SubscribeFebruary 4th, 2012
Romney deeply uncivil
I’m sure you all know that Mitt Romney had his atheist father-in-law baptized some 14 months after the man’s death. There’s an interesting report that talks about this as “cuckoo-for-cocopuffs” which is true I suppose, but I think not the real point.
Bill Maher comes closer to my main disagreement with such acts as Romney perpetrated on the dead guy in this “unbaptism” video clip.
I can imagine the outrage from the various religious pundits should a reddit crowd call a flashmob to ritually unbaptize the whole populace of city after city in the US.
Personally, I’d think it was hilarious but that’s because the dead don’t give a shit, and neither baptisms nor unbaptism have any effect on something that doesn’t exist. Their true effect is on the living.
And this is the root of my disgust with Romney and the kinds of religious people who are so deeply uncivil as to frack with other people’s choices.
Romney wants to be the leader of a democratic nation. It is a nation built on the idea that we as individuals have the right to make choices, and the obligation to live by those choices in a manner in accordance with civil law. This means Romney and his wife had a choice about becoming Mormons. They still have a choice to stay Mormon, or to desist. Edward Davies, Romney’s father-in-law, also had a choice. And he made it. He was an atheist.
What Romney did by having the man baptized was declare that Davies’ choice did not matter and should not be considered sacrosanct. This is not a man I would like to see ruling a government that says it holds choice sacrosanct. I mean if he can so disrespect his own father-in-law, imagine what he might do to people he “rules”?
Of course since Davies’ is dead it doesn’t matter at all to him, but were he alive, I suspect he would be deeply ashamed of his daughter. I know I would be. Shame on you Ann. You had the right to choose and expect that choice to be honoured. You should do the same.
So perhaps we should all just follow Bill Maher’s example, organize a flash mob and unbaptize all those people who were added (against their wishes) to the Mormon rolls in what is a very uncivil act against democracy. The dead don’t care, but the living do. And I expect it might stir up some interesting “conversation.” What such an unbaptism flash mob would declare is that choices do matter and that even if we do not agree with a specific choice, as long as it accords with the civil law by which we all must be guided, we will respect the right to choose and that we will act against those that do not respect the legal choices made by others.
December 1st, 2011
perceived trustworthiness and the religious mind
Here’s a funny for ya:
The researchers found that religious believers thought that descriptions of untrustworthy people — people who steal or cheat — were more likely to be atheists than Christians, Muslims, Jews, gays or feminists.
Cackle. I mean magical thinking really screws with reality doesn’t it. But I suppose all the money laundering in mega churches, the lies in court by those trying to defend intelligent design, the problems with pedophilia in Catholic culture (etc, etc) should have been a clue that the real “other”, that real person behind the projected mask, might not be too visible to the religious mind.
“If you believe your behaviour is being watched [by God] you are going to be on your best behaviour,” said Gervais. “But that wouldn’t apply for an atheist. That would allow people to use religious belief as a signal for how trustworthy a person is.”
Problem is that that sense of being watched doesn’t actually seem to work all that well. It’s almost as if they secretly know no one is there and just pull out the divine when needed for instant forgiveness for that which they did when—what—god blinked?
And the reverse?
The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.
“Atheists don’t necessarily favour other atheists over Christians or anyone else,” he said. “They seem to think that religion is not an important signal for who you can trust.”
Huh! Gee! Say no more!
October 10th, 2011
US Atheism circa 1903, answer to a religious correspondent
Yesterday I posted a letter published in the Blue Grass Blade on October 11, 1903 from an atheist man who recounted why he had become an atheist. Today I’m posting an answer to a letter (also published in the same edition) that came in to the newspaper’s publisher (C. C. Moore) from Rev. Shearer. It appears to be the product of an ongoing conversation about religion, atheism and (sort of) related subjects.
I posted this in addition to the earlier letter because it is clear to me that the arguments have not progressed. Apart from some terminology specific to the time (i.e. prohibition), this could easily be some post on a site dedicated to atheism. I find that a little depressing. Still, it took 100 odd years from the Civil War to get to the civil rights of the people brought to this continent to labour in our fields and (later) factories and more than 50 years after that before Black people really saw an opening to equality (I’m talking about Obama, of course) and the Tea Party and related Republicans have shown us that Emancipation Proclamation or not, Blacks are still scary, scary shit to some of us and to be destroyed if at all possible. So I’m not really surprised that at 115 years after the death of the “father of American atheism” that we have not resolved the atheist/religious problem.
Answer.– I indicate your bad spelling to support my contention that a scholarly man is not apt to believe in a God.
It has been said of spelling that it is a thing which it is no credit to know, but a disgrace not to know.
The “burden of proof” in this instance rests upon you. You affirm that there is a God. I deny that there is a God.
Greenleaf says, “To this general rule that the burden of proof is on the party holding the affirmative, there are some exceptions.” Greenleaf on Evidence, vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 3. p. 105—L. B. & Co. ’52).
