Meaning and Happiness May 9, 2012
Posted by shaunphilly in Religion, Skepticism and atheism.Tags: happiness, meaning, relationships, religion, theology
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I’m not going to address the canard that without god we can’t have meaning in our lives. OK, yes I am. But only briefly, and the rest will only deal with that question indirectly. Yes, it is quite obvious that people without a belief in gods have meaning in their lives. Perhaps not inherent, absolute, and cosmically significant meaning, but those things are illusory, just like gods.
I have been, since childhood, rather introspective. I do a lot of thinking about thinking, reflecting on experience, and asking simple “why…” questions about mundane things that most people take as granted. To me, the beginning of skepticism begins with the ability to ask why something is, and then asking for reasons to keep accepting it. I never merely accepted the way things are and that they need to be that way. Thus, my becoming a degenerate deviant is not surprising.
Ultimately, I think seeing polyamory, atheism, and skepticism as deviant and degenerate is, well, unfortunate and morosely funny. It does not speak well of our species that such basic values as demanding evidence for claims and then not accepting worldviews that can’t stand up to such demands is the weird thing. But I digress…
Anyway, I’m one of those annoying people who thinks asking why we do and believe certain things is good. I also am interested in various experiences. I was very interested in meditation while young, and much of what I learned and experienced during those times in my life have influenced how I see the world, how I think, and how I try and improve as a person. I “experimented” with drugs while younger (meaning I enjoyed their effects while on them), and while I have little interest in such things now, I am glad that I had those experiences.
When I got to college, I was very interested in taking as many courses that dealt with religion, philosophy, and anthropology as I could. I was interested in questions about meaning, belief, and knowledge in culture and psychology. Is there any surprise that I graduated with a degree in ‘religious anthropology”? Is there any surprise that I write about religion, think about religion, and ultimately oppose religion?
I knew that the history of ideas which dealt with meaning, experience, etc are contained in philosophy, theology, and religion. I also knew that I didn’t believe in any gods, had strong issues with religions, both organized and less-than-organized, and that I had an attraction to science and philosophy.
After reading religious thinkers from over the centuries, including many scriptures and apologetic writing, I knew that these things had something to offer us, even if much of it was meshed with absurd theological assertions and assumptions; I knew that it is all too easy to conflate interesting psychological insights with the tradition adjacent to their origin. That is, I understood that a Catholic, Moslem, or Hindu thinker could say something interesting, insightful, or even true without that idea having any logical relevance to the theology they believed.
So, any sophisticated theologian who attempts to claim that this gnu atheist is unfamiliar with sophisticated theology, I can confidently reply that they are simply incorrect. No Courtier’s Reply can stick to me, especially since the Reply is absurd on its face.
—
For a few years I have thought about how we, as a community of reason, could talk about such things outside of a theological context. I mean, philosophers do it all the time, right? (And I do have a MA in philosophy). Then today I ran into this post by Dale McGowan which talks about the importance of social interactions in happiness. It is a quick review of a study about why religion makes people happier.
Essentially the point is encapsulated here, stolen from McGowan’s post, in these quotes by Chaeyoon Lim:
[Life satisfaction] is almost entirely about the social aspect of religion, rather than the theological or spiritual aspect…
and Raising Freethinkers co-author Amanda Metskas:
[T]heology is less important to most churchgoers than a number of other benefits. In many cases, they attend despite the theology. It is telling that only 27 percent of churchgoing US respondents to a 2007 Gallup poll even mentioned God when asked for the main reason they attend church. Most people go for personal growth, for guidance in their lives, to be encouraged, to be inspired—or for the community and fellowship of other members. These, not worship, are the primary needs fulfilled by churches. (p. 206)
This is illuminating, and speaks to precisely the point that many gnus have discussed over the last few years; it is not the beliefs which make people happy (they are usually harmful), but it is the social connections that keep many people in church.
The implication, I believe, is that we do need to do more to create social environments for atheists and such. Skeptics in the pub, conventions, campus groups, etc are all great steps in that direction, even if some people take things too far in terms of emulating religion. That is, Alain de Botton is wrong precisely because he does not just want to keep the social aspects around, but he wants to keep some of the theological parts alive too.
Part of what will cultivate community, I think, will be organizing under a banner, a label (or a very small set of labels at most), and a small set of major organizations who represent what we do share, our political concerns, and our social presence. The Reason Rally was a step in defining much of these things, and the next few years will have a lot to tell us about the nature of our collective message, what organizations will be saying them, and how broad we need to be to draw people in.
We have issues, as a community, in terms of drawing in the voices of women, ethnic and racial minorities”, genderqueer people, and even blue collar secularists. I don’t know what all the solutions are, but I am keeping my ears tuned to people who offer some and will be thinking and writing about it from time to time.
I know I am guilty of many of the things that turn many people away; my writing is esoteric, my tone is sometimes harsh, and I include commentary which does not fit in with most atheists and skeptics (specifically polyamory. To what degree, if any, I may change any of this will depend on the strength of arguments, the evidence supporting said arguments, and my ability to actually change.
But I think we, the community of reason and skepticism, have a lot to say about how to create meaning in important ways and how to live lives of general contentment and happiness. Fore me, my life project to be happy lead me to atheism and polyamory, while sharpening my skeptical tools along the way. I think my story and views have something to add to this conversation.
The Secular Coalition gets a new executive director, and (I think) gets it right May 3, 2012
Posted by shaunphilly in Skepticism and atheism.Tags: church and state., conservative, Edwina Rogers, liberal, politics, religion, secular coalition for America
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I have been a fan of the past executive directors of the SCA. Lori Lipman Brown and Sean Faircloth are both smart, friendly, fun-loving people who I enjoyed getting to know. When Sean left the position to be with the Richard Dawkins Foundation, there was the hanging question of who would be chosen to succeed him.
