View from the Loft

A response to "Animist on Atheism"

Paragardener and I had a brisk discussion about atheism, materialism, and spirituality on Facebook the other day, one that may have helped launched his recent blog post, "Animist on Atheism." In it, he posits that without the spiritual, we humans turn the world into Mordor. In what follows, I apologize if I've misunderstood anything and welcome correction.

He begins by offering the theory that atheism took off when science-y types rejected the Christian concept of god. Actually, scientists and religion got along very well for a very long time; I would really argue with his implying that science easily and quickly left religion behind. But I don't want to spend time on that, as it's kind of a side branch of his overarching argument.

Let's get to the heart of the matter:

The atheist denial of natural spirits is based on an error, the belief that the spirit world is basically a lie communicated to the people by priests. For most people over most of human time, the spirit world was much more directly accessible.

Just a couple of sentences, but a lot to unpack.

First, most atheists have come to their lack of belief in god, gods, or spirits because there is no evidence for such. Many of us have arrived at our atheism by means of critical thinking, rejection of the usual arguments for god (or spirits)--the same tired arguments are offered over and over--and noticing the lack of evidence for god(s)/spirits. Our unbelief isn't primarily derived from priests (a term I assume includes all those who represent official, organized systems of religious belief) being the ones who communicate the lies. Instead we reject the very existence of said gods or spirits. You can ingest a lot of lies all by yourself just by reading the bible and believing what you read. Or you can see an eclipse and attribute it to a fearsome sky spirit. The intervening priestly class isn't necessary for the propagation of lies, although it certainly has helped that along. 

For atheists, the lies are pretty self-evident. We really don't believe in a spirit world, directly accessible or not.

Interestingly, much of Paragardener's post actually invokes natural processes and not spirits at all. For example:

On an everyday level, people were trained to rely on their instinct or “see with the heart.” Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer, describes it thus: “I spent much of my childhood in a third-world, rural environment where we had to be in tune with Mother Nature for our very survival… To be instinctual means to be clearheaded, open, and aware of the signals we are getting from other people, animals, and our environment all the time. It means understanding our natural selves and the natural world, and acknowledging our interdependence with that world.” (from “Be the Pack Leader.”)

There's nothing supernatural in all this. I'm a little confused by the use of "instinct" and "instinctual" here. Instinct is what gives us fight or flight, the search for food, the desire for sex, the avoidance of danger, etc. This paragraph seems to be more about what's often called "intuition." And intuition is being aware of hundreds of little signals that we are probably not consciously aware of. But the amazing human brain takes in all this sensory input and comes to very rapid conclusions if it has been taking in and storing data derived through experience. Paying close attention to our surroundings as a matter of course does yield response and instant analysis that can seem instinctual, in the way I think Paragardener is using the term.

Later in the post, there's this:

These philosophies are insufficient — they do not feed the instinctual side of human nature. We find ourselves a bunch of neurotics living in ugly places.

I don't know if I'm reading this right, but it seems to say that experiencing a spiritual world is instinctual. It's true that humans have searched for reasons for what was inexplicable before science came along and that they attributed events to gods or spirits. Is that instinctual? Maybe, but I don't see it as a virtue. I see it as ignorance, and as something that can stifle the urge to discover the real answers to "why?" (As for "a bunch of neurotics living in ugly places," I blame organized religion and government policy, for starters ...) And what about the artistic side of human nature? We've had cave art for tens of thousands of years; the need to make art is in us. There is something that calls us to beauty that has nothing to do with the spiritual, unless you define "spiritual" so broadly that it loses its meaning.

I also have to argue with Paragardener's apparent belief that studying botany and cell biology ruins one's appreciation of trees. The extrapolation would be that learning science banishes the mystical and mysterious. If the mystical is non-existent, then banishing it isn't a bad thing, at least if you value truth over superstition. And I don't find that it ruins the sense of mystery I feel when I walk in a forest. I, too, see trees as sinister or welcoming, but that's because of my imagination. A little poetry or music or just listening to the wind in the trees and I don't need the fiction of a spirit world to feel wonder and oneness with nature.