You offer no reason why your case should be an “exception” to the general rule and I see no such reason. I think you will find that “Jefferson’s Manual” will decide that the burden of proof is upon you.
The Bible and Sir William Blackstone and the courts of Salem Massachusetts affirmed that there were witches. The consensus of the competent said that the burden of proof rested upon those three, and that contention never having been sustained by any of the three, modern intelligence has decided that there are no witches. I do not have to account for any phenomena of nature, “leaving God out,” or leaving him or it, in. That is the graft of the natural scientist, I don’t have to account for anything. All I have to do is hear your argument and answer I, if I can. You say to me: “If you say you can do this, the burden of proof is upon you.”
Your statement is correct, but I do not say, “I can do this,” and therefore the burden of proof is not upon me. You say it would be foolish for you to try to prove to me that there is a God when I decline to accept your “testamony.” If you knew in advance, as you probably did, that I would not accept the testimony that you would offer, you were certainly “foolish” to offer it.
The testimony that you offer is the Bible and nature. If I accepted the Bible as a “competent” witness in this case, it would be “foolish” in me to discuss the question with you, for the Bible certainly says there is a God. But the competency of the Bible is a matter in issue, and, of course, I can not accept the Bible as competent testimony. You argue that the Bible is true because God wrote it, and then you argue that there is a God because the Bible says so.
That is what is called, in logic, “reasoning in a circle,” and it is recognized by all logicians as a common fallacy.
If it be true that the Bible, “for four thousand years has furnished indubitable evidence” that there is a God, why are you still arguing that there is a God? The very fact that you are making this argument shows that you do not regard the argument for the existence of a God as being “indubitable.” The multiplication table is indubitably correct.
If any man would say the multiplication table is not correct, you would not write him a long letter to show him that the multiplication table is correct. We do not argue about indubitable things. You would regard a man who thought the multiplication table incorrect as being an ignoramus or a fool, and you would wast no time on him, or would make an ass of yourself if you did.
The Bible says that man is a fool who says there is no God, and that goes with people who think the Bible knows it all, but it does not cut any ice with people who don’t believe the Bible any more than they do “Arabian Nights.” You say that beside this indubitable evidence we have in the Bible, we have the “book or nature” bearing the same testimony.”
If the Bible’s testimony that there is a God is indubitable why mention the additional book of nature?
If Euclid proves a certain mathematical proposition to be true, what is the use of saying that some other man, or some other book, also proved it to be true? Granting that nature is a book, there certainly is quite a diversity of opinion as to what it says, and your mere assertion that it says there is a God does not count.
I think it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to offer the Bible book and the “book of nature” to me as evidence that there is a God, and you say it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to do so, then why do you do it?
You certainly must have known that that same old racket had been offered to Atheists million of times, and as often rejected by them, then what was the good sense in asking me to fill up my columns with a long rigamarole that you evidently knew in advance would not amount to a hill of beans to me?
What was the use of your saying anything to the 15,000 hell-bent Atheists that “blow” themselves in my paper unless you had some new argument?
You answer my question by saying that the testimony you offer is “the only testimony that can be brought to bear in this matter.”
Then what are you kicking about? The evidence is all in, and it’s a hung jury and we will go to the presiding judge and tell him we can’t agree on a verdict.
All that you say about what I would do or would not do if an angel were to come from heaven to Lexington is poppycock. You certainly cannot know what I would do under such circumstances, for I don’t know myself. You are merely talking through your hat. It will be time enough for me to consider what I would do under such circumstances when the angel gets here. I do not think it is commonly recognized as being dead certain that angels come to this country at all these times, and I don’t think an angel that had any sense would come to Lexington. He wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in Lexington. The “cops” would run him in for wearing woman’s clothes on the streets, or some Lexington fellow would shoot him because he would not come into Gus Jaubert’s and set up the beer, or, if he did go into Gus’s he would get drunk and the “cops” would get him anyhow. But I believe you are mistaken, or worse—lying.
Old man Bell, the manager of the cemetery, reported the other day that a man was buried in that cemetery who made just 15,000 people buried there in all.
If some fellow would come along and resurrect all of those 15,000 people buried, and they should come marching into Lexington, including some hundreds of old boys that I believed whisky killed forty years ago, and my precious little curly headed girl, whose death brought the first gray hairs to my head, I think it would shake my present opinions about the resurrection from the dead. If anybody will come to Lexington and even clear the whisky out of the town, by any means, natural or supernatural, I will give anything he has to say, on any subject, a very respectful hearing. I think you got that up wrong pard. I say “pard” because I think you are a Campbellite preacher. They are hell on “shearing Baptists and Methodists,” and they make the wool fly. I’ve been there.