And today we have an answer from Hemant Mehta’s blog. The choice is a former Republican lobbyist named Edwina Rogers. I have never heard of her until today, but let me tell you, based on what I read from Hemant’s interview, why I think that the choice is a good one.
First, her answers to Hemant’s questions are encouraging. She’s a nontheist (her preferred term), secularist, and she seems to be aware of the issues which the SCA is designed to confront. In short, she’s one of us.
Second, the fact that she is a she is a plus in the sense that we do have some issues with gender inequality in the larger community of reason. Not that hiring a man would have been a mistake, but this is an added bonus from an equality point of view.
Third, she has inroads to Republicans. This, I think, is the most important part. For some time there has been an idea that there is a divide in our “culture wars” which divide along the lines of Democrat/liberal/secularist versus Republican/conservative/theocrat. This divide is way too simplistic, and as Edwina Rogers states, its not true in the majority of cases.
Secularism is not a uniquely liberal value or cause. Yes, there are many conservative voices who declare their opposition to the liberal and secularist agendas, but even those conservatives have much to gain, and maintain, in a secular government. With Edwina speaking for us, perhaps some of those voices will be forced to allow their connected ears to get some exercise. Seculaism has much to offer conservatives, especially the religious ones.
Yes, I have stark political and philosophical differences with conservative people (some who are family members) who view me as some crazed, brainwashed, confused elitist who has been fed the liberal lie of separation of church and state. Perhaps Edwina’s voice can carry a little more weight with such people (perhaps not, in many), ot at least be able to frame them in ways those people will understand.
And there may in fact be a majority of conservative contituents who hold similar views about us elitist progressive secularists, but there are paths towards developing political alliances with secular conservatives who hold, or at least are near, levers of power and authority.
I would prefer to see America become more progressive as a whole. I would like to see the Democratic party become truly progressive, fully secular, and deal with real social inequalities such as those brought up by the Occupy movement. I would like to see the Republican party return to leaders such as Barry Goldwater, rather than the theocracy-downed idiocy that so often sways Republican constituents and legislation.
I would like to see real, substantive, argument about policy between people who intelligently disagree, rather than be distracted by Biblical proclamations and religiously-based anti-gay, anti-women, and anti-science ideologies which end up doing damage to the nation we all live in. There is much to love about America, but sometimes those attributes become smudged with too much mud from religious contamination.
Theocratic tendencies in politics harm us all in ways which we often don’t even realize, unless we are paying close attention. Having someone familiar with conservative lobbying circles assisting in our efforts to support secularism in America will be a boon for us all–liberal, conservative, etc–long-term.
I think that the SCA made a smart move in choosing Edwina Rogers. Let’s see if I’m right. In the mean time, let’s all welcome Edwina to her new position.
Sunday, Bloody Easter April 7, 2012
Posted by shaunphilly in Culture and Society, Religion, Skepticism and atheism.Tags: crucifixion, Easter, Jesus, religion, resurrection
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Jesus had a bad weekend for your sins.
Listen, I don’t accept the crucifixion and then the story of how Jesus rose on the third day for a second. There is simply no corroborating evidence for it, it parallels too many pre-Christian stories, and the oldest Gospel, Mark, didn’t originally contain the story of the resurrection. There is a lot out there to read about the issue of the resurrection, and I am certainly no expert (although I know one person who has expertise in related academic fields), so I will leave it to them to address that particular issue in more detail.
But if I did accept the story, that is, the bare facts that some guy (let’s call him Jesus, Yeshua, or Frank for all I care) almost 2000 years ago was wandering around with 12 dudes while preaching about some messianic Jewish story or how the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, or possibly within you, was arrested, detained, questions, tortured, crucified, and then buried only to appear, alive, a couple of days later…. Well, so what?
Let’s say that I was willing to grant that this happened. It does not have to mean I have to accept the interpretation of those who claimed to have been witnesses. I don’t have to accept the dominant narrative that evolved into the Gospel stories nor the earlier Pauline accounts, via his letters to other people who started worshiping this guy around the Mediterranean Sea, do I?. In fact, this historical fact, if assumed true, does not address the existence of any gods at all, necessarily (nor does it address whether that person was a god, let alone THE god…or at least one of three hypostases of god…whatever). It would be a mysterious situation that would pique my curiosity (and skepticism), but if it happened then we would have to deal with it as a real event and figure out how it might have heppened.
The problem is that we are so far removed from the historical events, blind to essential details, that the type of necessary investigation would be impossible. There is nothing to do with the facts other than wonder about them. So, what does this type of story have to do with god, religion, hundreds of years of violence, repression of scientific and intellectual freedom to advance, and hierarchical infrastructures of people whom are generally automatically revered because they apparently know this guy who rose from the “dead”?
In a word; nothing. At least it shouldn’t, if we were being rational about things.
Many Christian apologists have claimed that what makes Christianity unique is the fact that it is based upon not mere mythology, but historical fact. Paul, in the first letter to the Corinthians famously said that
15:14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
and for many Christians this is the crux (lol) of the matter. For them, the “miracle” of the resurrection is the fact that defines their faith. And despite the fact that I (as well as many other people) do not think that it happened, this is irrelevant because even if it did actually happen it does not lead to the salvation story that many Christians want it to tell.
What happened to Jesus, if it happened at all like it is portrayed in Christian orthodox theological terms, was not a sacrifice. If Jesus was god, or at least one with god, and if Jesus knew this, then it is not a sacrifice because he suffered no actual harm and no real loss,. It is a bad couple of days, a stubbed toe, an inconvenient breeze in the face of eternity as a freaking all-powerful god! It would be less of a sacrifice than the sacrifice of effort and time it would take to flip a switch within arm’s length in order to save people from certain death by some killing machine, created by some super-villain.
Except in the case of Christianity, God is not only the switch-flipper, but God is also the mad super-villain who created the killing machine as well as the switch itself. I simply cannot find meaning in this Easter story beyond metaphors for all sorts of themes surrounding rebirth, which are used by most religious traditions and which don’t imply that we are all evil sinners worthy of eternal torture for being what God made us to be so that he would have to send himself to have a bad couple of days to make up for lack of good planning concerning the fate of billions of people throughout all of history.