Nor do I think that psychedelic drugs, yoga, meditation, or certain kinds of music complete with light shows connects us to another world. They work on the mind, that astounding organ we are learning more about every day. I'm not saying that they don't open us up to different experiences or ways of experiencing--I'm just arguing that said experiences don't necessarily betoken accessing a spirit world.

I don't know to what extent I'm a materialist or a positivist--I'm not even sure what those words mean, although I can guess. I do know that disbelief in spirits does not consign a person to a bleak world of surface meaning only or to purely utilitarian ways of responding to the world or to valuing the material over such things as love, response to art, feelings of connectedness, and a sense of awe. It's not as if I've never explored the spiritual possibilities; I have. But I feel now that this world is quite enough, if we have the eyes to see it.  I don't need magic. But I need to be open to beauty, love, compassion, and the knowledge that all life on this planet is indeed, as Paragardener says, interdependent.

The universe is vast, even the part of it we can see with the naked eye in the night sky. That I'm temporarily a part of it is quite magic enough.

It's that time of year

Yeah, that time of year when a certain variety of Christian gets all whacked out over the War Against Christmas and people saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." People I like even get into this mindset, to my great sadness and dismay, posting things on FB about how they will always say "Merry Christmas" and never "Happy Holidays." Where is it written that everyone--EVERYone--must comply with the Christian religion?

One of my examples is the cashier at your local supermarket: how do you know that s/he is Christian? Maybe s/he doesn't celebrate Christmas. So why not just "Happy Holidays," which is cheery and a wish for good times in and of itself? Why insist on CHRISTmas, forcing your particular god down someone's throat? Don't get me wrong: when someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, I say "Merry Christmas" back. I don't have a problem with it, but I'm rather loath to offer that greeting first, since I don't know whether the recipient is of some other religion or none at all.  Even if I were Christian, I'd be rather embarrassed about assuming that everyone I meet is a Christian and won't mind the whole Christmas thing.

I'm with Tim Minchin--I really like Christmas--but I don't like exhortations that tell us how we're "supposed" to celebrate it. You know, like "Keep the Christ in Christmas!" Well, guess what, folks: most or all of our beloved traditions came from pagan cultures.  Everything from the purported date of his birth to legends of stars, the use of Christmas trees and candles, even mistletoe, comes from non-Christian tradition.  Actually it's more like "Where IS the Christ in Christmas?" We can't really pin him down. The Gospel narratives, of course, are at odds with each other about the whole nativity and other aspects of Jesus' life and death. And let's not forget that many of the details of Jesus' life mirror the life of other gods popular at the time.

But beyond all that, Christmas has become secularized over the years, despite the wails of Christians who don't like that trend. When you think about it those protests have been going on since the Puritans ...  Christmas, realistically speaking, can no longer be treated as if it's confined to Christian believers. It just isn't. Christians may claim the holiday for their own and put Jesus Christ at the center of it, but for a lot of people, that's simply not true any more.

We celebrate Christmas totally without Christ. It's a time for family to come together, to take note of the winter solstice and honor those symbolic gestures that represent the return of the sun, to feel the connection with all the family Christmases past. It is and always will be special to us.

And we don't need Jesus to feel this way. We just need each other.

On sexual harassment

(Yes, it's been donkey's years since I've posted here. I hope that will change.)

I read a lot of atheist blogs, and recently there's been a lot of discussion--well, discussion, mudslinging, tantrums, etc.--about sexual harassment at atheist conferences. Some women active in the secularist/skeptic/atheist movement have publicly addressed the issue and asked for policies to be put in place that would make it clear to conference-goers that sexual harassment will not be tolerated.

It seems to me that most reasonable people would find such policies to be a good thing. Alas, there are a good many sexists and misogynists--and not just men--who are whining and complaining about them. Objections fall into a few different groups: "A code of conduct will make even consensual sexual activities verboten, or too risky!"  "Goodbye spontaneity!" "Women: lying bitches!"

Yes, one of the fears is that women are malicious liars who want to get innocent men in trouble. Seriously.