I have nothing to say in defense of those fellows over in Jerusalem. I’ve been there, too. O, no, that’s not “mud-slinging”— nothing of the kind, all fair so far as decency is concerned. What does all that dissertation on the subject of “mind” amount to in this connection? That is the province of mental philosophy, in which Upham and Abercrombie are authorities, but you and I are discussing theology in which you and Moses, and the “book of nature,” are your authorities. Mind certainly “plays a very conspicuous part in everything with which man has to do” (unless it is preaching), but your remark is just as true of muscle and bread and butter and money and a million other things and so what is the occasion of a remark so self-evidently true?
We don’t look “within” us except with an X-ray and you’d better leave that out.
Your statements about the hop and the bean stalk would be well enough in a lecture on botany or horticulture, but are irrelevant here. We are discussing whether or not there is a God. As a “sky-buster,” you ought to stick to your text.
As a good Prohibitionist, I may recognize some relationship between the hop and lager beer to prove the existence of a devil, but I can’t see how a hop testifies for any brand of a God that is against liquor.
You say a great mind has had to do with the framing of this universe. The Standard Dictionary defines “mind” to be “the entire psychical being of man.” Webster defines “mind” to be “the intellectual, or intelligent, power of man.”
These dictionaries agree that “mind” is a part of man, and if “mind” had anything to do with “the framing of this universe,” then man must have had something to do with “the framing of this universe,” and I reckon he didn’t. Guess you are in water over your head and you had better try to get ashore.
The opinion of Mr. B.A. Wright, in the Blade may B. Wright, or it may B. Wrong, but even if man does stand at the head of the animal creation instead of the tail of the animal creation, as there seems some reason to believe, I don’t see how that proves that there is a God. All that about “mechanical arrangement” sounds well enough if we were discussing natural philosophy or dynamics, but we are trying to find out if there is any God. You ask me: “What is it that leaves the brain at death that renders it unable to think?” I give it up; ask me something easy. But what about it? We are discussing the existence of a God, and I am a theologian and not an physiologist. Same about the origin of life. I don’t have to know or even to have an opinion on that subject. We are not discussing biology. We are talking about the existence of a God.
You talk funny. You say: “If it is a fact (and a fact it certainly is),” etc. Why say, “If it is a fact,” which expresses doubt, when you say it certainly is a fact.” which affirms that there is no doubt?
They say that death and taxes are “certain,” but the domain of the certain is very limited, and you ought to go slow in asserting the “certain.” You want to know how an idea is carried over from the mind to the nervous system.
Not my graft; didn’t even know it was carried over; thought may be it just walked over. Ask some doctor. You ask me the same question a second time, but I don’t know any more about it that I did the first time.
Same about the pumpkin—give it up. Ditto about the pig and the lamb and the goose. I used to know that one about the fox and the goose and the corn that a mans had to take over in a boat, but I am not specially good on riddles. Same way about the oak and the acorn—which was first? I can’t give my 15,000 readers the origin of a single think in this universe, even with the “God idea” in, and you say I can’t do it with the “God idea” out, so why do you keep on asking me so many hard questions? Ask me an easy one.
You say I know that this world is made up of little things, but I don’t. I didn’t even know that it was made up at all—thought may be it had been here always.
I haven’t specially “limited” myself—could write this whole paper full if I wanted to, (missing text) I think five Blades full (missing text) be a little too much of a muchness. If you are going to write any more on this subject, I would be obliged to you if you would “limit” yourself some, unless you have some argument to prove the existence of a God. Please confine yourself to that subject and discuss pigs and geese in an article to some farm journal. This is a religious paper.
That joke about my hair and whiskers is pretty good—only trouble about it is that we old Blade readers had worn it out years ago, and had let up on it; but you are probably a new beginner on the Blade and didn’t know about that. But if I were you I wouldn’t say it any more.
October 9th, 2011
US atheism, circa 1903
Upon reading about the new book Letters from an Atheist Nation I took it upon myself to go look at the original documentation from which these letters come. OMG, what a delight! This letter is from Sunday, October 11, 1903.
(From the Blue-grass blade (Lexington, Ky) Sunday, October 11, 1903, p.4)
ATHEISTIC MASONS
To the Editor:
In your editorial of 13th discoursing on the above subject you say: “Whether or not a Mason who becomes an Atheist after becoming a Mason must get out of Masonry we do not know. Information is requested.”
Being one of those Atheistical bipeds “reverting to quadrupeds,” as you say and a Mason in good standing for over forty years, I will answer:
It is true that in the United States an Atheist cannot, according to Masonic laws, become a Mason, but a Mason may consistently become an Atheist. Masonry assures the religious and political liberty and respects the conscientious convictions of its members.
Now as to Atheists: I was made a Mason soon after I was “confirmed” in the old school of Lutheran faith, and being verdant and ignorant of the facts of nature, I cheerfully subscribed to the Masonic obligation.
But soon after a book of the elementary facts of astronomy radically changed my conceptions of the celestial aspect and the mansions in the sky, a golden throne, fiery lake and good and evil spirits all vanished from view, and the realistic conception of nature as revealed by astronomy took their place. I could not ignore facts and these inexorably disproved my theism.
The facts of nature irrefutably prove that a God is not a fact.