Yeah, that’s the story of Christianity, people.
Ok, so what if Jesus was a man, albeit a unique and important one? What if Jesus was a man inspired by a true god, or at least the chosen messenger of god, whose efforts in delivering said message would be rewarded with eternal paradise on the right hand, or even down the street from, the real God of the universe(s)? Then it is merely a form of substitutional atonement; an awful event, morally, if ever there was one. I’ve heard the apologetic responses, but the story of the atonement, or the replacing of the sacrificial sheep 
with Jesus (the most unblemished of sacrificial lambs) is absurd. How does another person dying do anything for my imperfections? The level of theological rationalization around this issue is frankly staggering, and we need to see it for what it is. The idea simply makes no sense, whatsoever, and it robs us of our personal responsibility for our own misdeeds.
Jesus dying for our sins, whether as god or man (or as some weird genetic cross-breed of god-man), is quite simply absurd and silly. It appeals to us emotionally and can be rationalized into some meaningful pulp, but it has no nutritional value whatsoever. It is irrational, un-skeptical, and even immoral in nature.
If anything, it’s just another old religious metaphor for the rebirth of the world, in Spring, from the death that is winter, with the addition of theological concepts which absorb us in self-deprecation and is ultimately anti-life. You know, like symbols reminiscent of life, birth, and youth but bathed in blood and depressing self-hate.
It’s too bad we don’t have anything this time of year which is like that without all the blood, death, and anti-humanistic rhetoric built-in.
Oh, right, yes we do! Symbols of fertility, birth/rebirth, and youth surround our more secularized version of Easter. Pagan will try to take credit, and they do deserve some of it, but this is simply human behavior; we want a way to symbolize and celebrate the return of life to the world. Our history and literature is replete with such symbols and celebrations, and Christianity has (once again) seized them and used them as their own.
But in this case, the thieving Christians, specifically the Catholic Church, didn’t even have the common decency to re-name the holiday! Easter? really? EASTER?
I mean, come on, people? It’s bad enough that Christians stole Christmas, but at least in that case they chose an original name, right?
So, here is Ostara (she goes by many names, but essentially she is Ēostre/Easter. Check the link if you want to know more about the pagan mythology and history of celebrations and rituals surrounding her and this time of year. But if you don’t, at least take home with you the idea that this holiday is not merely Christian, and insofar as it is Christian it is not the story that the Pope or your pastor tells on Easter morning.
Please, learn your history. If you are a Christian, please learn where your ideas came from. Try to understand the context, the subtleties, and even the blatant cultural influences which shape how you see the world. View the Jesus story as a metaphor, a metaphorical narrative, and possibly not a very good one, which tells you something about our psychology and needs, but not about historical or metaphysical truth.
Jesus, if such a person existed and died via crucifixion, is not the solution to your sense of ultimate personal lacking. Your imperfections, misdeeds, and falling short of some ideal morality cannot be solved by a person dying, nor subsequent rising from said death, nor from some contrived ‘God sacrifices himself to himself to make up for a law he made about a piece of fruit that nobody ever actually ate’ theology. You must take responsibility for yourself, toss aside this metaphysical concept of sin, and stop sacrificing this life for some promised other life.
This life is all we have, and we must do what we can to make it all that we want it to be. So stop bowing to a pseudo-sacrifice and start living in a world which is currently blooming with things wonderful, terrible, and worth working for now
Happy Easter, everyone.
Individualism, association, and atheism April 5, 2012
Posted by Ginny in Culture and Society, Religion.Tags: atheism, new atheism, religion, respect
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A recent post on Camels with Hammers about intellectual temptations atheists must avoid voices a lot of my thoughts better than I could. Fincke generally allies himself with the New Atheists, but often speaks out against the cruder and less thoughtful instances of New Atheist thought, in a way I really appreciate (since I’m basically in his position as well.) #6 in his list is one I’ve thought about a lot, and want to expand on somewhat here.
Atheists, on the whole, are a pretty individualistic bunch. Relative to the rest of humanity, they feel okay going against the grain, risking social pariah-hood, and rejecting customs that exist for the sole purpose of making humans feel more connected to each other. This makes sense: to adopt a position so counter to cultural norms, a person needs to have a pretty thick skin toward social disapproval. Individualism is a self-selecting quality for atheists in this day and age.
What I see happening a lot is that atheists conflate this individualistic personality trait with superior rationality. They care less about social approval and social bonding, they see that other atheists feel similarly and that people subscribing to all kinds of woo and religion care more about it, and they assume that caring about social approval and social bonding are in themselves less rational. So any time an attempt is made to incorporate community, ritual, and institutions which prioritize social bonding into an atheist frame, you get some voices pooh-poohing the attempt as worthless and meaningless and anti-rational. When someone confesses that they have difficulty leaving religion because of the inevitable social isolation, this is seen as a sign of weakness.
This point of view “I’m individualistic and rational, if you were rational you’d be individualistic too” ignores a basic fact of humanity: we are social animals. We were social animals before we were intellectual, inquisitive animals, and the rise of curiosity and higher-order intelligence did not erase that part of our nature. The social impulse is as valid a part of our humanity as the truth-seeking impulse, and to try to weed out either is to try to change the fundamental nature of humanity.
Humanity is greatly indebted to the individualists: they ask the questions no one else will ask, they think of things no one else has thought of, and they create new ways of being when no one else dares to try. But in doing this, they must also remember that they are statistical outliers: that if the rest of humanity is going to follow them, we’re going to transform the vision into something that meets our common need for connection and social order. This will always happen: this is the kind of beings we are.