I just love how women's discomfort and even fears are so readily dismissed. The head of one prominent skeptics organization went so far as to say that harassment had never been reported at that organization's conference, only to be immediately reminded by several women of incidents that had been reported--and never acted on.

Another common defensive maneuver is that whatever incident wasn't really harassment. Stupid women! It's all in their mind! And besides--you're ugly! Who would ever give you unwanted sexual attention!

Yes, these are the claims being made and the childish arguments being put forth. They pretty much add up to claiming the inappropriateness of asking men to forgo their self-perceived privilege to proposition women whenever and however they like. To make sexist jokes with impunity. To disregard women's dignity, comfort level, or desire to be seen as a full human being, not just T & A or a set of orifices.

There isn't a woman alive who has not been the victim of sexual harassment. I'm not talking about harassment in the legal sense necessary to prove, say, workplace harassment. I'm talking about women's everyday experiences out in the world. Take it from one who knows: you don't have to be drop-dead gorgeous to experience unwanted attention from men.

When my son was still an infant and I'd take him out in his stroller, it was quite common for some yahoo in a pickup truck passing by to yell at me such things as "Nice ass!" accompanied by a whistle. Does anyone reading this think that's a compliment? Because I sure as hell didn't. I thought, WTF is he doing yelling that at a woman pushing a stroller? And who gave him the right not only to judge my ass's pulchritude, but to announce it to me?

It's a way to put a woman in her place, to remind her that she is not a person with autonomy, but a person who exists in relation to Men. A person who does or does not please Men. A person (or "person") who has no right to go about her business without fear of having her privacy invaded and her body commented on.

Then there was the time when my kids were sick and I'd been up at night tending to them (sick myself) and had to run out to the neighborhood store for milk or bread or whatever. My daughter was old enough by then to leave my son in her care for the 15 minutes it would take me, so in a relative lull I dashed off. I got out of the car to be met with barking noises (clever, right? "You're a dog!") made by men in a truck in the parking lot. "Woof, woof, woof!" Gee, I didn't meet these dickheads' standard of beauty, I guess.

Another time I stopped at a convenience store and was hailed by some guy hanging around outside the store. I don't even remember what he said to me, but when I ignored him he said "BITCH!" Yes, that's right. A woman is a bitch if she does not not immediately gratify some dude's bid for attention.

I could go on and on. It must be a lot worse for a woman who is truly beautiful; I can only imagine how often men think it's perfectly swell to comment on her face or figure. I'm not saying that women never take it as a compliment, just that it grinds my gears that men feel so entitled to judge and proclaim.

Sometimes women just become inured to such assaults on their personhood, as a fish doesn't notice the water it's swimming in. Some women just resign themselves to it. Some women want to be "one of the guys" and join in with the chorus that women don't have a sense of humor, or are too sensitive, or should "grow a pair." (Telling, that ...)

Anyway, I'm happy that despite the jerks who have been trolling various atheist sites and complaining and insisting that harassment isn't a problem and that women are hysterical and liars and malicious bitches, American Atheists has come out with  a code of conduct for its conferences that makes it clear that sexual harassment will not be tolerated.

Of course there are howls that "just asking someone out could get you reported for harassment," etc., but this kind of reaction is to be expected. In point of fact, the new policy protects men and the gender-fluid as well as women, but the howling is mainly coming from men at the thought that their sense of privilege is being curtailed in any way at all.

 

Hell No!

In light of the recent court decision regarding a public school's prayer banner that had been hanging in the gym illegally since the 1960s, my son's experience with the imposition of religion--specifically Christianity--in his school came to mind.

In objecting to the posters put up by an after-school bible club, he did not experience vilification, threats of assault and even death, ostracism, and elected officials spewing vitriol, as did Jessica Ahlquist, who acted as plaintiff in the lawsuit. (See here, here, here, and here, just for starters--there's much more.)

Jessica Ahlquist ran into trouble from day one. And the school administration was dishonest, claiming that the banner (which began with the words "Our heavenly father" and ended with "Amen") was not a prayer, just a "tradition." This fooled no one, certainly not people speaking at a public meeting about the issue last February. Speakers invoked god and insulted atheists openly.