The Atheist, with Tindall, Huxley, Mills, Spencer, Haeckle, von Humboldt and many other of our greatest scientists, finds in the physical and chemical potencies of science, matter, phenomena and life.
Science, with its great lenses, sweeps boundless expanse and finds countless incandescent suns and minor bodies, all moving within their…(missing text)…
An omnipresent being cannot exist within an omnipresent universe. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. The universe preoccupies all space—where, then, is God?
Astronomers, aided by the camera have photographed the skies, revealing many bodies not heretofore covered by our telescopes. Thousands of the plates have been produced. Unite them in one great map then search for the God you worship—the infinite being, said to extend from star to star and greater than all—you cannot find him. Said to everywhere, he is nowhere.
This God corresponds with nothing but vacuum.
The ether, air, electricity and other inorganic forces and fluids of nature do not possess personal attributes and cannot be a God and all it implies.
A God has never caused an observation or an eclipse of a solitary comic body—positive proof that such a being does not exist.
Has God a brain, then how can he be infinite? If no brain, how can He be a God?
The Atheist is not negative to a solitary established fact and truth: on the contrary, he has the universe—the sum total of all existence—as the basis for his belief. He is negative only towards spooks, myths and an absurd superstition, acknowledged by most eminent churchmen to be inscrutable and utterly beyond human comprehension. Define your God and I will show you how childish your conception.
Theists explain (missing text) existence by assuming a gigantic necromancer or miracle worker said (missing text) and to operate, everywhere simultaneously. But biology affirms that conditions must be favorable or life is impossible. Conditions within interstellar space absolutely exclude life, hence a God of any kind cannot exist there.
Mind, wisdom and physical activity of any kind are ever associated with the physical organism. Without organic structure for a basis, mind is not known to science nor is it conceivably divested of organism. God, then must be possessed of organic animal structure or he cannot exist. Can you conceive of an infinite animal?
The materialist (incidentally an Atheist) believes infinite phenomena necessitate infinite causes to produce them. These he finds in the matter constituting all phenomena, which matter is force, ever pregnant with life, eternal and omnipresent. What ever is, is matter; when science deals with causes it discovers them in the matter which constitutes the object of of its research and its environments—never in a God.
And lastly: Mind is a result of environment. In vacuum mind cannot evolve. Hence mind of any kind could not exist prior to creation.
OTTO WETTSTEIN
La Grange, Illinois.
So much for the idea of a Christian Nation and rock on Otto!
“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency! (E. Dickinson)
The society that resulted from the European invasion of the Americas seems prone to periods of alternating despair and certainty. The periods of certainty result in territorial and cultural expansion; despair results in upsurges of religiosity and (mental and social) isolationism. The first comes with that awful taste of American-style surety of superiority, that rather hubristic idea that we are the vanguard of human civilization. The second comes when that state crashes – as it inevitably does – against the facts, and falls like a mirror shattered in rage and fear.
My question is how to navigate a society that refuses an even keel?
I was brought to this query by an article on the Daily Beast about religious and anti-religious films written by Marlow Stern.
From superchurch satire ‘Salvation Boulevard’ to the atheist film ‘The Ledge’ and Sundance fave ‘Higher Ground,’ an abnormal number of movies this summer rail against evangelicalism. Marlow Stern speaks with filmmakers and experts from both sides of the debate, including Vera Farmiga of ‘Higher Ground’ and Kirk Cameron of ‘Fireproof.’
Wrestling with it, I found myself thinking about the cycles of religious evangelicism in the US often talked about as the Great Awakenings. (If you’re interested in the topic you might try Jon Butler’s Awash in a Sea of Faith.) It also led me to think about Emily Dickinson and her experience of her community’s salvation.
There is a rather fine short article about E.D. and the complex nature of her faith.
In Dickinson’s teen years, a wave of religious revivals moved through New England. One by one, her friends and family members made the public profession of belief in Christ that was necessary to become a full member of the church. Although she agonized over her relationship to God, Dickinson ultimately did not join the church–not out of defiance but in order to remain true to herself: “I feel that the world holds a predominant place in my affections. I do not feel that I could give up all for Christ, were I called to die” (L13). By the time the First Congregational Church moved to a site near the Homestead on Main Street in 1868, Emily Dickinson had stopped attending services altogether.
Dickinson’s attitude toward spiritual matters was more complex than her poem “Some keep the Sabbath going to church / I keep it staying at home” (Fr236) implies. While her poems are saturated with the language, ritual, and expectation of traditional religious experience, her tone varies tremendously. Some poems affirm the need for faith: “Faith – is the Pierless Bridge / Supporting what We see / Unto the Scene that We do not – ” (Fr978). Irreverence underlies other aspects of her work: “The Bible is an antique Volume – / Written by faded Men / At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -” (Fr1577). At times Dickinson’s poetry expresses outright anger with an absent God:
Of Course – I prayed -
And did God care?