I hear some individualists say, “Well, of course I understand that it’s hard to risk social rejection… I struggle with it too.” Yes indeed… individualism and the need for association are not mutually exclusive, and nearly all of us have elements of both. But what I would like more individualists to understand is that their need for association, while genuine, may be far less strong than another person’s. What, for you, was hard in the way running a marathon is hard, might for another person be hard in the way that climbing Mt. Everest is hard. We’re all calibrated differently; we all have different threshholds of need for different human necessities.
And yes, depending on social connection can be a bar to rationality. Of course it can. I’m a good example: several months after my initial deconversion, I was desperately searching for a way back into Christianity. Eventually I found a definition of “faith” I could accept, and I went with it, and continued calling myself a Christian for several years. It wasn’t until I began dating an atheist that I could call myself an atheist again, and that’s not a coincidence. I wanted back in because I was lonely. Because all the people who loved me were Christians, and I felt hopelessly cut off from them — even though they still loved me, I needed a sense of belonging. I couldn’t hack it as an atheist on my own. My need for social connection guided my intellectual investigations, and biased me towards one conclusion.
So, a need to “belong” can influence and distort rational thinking. You know what else can influence and distort rational thinking? A need to be smarter and more correct than other people… a personality trait that self-selecting atheists are overall in no shortage of. The wise, mature ones acknowledge this tendency, recognize how it can bias them, and find ways to minimize its effect. Similarly, I’ve come to acknowledge my profound need for social connection, recognize how it can bias me, and find ways to minimize its effect. One thing that doesn’t work is deciding to care less. That only leads to self-deception.
There are a lot of people who are socially dependent to a degree that cripples them, that cuts them off from acknowledging truths that would improve their lives. A LOT of people. But the way to self-improvement, for many, is not to become diehard individualists, but to become more thoughtful and choosy in the ways they form and maintain their social bonds. The diehard individualists would do well to remember this.
The ends of unhealthy relationships April 4, 2012
Posted by shaunphilly in Polyamory, Religion, Skepticism and atheism.Tags: relationships, religion, skepticism
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Ever been in an unhealthy relationship? Ever had that relationship go bad and have it end in flames, the coldness reminiscent of the deep vacuum of space devoid of warmth or corporeal presence, or perhaps a little bit of both? I have. It is awful, painful, and ultimately liberating. But before your experience traverses the totality of the immediately previous triad, there is often a moment when the reality of it clicks home, a time when all you are capable of feeling is hurt. The anger and loneliness will come (again), but at that moment all which exists for you is a cognitively-blinding pain which compels a futile grasping towards the emptiness around and, seemingly, within you.
In time, will be the reflection and evaluation through sadness, anger, and even laughter as you remember what was good haunts you for days, weeks, and possibly longer. Eventually, you will begin to understand that the relationship was unhealthy. Sure, the relationship didn’t seem so at the time; the sex was good, you had fun with them most of the time, and there were some really good aspects to the person you cared for and with whom you built something important.
Even though sometimes they would be a little bit crazy or unbalanced. Perhaps they had some strange ideas, insisted upon them, and didn’t seem to allow you the freedom to express your ideas without complaining about being persecuted or somehow oppressed. Perhaps they had a bad history with relationships which you ignored for various reasons. Perhaps the relationship afforded you professional, social, or even political benefits which would be difficult to attain without the associations provided therein.
Or perhaps you thought what was good about them outweighed what was bad. Perhaps you rationalized that the bad was not even really bad, but merely misunderstood quirks and intricacies of the person you loved; things which illuminated their love for you…or something. Rationalization asserts more sense during its subjective composition it than it does through its dissemination.
But when the relationship ended, it hurt. It didn’t matter that the reason it ended was probably something that should make you feel better about getting away. It didn’t even matter that if you stopped to think about it rationally (that is, if you were capable of such a feat under the circumstances), you would realize that you will be much happier removed from such a relationship. The separation from an established relationship often brings forth sadness, depression, anxiety, loneliness, etc.
It does not even matter if the intimacy of that relationship was fictitious, or perhaps merely one-way.
Breaking up with god
Anyone who has left religion might be noticing some analogs here. This is, obviously, intentional. The reason I am drawing some parallels between leaving religion and a break-up from a bad romantic relationship is that I think that there are some interesting comparisons between them. In fact, my experiences with unhealthy relationships has not only taught me a lot about relationships, but I think it gives me a glimpse of what losing religion might be like, since I never had a religion to lose.
To start with, I suspect that many people stay in bad relationships, and religion, longer than the relationships provide actual happiness. I think that much of what keeps people in religion is a combination of habit and the comfort of familiarity. I think that many people stay in relationships whether they are abusive, neglectful, or simply poor romantic matches for similar reasons. It takes a lot to leave a relationship we are invested in, and even knowing that we need to do so does not make the process easier.
Secondly, I think that people stay in such relationships longer than they should because they don’t recognize how unhealthy the relationship actually has been. I imagine that the full comprehension of this is never fully known until much later, in many cases. People often don’t recognize the difference between (co-)dependency and real intimate affection and concern, and this inability perpetuates unhealthy relationships all to often. The feeling of needing someone, especially if that needing reflects some feeling of possession, ownership, or obligation, is not healthy. The fear of loss (often in the form of jealousy), or basic insecurity of uncertainty, is not something to be held aloft as the basis for love, let alone “true” love.
And this is the type of relationship which religion instills; a fear of loss, of being owned, and even of feeling obligated to remain in relationships which are unhealthy.
Healthy relationships
Relationships need to be built upon things like trust, transparency, and honesty. We do not own our partners, we must be open about what we do, what we want, and what we can and cannot handle. We need to do the personal work to make sure that we know what we want, to make sure that we have exercised our ability to perpetually grow emotionally and intellectually, as well, in order to make sure never to prematurely cut off what we can handle to some too easily reachable goal which will stagnate who we could be if we challenged ourselves more.