Here's what happened in my son's case: the Hell No! club hung posters in the hallways featuring bible quotes, quotes such as "only a fool does not believe in God," and threats of eternal punishment for nonbelievers. Our son felt that these were inappropriate in a public school and wrote letters to the principal, superintendent, and school board. While I'm sure that some people thought we put him up to this, we did not. Ethan asked me to check the letter for spelling and formatting, which I did. I had no other input.

A few days later he was called to the principal's office. The school's attorney had been informed of the situation, and some of the school board members contacted a local college to see how such matters were handled there. The attorney  considered that featuring a cross on posters advertising a bible club was legal, but that posters suggesting superiority of a particular religion and containing arguably harrassing statements had to come down. About half the posters were removed.

As Ethan reminded me in an e-mail, "A few people were irritated about the signs coming down, but once I exposed myself as the 'squeaky wheel,' no one was really mean about it and some people congratulated me." I recall running into the superintendent and a few of the board members at a restaurant shortly after this happened and being complimented on our son's letter.

But as my husband pointed out, the religionists have gotten much uglier in the past couple of decades, so who knows what might have happened to him if the events that transpired then were to happen today? Whether it's the political clout of the rabid religious right or fears about a secularist minority that's becoming more vocal and less inclined to stay closeted that's causing such vile behaviors as Ms. Ahlquist has had to suffer, the godbotherers have gotten nastier and nastier.

There is a reason not to tolerate such expression of religion in a public school: as the courts have decided again and again, it violates the separation of church and state. Yes, I remember singing a little song in first grade that started with "Oh, the Lord's been good to me," but that doesn't mean it was right, and subsequently such religious artifacts in state-funded schools were ruled illegal. As they should be. The majority of Americans may believe in god, and particularly a Christian god, but the Constitution exists to protect the rights of the minority.

We were very proud of our son for taking this action, as I assume Jessica's parents are of her. It isn't easy to stand for what's right when the majority of your community is against you--even without name-calling and death threats.

To all those religious believers and promoters who tell the rest of us to shut up, I can only say, "Hell, no!"

 

Jesus problem

I know quite a few people who, although not Christians themselves, think highly of Jesus. They believe that he was a great teacher, moral philosopher, and humanitarian--that he was something we should all strive to be.

I used to think that way myself, but in honestly looking at some of his statements--and some of what he neglected to say--I have had to reassess.

Recently I stumbled on a piece that nicely summarizes my own uneasiness about the whole Jesus thing. I don't think Jesus is the greatest thinker or philosopher or even god-botherer who ever lived. I think that he was most likely one of the many itinerant preachers of his time (if he actually existed), mostly ignorant and delusional, who thought that god spoke to them and through them. Today we call this ... well, insanity. Part of me thinks that he must have had something going for him in order to win followers, but part of me also agrees with Tim Minchin that "just because ideas are tenacious doesn't mean that they're worthy." And although I'm not clear on the details, I do know that the doctrines of Christianity were settled by men in seats of power who had a stake in the outcome.

There are a number of sayings of Jesus--and we must always remember that these are attributed to him, but we have no way of knowing whether he actually said them--that militate against seeing him as peace-loving and compassionate, despite "turn the other cheek" and so on. As a pacifist (I'm not saying I'm a very thoroughgoing pacifist, just that my tendencies lie that way), I was always bothered by "I come not to bring peace, but a sword" and by the declaration that he had come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and so on. I have read interpretations that claim to make sense of this in a way that conforms to the idea of Jesus as peace-loving and compassionate, but over time I have become unable to reconcile the words in the NT texts with any such image of Jesus.

I really liked John Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, and it influenced my thinking for a long time. But now I have read enough to wonder if Jesus actually even existed. We don't really have outside proof of it. And I also doubt Crossan's theses about Jesus. I used to agree with Jackson Browne's song "The Rebel Jesus," but now I think Jesus was actually pretty conservative, in that he exhorted his followers to hew to Jewish law in all its intrricate prohibitions and  demands. Nor did he urge his followers to rebel against the Romans; remember "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"?