He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird – had stamped her foot -
And cried “Give Me” -
(Fr581)
That’s, I think, the way to handle this current shattered mirror and consequent upswing of despairing faith. The fact that the mirror is broken does not mean what you glimpsed there is no longer true. As best as one can, question, refuse the comfort of simple faith and its feelings of release, refuse the assumptions involved in giving over to the “Gentlemen who see”. Keep formulating alternative responses, but never settle for one; always question, always ask for worldly evidence, for the bird’s perspective on your beliefs.
There’s no way out of the pain of course, no real way to avoid what the mirror reflected. We all have assumptions and we cannot simply leave them all behind, but we can refuse comfort in order to allow questioning. Dickinson remained someone who spoke of gods and the afterlife. That was the basis of her entire world, but her stubborn hold on the world allowed her to remain brilliant, unconventional, a poet.
I mean, who do we remember now? Not those who took hold of the comfort, but those who refused it. There is a reason for that. Not that being remembered is the end-all of desire, but it does point to a lively spot in human awareness, a place where mental sleep has not yet claimed its toll.
This period of upcoming history will be difficult I suspect. No huge wave of desire for comfort, for sleep ever comes without a violent hand for the alarm clocks and a sleeping drug for the awkward pain of living. There will be Emilys of this time, and that voice will be a record of dissent against the coming/ongoing “revival”. I don’t envy her life though, just as I don’t envy Emily’s. So alone, our Amherst Emily must have been with no one who could think as she could, no one who could stand with her in the pain of continual appraisal, constant questioning. So in advance of your life and death, our dearest future unknown Emily, kudos.
In an earlier post I was telling you about the argumentative warning bells that Why God Won’t Go Away set off.
When you come across a passage that unsettles your faith in an author’s veracity or capacity to think past his or her personal biases, one can do two basic things. One can put the book down or one can keep reading, however warily.
I chose the second option because I wanted to get to their information on the neurological position with respect to myth making in humans. Then I hit another of those icky-think places. There were a number but here’s one.
The authors are talking about the Neanderthal people and the finds that have been made where some Neanderthal dead appear to have been buried with grave goods and positioned in such a way as to suggest symbolic thought.
Evidence of Neanderthal mortuary rituals has been discovered at Paleolithic grave sites scattered across Europe and Asia, and while anthropologists know very little about the specifics of Neanderthal myth, these early humans had clearly devised a system of belief that assured them that in some sense, death could be survived.
Jeez Lousie, it so does not. Let’s take this apart just a bit. There is evidence from a number of Neanderthal burials (and other sites) that suggest symbolic thought as well as suggests some intent behind burial that we would describe as ritualistic. But what is true is that we know nothing really of the specifics. In fact, without the assumption that their symbolic system is basically the same as ours, we cannot say anything about what the apparent ritual means. I mean if I make a small pile of stones and a Taliban man makes a similar pile, you think we necessarily did it for the same reason? And the Taliban dude and I are of the same species and same era. Fuck man, what a dumb-shit, patently false set of assumptions and “logical” connections.
It turns out that this book is an extension of The Transmitter to God: The Limbic System, the Soul, and Spirituality by Rhawn Joseph. Here is what a customer had to say about this book.
Joseph’s book contains abundant promise and abundant disappointment. Its bookends–the start and finish–provide provide reasonable interpretations of data from neurological and fossil research. The center, unfortunately, merely affords a bully pulpit for the author’s unsubstantiated rants about religious literature, especially the Koran and the Bible. This juxtaposition of authority and speculation is paralleled by displays of scholarly writing (e.g., citing sources for stated views) at the outset and junior high writing (e.g., missing citations and bizarre interpretations of religious writ) in the middle. Joseph is to be commended for his imagination, but misrepresents his book as a scholarly contribution.
A huh. Yep. Yessiree. You could say the same thing about Why God Won’t Go Away.
Anyway, based on the slim evidence of possible Neanderthal ritual burials and the massive assumption of their cognitive and cultural similarity to us, the authors of Why God say:
The Neanderthals, it seems, had also come to believe that their world was not chaotic, but was instead governed by powerful orderly forces that they could come to know. They believed they could appeal to these forces through proper practices and, to some extent, control them. We know this because Neanderthal shrines have been found in high mountain caves where bear skulls had been ritualistically stacked in pyramids and small crude altars still show the charred evidence of animal sacrifices carried out as long ago as two hundred thousand years.
Can you believe they think of themselves as scientists at all? I know fantasy writers with less vivid imaginations.
Finally, the evidence they cite to support these two paragraphs? Joseph’s The Transmitter to God. That’s like Glen Beck citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to prove his impartial stance with regard to Judaism.
So the book goes back to the library unfinished. This is why I pre-read most books before I buy them. I’ll just have to try and find a better source for the information I want.