And in terms of our relationship with the universe, our society, and even the “truth,” we need to make sure that we are continuing to challenge our boundaries, presuppositions, and to keep communicating with people with whom we disagree. The universe is massive, complicated, and often beautiful as well as terrible. We would be temporal thieves of potential experience, understanding, and perspective by not allowing ourselves to see as much of that beauty—and terribleness!—if we didn’t pursue the world with full thrust towards such potential.
We need to approach people and the reality which we all share with an open mind, open heart, and unbridled willingness to hear the world calling us on our bullshit. If we do these things, we will be better off in all our relationships, whether they are the two-way relationships of traditional monogamy, multi-faceted relationships of less traditional polyamory, or the one-sides intimacy of our own self-respect or the respect for reality.
For reality cannot love us back, but that does not stop us from finding it beautiful, compelling, and worth our effort to get to know it as intimately as our limited cognitive ability allows us.
Sense which pleases the Lord April 1, 2012
Posted by shaunphilly in Skepticism and atheism.Tags: Bible, burnt offerings, church, ex-atheists, god, religion
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Yesterday, Ginny and I spent a fair amount of time editing a new post for today. We had wanted to make sure that we got the wording just right, trimmed it down enough to not be overwhelming (I do have a tendency to go on and on…), and were almost done….
What I almost did
So, firefox crashed. The crash message was there so briefly before the window disappeared that I don’t know the nature of the crash, but crash it did. “No problem,” I thought. “WordPress saved most of the work, and it’s fresh in my mind.” But no. The work was gone, irretrievable, dead. I had never seen firefox crash in this way before, and that it happened right then was extremely irritating, as if some intelligent force were at work.
I was angry. Ginny came back into the room and was annoyed too. I considered re-writing the post, but I was too frustrated, tired, and didn’t have the heart for it.
That was the problem, I didn’t have the heart….
So Ginny came over to me and held me and we grieved together briefly and then, well, something else happened. This time this new thing happened to both of us, in apparent unison. A feeling of assurance and understanding washed over both of us and looked at each other in coterminous understanding.
It occurred to both of us that perhaps that strange crash, at that moment, was not mere accident. Why would it happen then, as we worked on a post together for the first time (sort of like a preamble to our coming wedding vows), rather than any other time? What was the significance?
What if some power, some force, or even some intelligence saw this as the right opportunity to reach out to us. I have been saying for some time that if a god existed, I’d want to know. Also, I have said that this god would know how to make itself known to me. Apparently, god was waiting for the right time. He surely does work in mysterious ways.
What happened next was too sudden, too intense to record. Most of it was a blur. There were tears, prayers, and we had to go out to get what we needed in order to complete the right ritual. We didn’t have time to call a priest or consult the book, we had to get moving before God smited us. Of course, finding a goat so late at night would be hard, especially without a car.
We totes have to get one of these...makes great BBQ!
But eventually we found a supermarket that had some goat meat which was open all night, and proceeded to acquire it. It was not much of a “sacrifice,” but it was all we could do under such short notice. The meat department were nice enough to supply some goat blood too, as that would be necessary.
We burnt it on an altar to the Lord, as is demanded by Him, and left it for the high priests.
Of course, not having our own altar, we had to go to the local Jewish temple. But their altar was probably inside, and the door was really hard to get through, so we stopped trying and instead used the front steps and left it there for them. They will be so happy to know that people are returning to the old ways.
Our offering, before the burnt part
I know, I know…I’m new to this, OK? I have not read Leviticus in so long that I just sort of winged it. It came from the heart. That’s all the Host of Hosts demands, right? Later today I will re-read the chapters and do it right, but I thought that the attempt was enough to please the nose of the Lord at the time.
It did smell pretty good. That YHWH sure loves BBQ.
In any case, we then walked home and prayed loudly in the streets for all to hear and enjoy, sharing our new-found relationship with the true god, the King of Kings, with all who were out sinning in the Babylon which is downtown Philadelphia on a Saturday night. By this time, the bars were near to closing and we were getting nowhere with the people coming out of the bars drunk on their own dirty sin. So we just had to try and go in and spread some more good news.
This guy asked for some "help" with these 3. I told him I already had the 3 I needed...
Most people were friendly, but they were not in the mood for helping us find an unblemished male goat for a morning ritual. Plus, the blood all over us from earlier was apparently off-putting.
If these unforgiven Sodomites and Gomorrah-dwellers would only read Leviticus, they would understand that we hadn’t just slaughtered a room full of children, but in fact had been trying to please the God they were ignoring.
But they were too busy ignoring His Throne in their drunken orgy of Baal or whatever. Hey, I read the gosh-darned book years ago, it’s not exactly fresh in my memory!If not Baal, it was one of those false idols, like Vishnu or something. That false god loves drunk people.
So, after getting a few hours of sleep (I slept on the couch, not being married to Ginny yet and all), we woke up for an early church service at the local Baptist church, where we tried to show them all how to properly sacrifice a dove (OK, pigeon. We were short on time, again). But they were not interested and asked us to leave. So we left them to their luke-warmness and proceeded down the street.
These guys followed us all the way back to our house, yelling at us. Sinners!
We were lucky enough to catch the start of a Presbyterian service, and since they were already started we quietly sacrificed the pigeon in the back rows, which seemed to offend a few people. Perhaps they were upset because we did it at the wrong time? I’m not sure, but I don’t remember where the scripture tells you precisely when to do these things, so perhaps they were yelling at us for no reason except that they preferred to sacrifice birds after the communion.
Apparently, our timing was really bad, because they kicked us out too, a few of them following us down the street. Something about returning a “collection” plate, whatever that is.
But before trying to catch the noon Mass at the Catholic church, we decided that we should share our good news. Also, sorry Gina and Wes, but we can no longer take part in your sinning lifestyle. I guess we can still hang out and stuff, so long as you see the light. You do have a good back yard for burnt offerings, after all. However, if you don’t see the truth, we don’t want to be associated with people who will burn for eternity. And no, it’s not classism, whatever kind of Commie talk that is!