I know that Jesus proclaimed the existence of flame and fire for those who did not believe. Well, so much for a compassionate god, right? And what about the arrogance? "If you don't believe what I'm saying, you're going to an eternal fiery pit!" Pretty hard to reconcile with an idea of a loving Jesus, although the Christians always take issue with this, because it's the unbelievers' hardened hearts that bring hell upon them ... But anyway.

I have come to agree that Jesus was, as many have maintained, a failed apocalyptic prophet, of which there were many in his time (if he existed). I'm sure that for the vast majority of people at the time who lived a hand-to-mouth existence, a man promising their eventual triumph over their oppressors and over death was pretty appealing. Followers who came after him had to account for the fact that his prophecies did not come to pass in the time frame he'd promised, but that's not historically unusual.

I haven't really enjoyed giving up the idea of Jesus as a compassionate, philosophically defensible, exemplary teacher. But I've had to own up to my doubts and to wonder how this most likely unschooled man of a couple of millenia ago came to be the keystone of such a powerful religion. I tend to think that the answers to that are pretty unsavory and have a lot to do with earthly power, corruption, and co-optation. And yeah, the whole eternal life thing.

But hey, I can live without Jesus, and contrary to what the goddy types think of nontheists, my life isn't empty or meaningless. I'd rather look the facts in the eye, thank you very much, than try to hang on to a "comforting" myth. I'm a thinking person, and I can't--and don't want to--undo that.

Christmas cards

Surfing among the skeptical/humanist/nontheist blogs recently, I came across a post asking what fellow atheists like or dislike in holiday cards.

In this question lie buried myriad other questions, such as,

• Why do atheists send holiday cards? If they don't believe in Jesus/God, then why celebrate the holiday at all?
• Do atheists even have a right (in ethical terms) to object to certain kinds of cards? It's not their holiday, after all. Who are they to object to a manger scene?
• Since atheists are in the minority, shouldn't they just shut up and go with the flow?

And so on.

I've addressed the topic of Christmas before. Yes, I'm a nonbeliever, and yes, I still love Christmas. I've never felt that I had to abandon the traditions I love, especially as so many of those traditions have their roots in pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. I'm not pagan, either--I don't have religious beliefs of any kind--but I can appreciate all of the symbols and archetypes that abound. Myth and story will never lose their enchantment for me.

I like sending and receiving Christmas cards. I choose secular cards, and particularly favor cards that feature the word "peace." UNICEF offers some good choices, and the money goes to children in need, so I often buy holiday cards from that organization.

I don't like getting religious cards, but for the most part, I also don't attribute our getting Jesus-y cards to specific intent on the part of the sender. It does, however, irk me to some extent that most Christians seem to feel that all share their beliefs. That's not exactly astonishing, given the cultural mainstream, but sometimes it rankles nonetheless. I'm sure, too, that Christians feel that if there's any time where religious figures and symbols are called for, it's at Christmas. I understand that. I don't take offense at people's Christmas cards, even when my gut reaction is "yuck." I'm pretty much just gratified that they thought of James and me, and signaled that with a card.

My spouse used to get birthday cards from his mom once in a while in which she would write something about how she hoped he'd find Jesus. Those used to bother me and, I think (he's not much to comment on such things), James. Do believers really think that we nonbelievers haven't thought these things through? That we're just uninformed? Or steeped in "sin"?

Anyway, holiday cards just aren't something to get your shorts in a knot about. I think we all just want to reach out at this time of year and let people know they're still important to us, that we think of them even when we don't stay in touch as we should, that they are not absent from our thoughts, hearts, and lives. 

So for this atheist (or am I an agnostic?), Christmas cards will remain a feature of the holidays. Is it too early to say Merry Christmas? 

 

Dirge Without Music

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Oh my dog, I love Tim Minchin!

Do watch his animated film.

 

Old mortality

A friend who has also recently suffered the loss of a loved one remarked that she believed there is something of us that lives on after death, and she was honest enough to add, "I believe it because I want to believe it." Other friends present at the time concurred with her, at least about the existence of the soul (I infer), if not the "wanting to believe" part. None believed in the Christian afterlife of heaven and hell, but felt that in some way, we do go on, in whatever form, after our deaths.