July 8th, 2011
warning bells: arguments presented as either/or
I got a copy of Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science & The Biology of Belief from the library. It’s a book written for the general public and so is easy to understand (terminology at a minimum). That’s all good. However…
Before I get to that the book is published by Ballantine Books which is part of Random House. It’s a for-profit business, so some of what comes next may be at their request. The book is targeted to the US market and I suspect the publishers may have wanted material in the text reassuring American religious persons that just because neurology can explain the god experience, this doesn’t mean that god doesn’t exist. Whether the American public actually requires such overtly silly reassurances, is a question I cannot answer.
The problem started when I hit paragraph three on page 9.
A skeptic might suggest that a biological origin to all spiritual longings and experiences, including the universal human yearning to connect with something divine, could be explained as a delusion caused by the chemical misfirings of a bundle of nerve cells.
Ahuh – clang, clang, clang. “Misfirings”? Oh ho, I thought. Read that word choice along with “a skeptic” and the suggestion is that this is a silly thing to believe.
Then the next paragraph:
But the SPECT scans suggested another possibility. The orientation area was working unusually but not improperly, and we believe that we were seeing colorful evidence on the SPECT’s computer screen of the brain’s capacity to make spiritual experience real. After years of scientific study, and careful consideration of our results, Gene and I further believe that we saw evidence of a neurological process that has evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is.
So either the brain is misfiring or humans can “transcend material existence”?
I nearly gacked. It’s also when I went to the cataloging information in the front of the book and realized that the book was published by a popular press, not necessarily dedicated to decent argument. Either/or arguments should always make you sit up and ask “what the fuck are they trying to shove down my throat.”
“…the brain’s capacity to make spiritual experience real…” What does “real” mean in this context? What if I say, “the brain’s capacity to make dream experiences real”. What if I say, “the brain’s capacity to make sensory experiences real”. Does “real” mean the same thing in both sentences? Are they really saying that there is no difference between the experience of a kicked shin and a dream?
“…after years of scientific study, and careful consideration…” This is the bit that made me feel like gacking. I really hate it when people use scientifically based authority to support something that is essentially narrative. It’s a bit like saying science proves that science isn’t real. If you need science to be “just another narrative” then why use science as the source of legitimacy?
“…evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence…” Using “evolve” in this sentence does the same thing as “after years of scientific study” in that it suggests a physical basis in reality and that there are evidential reasons for believing in the rest of the sentence. (There aren’t.) They tack on “allow us humans to transcend material existence”. Allow! Allow! Who, exactly is doing the allowing here? Talk about salting the mind. Transcend! Jeez dude. Why don’t you assume what you want to prove.
Breathe, Mary. Just breathe.
The book proceeds by presenting data and interspersing this relevant information with silly analysis. Chapter two, for example, gives you lots of good, simply put, information on the “brain machinery” that enables the various types of awareness and perceptual experiences of which we are capable. Good stuff. Then chapter three (Brain architecture: how the brain makes mind) goes into the various states (hyperarousal and hyperquiescence and the limbic system) – again – good stuff.
But to start chapter three the authors blast argumentative shit out of the book’s universe into ours. It’s horrifying in the extreme.
The idea that our experience of reality—all our experiences, for that matter—are only “secondhand” depictions of what may or may not be objectively real, raises some profound questions about the most basic truths of human existence and the neurological nature of spiritual experience. For example, our experiment with Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns showed that the events they considered spiritual were, in fact, associated with observable neurological activity. In a reductionist sense, this could support the argument that religious experience is only imagined neurologically, that God is physically “all in your mind.” But a full understanding of the way in which the brain and mind assemble and experience reality suggests a very different view.
Imagine, for instance, that you are the subject of a brain imaging study. As part of this study, your have been asked to eat a generous slice of homemade apple pie. As you enjoy the pie, the brain scans capture images of the neurological activity in the various processing areas of the brain where input from your senses is being turned into the specific neural perceptions that add up to the experience of eating the pie…In a literal sense, the experience of eating the pie is all in your mind, but that doesn’t mean the pie is not real, or that it is not delicious.
I had an experience of Cthulhu a few nights ago. He was wearing pajamas with small black kittens printed on the fabric. Of course I was dreaming, but, nevertheless, neurologically I had the experience of sitting with Cthulhu clothed in kitten PJs. In a literal sense, the experience of sitting with Cthulhu was all in my mind, but that doesn’t mean Cthulhu is not real. Really?
Then there’s the end of the first paragraph – But a full understanding – that’s cheeky given the book is written for a general audience. The authors are claiming the right of might based on their authority as scientists who are capable of understanding and providing themselves a bat to batter anyone who disagrees. They can just say, “well if you understood the way the brain works…” Cheeky, and a sign of a poor grounding in evidence. I mean why would anyone who had decent evidence resort to such patently manipulative tactics?
Here’s the deal. The book has lots of good basic information in it but the authors’ argument for the existence of god sucks. This “analysis” left me wondering if they were “asked” to include bits to allay the fears of the god-fearing American public or if they just stop thinking once they are outside the realm of actual data. I’d love to know.
April 25th, 2011
deeply irritating, but why? faith, belief and argument
I’m an irritable kind of person, this is true, but some things really do deserve one’s disapprobation.