We will also have to take the website down soon, or at least change it to burntofferings.com (if that’s available!). But right now we have to get to Mass!
They’ll be so glad we brought our own sheep!
The Monogamy Delusion? March 29, 2012
Posted by shaunphilly in Polyamory, Skepticism and atheism.Tags: atheism, atheist movement, Greta Christina, polyamory, relationships, religion
2 comments
So, I just finished reading Greta Christina’s new book Why Are You Atheists So Angry: 99 Things That Piss Off The Godless (Kindle version), right after having met her after the Reason Rally, and I will briefly say that I recommend it as a great resource for both believer and heathen alike. It is a great read for anyone who does not quite understand why we get so fired up about religion and faith.
I use this as a premise for talking about goals of social movements, a question that Greta addresses in her book concerning the goals of the atheist movement specifically, and what this might have to teach the polyamory community. After watching the atheist movement grow and mature over the last 10 years or so, and given that I am usually thinking about polyamory, I inevitably will ask whether there will ever be a large, organized, coherent polyamory social movement.
And if there were, what would it look like?
As Greta talks about in her book, there are fundamental problems which the larger atheist community addresses through various means. There are the basic issues of confronting stereotypes, discrimination, and hatred of atheists. Such things range from moral, legal, and to philosophical issues and are fought for by both theists and atheists. There is also the front of the atheist community which actively responds to theistic claims, both to truth and socio-political access of levers of power (in the US, this is usually through Christian privilege), with counter arguments of varying levels of intensity. On the farther end is the ultimate goal of ridding the world—through persuasion—of religion. Greta and I share that goal.
With that in mind, what types of issues could a polyamory social movement address?
- are there fundamental cultural, legal, or philosophical problems which polyamory addresses?
- is there any real and significant discrimination against polyamorous people in the world? If so, is it primarily cultural or legal in nature?
- Would such a movement be essentially a struggle for equal rights or would it also include questions of truth, such as whether polyamory is the best model for relationships that all people should emulate? (I a thinking about that last point in terms of Sam Harris’ Moral Landscape)
I don’t have any definitive conclusions to these questions right now, nor do I think anyone does. I ask these questions to tease out some stark differences in the types of problems that the atheist community is dealing with from what the polyamory community has to deal with, whether it will become a larger social movement or not.
Will there ever be a poly equivalent to accommodationists?
In the atheist community, there are those whom like to argue that religion is worthy of respect, should not be criticized, and that there is much about religion that we should perpetuate, learn from, etc. I have addressed this question numerous times over the last few years, and will not say more than I disagree with this view. Strongly.
On the other side are people, like myself, who believe that religion is more harmful than not, untrue, and perpetuates the worst parts of our humanity; specifically faith. I will resist urge to rant about that here. Resistance is not always futile.
(In other words, urges to rant about faith can be countered with Star Trek references)
So, the question is whether this pattern holds for the polyamory community? Are there people who will argue that, for example, monogamy is more damaging than not? That monogamy cannot be a healthy relationship structure? Will people argue that polyamory is objectively better than non-polyamory? Will there, in short, be anti-monogamists? Not merely people who prefer polyamory, think it a better way to live given more options, but actually against the practice of monogamy as an irrational and delusional lifestyle? Will someone write a book called “The Monogamy Delusion”?
Again, not mere amonogamy–the lack of monogamy–but the active social activism against (through persuasion) the continuation of monogamy as a cultural practice.
(Some of you are thinking about Brave New World. Or, if you are uber-literate, you are thinking of WE.)
Now, I don’t doubt that there are a few people out there who might try to make such an argument. I’m sure that a rare poly bird out there, or a few, will argue that monogamy is fundamentally wrong, irrational, and possibly a bowing to the worst instincts of humanity; things like jealousy, social conformity, and living against one’s true desires (living inauthentically).
And on some points, I will agree with such people. I might, in fact, agree with many of the points they will make, and make some of those points myself. But despite this affinity for such arguments, I am not, at least not right now, one of those people who will make such an argument. And I want to explain why.
Theism v. monogamy
Theism is a hypothesis about the world, specifically the existence of some supernatural being commonly referred to as a deity, god, etc. It makes a specific claim which is either testable or untestable. If it is testable, it has not survived skeptical/scientific analysis so far, and does not appear as f it will ever pass such a standard. If it is not testable, it is a worthless hypothesis and should be thrown out on those merits alone. Atheism is the lack of that hypothesis, whether made out of ignorance or through informed analysis, and the arguments it makes are in response to a proposition of how the world is.
Monogamy is a relationship style based upon sexual (and usually romantic) exclusivity between two people. It is the lifestyle of having one lover, sometimes a spouse, at least at a time but possibly life-long. It is not a hypothesis about the world, but it is a…choice? (is it really always a choice, given how many people are not even aware of alternatives? A question for another post!). In any case, monogamy is a structure of one’s relationship, rather than a claim about reality.
What is the significance of this distinction? Essentially, it is the fact that polyamory is not a reaction to monogamy in the same way that atheism is a reaction to theism. A polyamorous advocate could say something like “this is a better lifestyle for my wants and needs, and it may be better for you” and not “your lifestyle is objectively unproven to be best, true, and so your lifestyle is objectively wrong and you should give it up.” Polyamory is not a reaction against a claim to objective truth, as atheism is. Polyamory has a relationship, and not always an antagonistic one, to a traditional cultural ideal of monogamy (traditional in much of the world, but certainly not all of it) that feels unnatural to many people.
To clarify the distinction between these two issues, let me ask two questions:
- Is it reasonable to consider all of the arguments for and against theism and rationally come out a theist?
- Is it reasonable to consider all of the arguments for and against monogamy and rationally come out monogamous?