Probably most human beings want to believe that death is not finality, not the last word. I think this is the lure of religion: the promise that there's an everlasting life for the soul, or that the soul is reborn, or for my friend, something unknown, yet there. It's very hard to accept the notion that this is all there is: this life, with all its joy and pain, exultation and tragedy, mundanity and transcendence. That this is it, this is all we get. That someone we loved is now gone, gone for good, all that brilliant light extinguished. And I'm not saying that that acceptance is right, or reasonable, or the only thing that makes sense. I'm saying only that this is something I'm trying to accept, because I don't think there's anything for us beyond this life.

Sometimes I myself have said that I wish I could believe--in God, in an afterlife, in something that gives the lie to e. e. cummings's line "and death I think is no parenthesis." But I have yet to understand how one can force oneself to believe. For me, it hasn't been possible to believe out of a desire to believe. That would require, for me, a shutting down of parts of myself that I can't, or don't want to, shut down. (For the record, I think "can't" is the more likely.)

My sister Linn bitterly accused me of being too rational, which strikes me as funny, since anyone who knows me knows that for me--to quote cummings again--"feeling is first." I react to things first with emotion, and often have to go back and analyze why I responded the way I did. I'm volatile, dangerously so--dangerous, that is, to my relationships with people and thus to my own well-being. I think most people who know me would attest to my passion and emotionality, and aren't those the opposite of rationality?

Linn's objection was that I needed some evidence for the idea of god in whatever way one imagined god, and that I hadn't found any. For her, god was far from the god of Judaism or Christianity. God was more in the way of a consciousness universal in scope and, in fact, inherent in the universe. She felt that I must feel very diminished by my acceptance of this life as "all there is." She pitied me for it. She raged against it. But one who lacks belief, like me, can't just talk herself out of unbelief and into belief. I don't know how untrue to myself I'd have to be to even attempt that.

It's not that I love the idea that this life is it, that we do, in fact, only go around once. Who does? And so ministers at countless funeral ceremonies intone about how we--well, actually, only those of us who are "saved"--will meet our loved ones in the hereafter. That sets apart "us"--the saved--from the miserable sinners among whose punishments is the eternal loss of our loved ones. I've never been to a Protestant funeral where this promise of a heavenly family reunion hasn't been trotted out as a recruiting device. Frankly, I find it sickeningly offensive and manipulative to exploit people's grief and fear at such a time.

I understand the need for comfort when we're grieving. I understand why preachers stand up and talk about how the departed is "in a better place now" (by the way, there's no Biblical support for the idea that the soul of the deceased immediately ascends to heaven). I've heard people at many a funeral talking about their loved one looking down from heaven and so on. I'm not a cold-hearted, cruel person. I understand why people believe what they do.

But I don't buy it. To me, it's wishful thinking. I don't have the comfort of having that comfort. I think we're like all other animals: we have a life, and when it's over, it's over. Death is the final act. I'm not happy about it, but there it is in all its starkness. And there's nothing to focus your attention on it like the sudden death of someone close to you.

Our own mortality is one of the hardest facts to grasp. Now that I'm heading for the age of sixty, I'm quite aware that my time on earth is dwindling. I would like to come to terms with the reality of my own death, but it isn't easy. And it isn't possible for me to find refuge in the belief of an afterlife. One cannot force oneself into a belief: it's either a belief, or it isn't. I understand wanting to believe, but I can't get from the desire to the actualization. I wish for many things that do not exist and will not exist, and I can't make them happen.

So this is it, all I have left of my life and myself, this time left on this earth. The question, then, is how to make the most of it.

Skepticism, anyone?

A friend and I have been having a most interesting conversation based on my post about the scarlet A over there in the right column. He's a reasonable person and I hope I've been reasonable too. And he's not, to my knowledge, a religious person. at least in the sense of organized religion. But in the course of our conversation I ran across this video by Tim Minchin, who is known for his skepticism and nonbelief in god, and couldn't resist putting it up here.