Amongst bits of behaviour that fall into this category are people who criticize new software programs without first having opened them, let alone used them, academics who write religious apologia as an academic rather than as a person of faith, people who critique books they haven’t actually read, and those who speak knowingly about subjects they don’t understand but don’t like (intuitively?) using broken logic and other acts of self-righteous justification.
What set this particular bout of irritation off? You should well ask.
Several years ago now I took a philosophy class in which a co-student gave his end of term paper presentation on the topic of why it is so difficult to be a man of faith in these times, and why it is so easy to be an atheist.
OK, so I actually really liked the guy. He was a techie, and they tend to be my favourite kind of person. He was kind, thoughtful, caring and devoted to his family. All of these things are good things, at least to me. His particular religion doesn’t matter at all. Nor does the the fact that he sees faith as a difficult thing to maintain. I suspect that’s actually very true given most of his life was dependent upon understanding the world of fact and science, which, of course, is one of the things continually eroding the ground on which faith is built.
What pissed me off was the fact that he thinks it’s easy to be an atheist without ever having attempted to understand what the world-view entails, and that the ease or difficulty of some position has anything whatsoever to do with its veracity. I mean Jeez dude, think. But it wasn’t my class, and I wasn’t going to step on the teacher’s toes and call him on it in class. I just let it go.
But then I ran into the very same argument yesterday on a blog. I’m not going to name it; I don’t really care what the blogger believes in, nor that s/he can’t summon up the will to think through his/her justifications for finding it difficult to maintain faith in supernatural powers. I don’t care what the blogger believes but I do care about how the blogger behaves; and the two seem clearly connected.
The obvious fact that atheism is still embattled, that one’s ability to hold a public position is compromised if one is not some sort of theist, seems to bely the position that it is easy. But this is a social sense of the word “easy.” By this sense being a Christian in North America is a much easier proposition. I suspect even being some sort of “deeply spiritual” person is easier than being an atheist in this sense.
But that word “easy” can be used in more than one way, right? I am sure that that some atheists find it easy in the way the blogger and my erstwhile co-student meant it—being a man of faith requires so much energetic creativity today, at least in the part of the world where all the facts central to our lives deny the likelihood of the objects of said faith, and none of this creativity is required of an atheist.
I do suspect it’s true that the rise in atheism of late has much to do with the hero worship inundating the four horsemen. With a mouth like the one on Hitch, what’s not to adore? Certainly our social and cultural dependency on science has much to do with the rise in athesim, as does the accumulation of data and video on the terrible behaviours of a whole historical bevy of men of faith. I mean really, how many dead gypsies, Jews and broken towers do we need to see before that real-life horror story gets old?
Sorry. I really am irritated. I tend to rant when that happens.
Philosophy classes, like the internet, are full of people who don’t seem to understand that sliding between word meanings endangers the validity of the argument. Just because the terms “easy” and “easy” look the same doesn’t mean that their various meanings are equivalent. What is socially “easy”—as in conforming to the public sense of what is acceptable—is not the same as what is rationally “easy”— as in something so well supported by data that it’s plain silly not to “believe” in it.
Let me give you an example of rationally easy: I “believe” in the notions of force and cause and effect in the material universe. That is, I “believe” that if I throw a rock through my window I am going to break it. I don’t think that the spirit of the glass just happens to shatter itself as the spirit of the rock manifests in the space that used to be occupied by my window. It’s not only silly not to believe in force and in cause and effect in the material universe, not believing in such things bespeaks a mental discombobulation, and frankly, I’d challenge any sane person to behaviourally display such a disbelief. I mean what? They walk directly in front of speeding cars to prove that cause and effect doesn’t exist?
Gads! Such disingenuousness. Still, negotiating the divide between normal human behaviour and the proposed lack of belief in cause and effect does require enormous creativity. Some of the explanatory narratives that result are really quite interesting. Leibniz, for example.
So there’s the problem with the blogger’s lack understanding of the slipperiness of language and the frankly silly assumption that because something is difficult to maintain it is therefore more valuable. Under that guiding hand, we should still be struggling to reconcile Ptolemy with NASA’s need to get scientific instrumentation to places like Mars. Imagine, Ptolemaic rocket science! That makes me smile. Never heard of Occam?
But it doesn’t answer my question of why such normal internet thinking irritates me so deeply.
To be honest I don’t like atheism via hero-worship any better than faith by fallacious argumentation. Both are irrational. Not that there isn’t value in the irrational. Of course there is. I mean I interpret dreams, read tarot, read Leibniz and Deleuze for goodness sake. But one “belief” is not like another. The belief in cause and effect in the material universe is not the same as a belief in supernatural forces. It’s one of those slippery words, like “easy” or “theory”.