In terms of (1), there are no good arguments for any gods’ existence, so any skeptic should become an atheist if they properly apply their skepticism to the question of gods. As for (2), there are people who will, upon honest reflection, discussion, and consideration with their partner, find that they both are actually quite happy, satisfied, and feel no desire to be with other people sexually/romantically. Those people will be what I call “accidentally monogamous.” They have seriously considered whether they would want other people in their sexual/romantic life and have concluded that they need no rule about exclusivity but will end up living a monogamous lifestyle, for all practical purposes.
And before anyone thinks to point this out, I admit having argued that a true skeptic should be polyamorous, but I have also argued that monogamy is legitimately rational as a needs-securing lifestyle for at least some people. To be clear, my view is that polyamory (not having an exclusivity rule) should be the starting position for all relationships, and monogamy is subsequently only fully rational if, and only if (iff), that is what both people actually, authentically, want with each other. Which means that they would need no rule arguing for exclusivity, because doing so would be redundant because neither is actually interested in pursuing other people.
Wes would probably say that this lack of a need for an exclusivity rule is coterminous with polyamory, and I tend to agree. But I think there is room for debate here about the definition of polyamory, so I am allowing that room in my analysis here. My views may change in the future, in that I may completely adopt his definition as being sufficient for polyamory. The consequence of this would be that I might then conclude that all monogamy, unless it is reached “accidentally,” would be irrational and possibly harmful.
I’m not there right now.
Polyamourous evangelicalism?
The conclusion from all of this, as I see it, is that any movement to advance polyamory culturally, socially, or politically will probably be limited to providing information, legal and philosophical challenges, and the decreasing of any discrimination which polyamorous people experience or are legitimately worried about.
I don’t see a strong argument, parallel to atheism’s arguments against theism, religion, and faith, against monogamy. I see arguments for being polyamorous, but that is not precisely the same thing as being against all monogamy.
There will be people who want to get rid of monogamy, and I will want to hear their arguments why they think we should strive for that (as I would hope atheist accommodationists should want to actually read new/gnu atheist arguments. I’m looking at you, Julian Baggini!). But for now, I don’t see much room for a “new/gnu poly” movement. But I suppose only time will tell.
If anyone feels I am being to accommodating to monogamy, I’m open to arguments.
On imaginary friends March 25, 2012
Posted by Ginny in Religion, religion, atheism, polyamory, culture.Tags: atheism, belief, god, religion
2 comments
Had a great time at the Reason Rally, despite the rain and chilliness, and despite it using every last scrap of social energy this introvert could muster. Adam Savage’s was perhaps my favorite speech, especially this part at the end:
I have concluded through careful empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought, giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I’m capable of. I believe they know everything I do and think and they still love me, and I’ve concluded after careful consideration that this person keeping score is me.
This nicely summarizes a thought that I’ve meant to write about for a while. It’s one of the less obvious negative consequences of religion, and something I myself didn’t realize until I’d been an atheist for several years. The idea of God I grew up with was everything Adam Savage describes in the quote and more: an ever-present companion even in my most profound loneliness, someone to pour out my worries to, share my joy, amusement, and exasperation with, someone who understood me at the deepest level, and, while he might not always approve, always loved and forgave me. Atheists mock theists for their “imaginary friend,” but perhaps they don’t really consider what it would be like to have such a friend that you actually believed existed. It means always being loved, always having support, never being alone. I, like many ex-believers, mourned the loss of this friend deeply when I found it was impossible to believe.
It took me a lot longer to realize that those experiences of feeling loved, supported, and listened to were real. Of course they were: I genuinely felt them. The interpretation I put on them was false, but the feelings were real. And what that means is that that support, that love, that listening ear, was only ever myself. The wise, calm voice I heard speaking back to me, giving perspective on my problems: that was me too. I had all those resources within myself the whole time, but I believed they came from outside of me. I didn’t give myself nearly enough credit. That friendly presence is not lost to me; it’s where it always was.
I started out saying that this was a negative consequence of religion, and I still think it is: religion, for many people, teaches us that the best and wisest part of ourself is not ourself at all, but external. It teaches us that we are dependent on someone else for love, forgiveness, wisdom, and encouragement. And that is a travesty. But on the other hand, perhaps the teachings about God enabled me to develop that part of myself. I don’t know; I’d have to hear from people who grew up atheist, whether they have anything like that sense of self-affirming internal companionship. (Evidently Adam Savage does, but I don’t know his religious history.) My guess is that some do and some don’t; and certainly not all religious people gain that particular thing from their notion of God. For some, indeed, God seems to embody many of the worst aspects of themselves, the bigoted and judgemental, the hateful and fearful. But I was lucky enough to be raised with a version of God that was everything best and wisest and most loving, as I could conceive of it, and perhaps that helped me develop that part of myself in a way I might not have otherwise.
So it may be that this is a possible positive as well as negative aspect of religion: providing a venue for people to shape and nurture their own best impulses. To the extent that my childhood religion did this for me, I’m grateful to it, as much as I resent it for telling me that those things were external to myself. Perhaps one thing the atheist movement should work on is encouraging those impulses, teaching people how to develop that supportive, forgiving, wise voice within themselves. Even though I recognized that it was present and accessible to me, I’ve lost sight of it in recent months, and I think I’d do well to recover it. I’m never as happy, healthy, and well-balanced as when I’m being my own imaginary friend.
On absolute truth and those disrespectful accommodationists February 29, 2012
Posted by Ginny in Religion, Skepticism and atheism.Tags: accommodationism, atheism, belief, liberal Christianity, new atheists, religion, respect, truth
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I could not have looked for a better way to sum up the difference between Gnu Atheists and fundamentalist theists on the one hand, and liberal ideologues of all stripes on the other, than this quote from Alain de Botton:
Probably the most boring question you can ask about religion is whether or not the whole thing is “true.”
De Botton is an atheist, but he thinks there’s a lot of useful and interesting stuff in religion, which he goes on to discuss. All well and good, and I agree with him that there is much about religion that’s “useful, interesting, and consoling,” — in fact I myself am still looking for ways to fill some of the holes that leaving religion has left in my life (no, none of them are god-shaped.) But through all the changes I’ve been through, there’s never been a point where I wouldn’t have been deeply offended by the claim that the question of religion’s truth or falsehood is “boring.”
De Botton’s position is very familiar to me. A lot of people, both religious and non-religious, have moved into a space of being fairly indifferent to the actual nature of the universe, and instead seeing religion as purely a social institution or personal mythology. Whatever works for you… all paths lead to God… I believe this, but you don’t have to… they’re all ways of saying the same thing: it doesn’t matter what’s actually true. This is compatible with a lot of religions, as well as with atheism or agnosticism, but it is absolutely incompatible with the monotheistic Abrahamic religions (and perhaps others that I’m less well familiar with.)
In a lot of ways the “I don’t care what’s true” stance is a big improvement, particularly in its social effects. But a key tenet of people who embrace it is not offending anybody, and what they fail to see is that that statement is profoundly offensive to those who do think truth matters. It’s worse than dissent, worse than disagreement: it’s invalidation. It’s saying “I reject the entire foundational concept of your belief. I think the things that are most important to you about your religion are irrelevant.”
A few days ago the story about Mormons baptizing deceased Jews got around, and my take on it was somewhat unusual. If I truly believed that a posthumous baptism was going to gain somebody an (optional) admittance to the eternal kingdom of God, I’d probably do it too! Being the compassionate literalist I am, I’d probably devote a major portion of my life to doing it — if I truly believed. That’s the gift of eternal life, people! Am I going to refrain from giving it just because somebody gets offended? To the extent that these baptisms are being done out of a sincere belief in their efficacy, and not for one of a host of other reasons religious rituals are practiced (I know nothing about the church politics around posthumous baptisms), I can’t fault them for doing these; from their viewpoint, it’s the absolute right and loving thing to do.
I pointed this out on facebook, and somebody responded, “But the people being baptized didn’t believe in the Mormon afterlife!” Which is colossally missing the point. The Mormons doing the baptisms do believe it (I assume, giving them all possible credit.) And under that belief, it doesn’t matter whether what afterlife the other person believed in: your belief is true, and you are helping them to eternal life despite their erroneous beliefs.
The happy, harmonious, multicultural view of religion whereby it’s all just social institution and personal mythology and nobody’s beliefs have a real impact on their life, death, and afterlife is completely ineffective in dealing with people who sincerely belief in the objective truth of their religion. I know; I used to be one. People who stood in that viewpoint appeared hopelessly naive and logically impaired to me. The statement “My religion is objectively true and has real-life consequences” cannot be effectively countered with “To each their own, whatever works for you.” The literalist believer will, at best, dismiss the religious pluralist with an annoyed shrug, and go on literally believing. As long as there are people who say “My religion is objectively true,” there will and should be non-believers who say, “No, it is objectively false,” and I think — have always thought — that those non-believers are giving the believers a hell of a lot more respect than any accommodationist.
Gnosis, pt 2 February 29, 2012
Posted by Ginny in Skepticism and atheism.Tags: agnosticism, atheism, belief, Christianity, faith, god, religion
3 comments
In my last post, I wrote about my own ups and downs with knowledge and belief about God, and the several-years-long transitional phase where I was truly neither a theist nor an atheist. Today I want to dig into what I think was going on with that.
I’m inclined to compare my transitional phase with the apparent beliefs of a lot of non-theists who nonetheless talk about things like “the universe,” “fate,” or “karma” on a regular basis. There’s a kind of animistic habit of mind which seems very common to human nature, which insists on attributing intention and consciousness to everything. It’s this habit of mind that remained when my explicit God-belief had vanished from my brain; it’s this habit of mind that made me say “God took away my belief in God.”
On top of that animistic habit, I had a deep and thorough understanding of an internally consistent Christian worldview. Everything that I perceived in the world could be interpreted through the lens of Christianity in a way that made sense on its own terms. Even my loss of belief could be interpreted that way. It did not require mental effort or self-deception to come up with an interpretation of the world that was consistent with Christianity: having grown up Christian, it was easy, almost second nature. That meant that it was still possible to continue believing in (a form of) Christianity with full intellectual integrity; what had changed was that it was also possible not to.
I did some studying; I read The God Delusion and some other writings; and I came to the conclusion that an atheist worldview was also internally consistent. I had hoped that there would be features of reality that couldn’t adequately be explained without a deity, but in my search I found none. I found myself looking at two complete, coherent accounts of reality, both plausible to me, both accounts that I could accept with full intellectual integrity, and entirely incompatible with each other. At that time in my life, I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that I was a theist or an atheist. I found both believable, and consequently couldn’t truly believe either.
I said before that I don’t like to use the word “know” in relation to questions of theism, because of its ambiguity. But if asked at that time in my life whether I believed in a god or not, all I could have honestly said was “I don’t know.” For a few years there, I’d say I was a true agnostic, an agnostic lacking both knowledge and belief.
Halfway through those transitional years I returned to Christianity, not because either my beliefs or my assessments of the truth had changed, but because I wanted it to be true. Not a strong reason, but it was all I had. If I’d had more unbelieving friends at that time, it probably wouldn’t have happened — I’d probably have continued in my agnostic paralysis until the unbelieving neural pathways clicked into place. (I just made that up, but it’s a terrific way of thinking about it… the whole thing was basically like a gear shift, and there was a long period there where the chain was suspended, adjusting over the gears, neither one thing nor the other.) But I was lonely, and all but one of my close friends and family were Christian, so I was looking for a way back in. I never thought that my desire for the Christian God to be real made it more likely that he was real; I just seized on desire as an acceptable stand-in for “faith,” since I didn’t have any of that. And I was backed up in that interpretation by some statements in the first few chapters of Introduction to Christianity, by Joseph Ratzinger, who did rather well in the ranks of his faith profession.
I’ll write more about my ins and outs with religion later; now I have to go rant about truth!