It’s “just a theory“…. that one is getting really old since it displays such a willful ignorance and the deeply disrespectful act of not even attempting to understand that which you repudiate. And this is what bothers me, I suppose. It’s the blatant disrespect, not only of me—which doesn’t matter since the blogger doesn’t know me, and my erstwhile co-student was intent on defending himself from my perspicacity—but also illustrates a deep disrespect of himself and his attendant beliefs.
You really care so little about what you believe that you cannot be bothered to think it through cleanly? I value what you believe more than that, and I don’t share in it.
But I suspect what is even deeper, and why the thorn of it still lingers after several years, is that it appears like my co-student and the blogger don’t value reason at all. They don’t reason because they don’t trust it. They think feeling is a better guide to human happiness. Romantics they are, alive and well long after Wordsworth climbed that particular mountain. Of course the problem is that reason and feeling are not seperable functions in the human mind and so such contemporary Romantics, untutored in sound logic because of culturally received distrust, use an ill-formed and non-viable “logic” to support their faith in their feeling – what the blogger called common sense. But still it comes down to a lack of respect of their own mind, of the very feeling function they so assiduously defend. Without sound reasoning feeling abhors human life. Just ask Phineas Gage. Or Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger.
Feeling, like reason, is critical to human life. This is why I am so fascinated by religiousity. It is a primary site of feeling in human beings and a site where narrative, feeling, reason and the material world meet. Religion might be wrong in its analysis of the material world, but it is still vastly important because it is a key part of the human analysis of human life. It is a phenomenological database. Religion and our metaphysical concepts of reality are, along with art, by far the best source of data that we have for what it feels like to be a human being.
Because of the importance of religion and spirituality in the human universe, just because you believe it to be materially true as well as narratively true, doesn’t give you a pass on treating the phenomenon with respect. Religion is dangerous and deeply human. Treating it with the disrespect attendant upon your use of faulty logic is like a cat fancier turning her back on a ravenous lion. Stupid, man. Stupid.
And that’s what bothers me the most. It’s so deeply stupid to take your life so lightly.
March 13th, 2011
what “evidence” means and human narratives
I’m still thinking about what evidence means for people who don’t ground the word on an empirical, checkable basis. Essentially what “evidence” comes to mean is the fit the particular datum makes within the narrative that drives the person seeking the evidence. The kind of “evidence” that rests finally in the physical evidence I will call material evidence. The kind that rests finally in the story being questioned I will call narrative evidence.
There’s a pretty big difference between material and narrative evidence. Using Wittgenstein’s language, these are vastly different language games. It is important to note that all human beings used both “games”, but they are never given equal authority. Some of us come down hard on the side of material evidence and some on the side of narrative evidence. Each group lives in a very different social world.
I finished When Prophecy Fails this morning and it is this that prompted this post. Essentially, the book tries to discover why, when a prophecy has failed, do some of the believers believe even harder, proselytize ever more fiercely? Why doesn’t the discomfirmation of their belief make them question their belief? In my terms, what cultural and social conditions prompt some people to finally go with narrative evidence instead of with the stone stubbing against their toe?
First it should be said that some of the Seekers (what the study’s group called themselves) did abandon the story once the prophecy failed to come to pass. Ultimately, they chose material evidence over narrative. So being in a group like this one—in this case believers in space aliens to the rescue—where something outside the known material world will rescue a small group of select human beings is not in itself enough to say that material evidence doesn’t count for those persons.
What the researchers did is show that there are five things that need to be present for a person to refuse the material evidence of a failed prophecy and stick what they established as narrative evidence of belief confirmation. (For example, It’s not that the aliens aren’t real, and the aliens didn’t fail us. They were just testing our faith.)
1) A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he believes.
2) The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. (Like selling his house, and giving away all him money.) In general, the more important a such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual’s commitment to the belief.
3) The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief. (This is interesting. Here’s where the person who comes down on the side of narrative evidence grips onto the world and probably one of the reasons why creationists keep trying to ground their-out-of-the-world origin stories on material evidence and why their repeated failure doesn’t diminish the number of future attempts.)
4) Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief. (Here’s Comfort apologizing for the banana blooper and then continuing on to the next bloody great misreading of the origins of the material world.)
The first two of these conditions specify the circumstances that will make the belief resist to change. The third and fourth conditions together, on the other hand, point to factors that would exert powerful pressure on a believer to discard his belief. It is, of course, possible that an individual, even though deeply convinced of a belief, may discard it in the face of unequivocal disconfirmation. We must, therefore, state a fifth condition specifying the circumstances under which the belief will be discarded and those under which it will be maintained with new fervor.
5) The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct. (Can anybody say “Tea Party”?)
These five condition specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.
(Note: the italic additions above are mine.)
That’s a lot to think about, really. All humans are prey to this social pressure (number 5 above), including those of us who are atheists. That’s why I think having material evidence as one’s base line is so incredibly important. It’s the only thing we can tether to outside the incredible power of human social narrative.
March 10th, 2011
what is “evidence”
I’ve been thinking about what the word “evidence” means. This relates to my current reading of Dawkins’ book and to a comment by QunQun talking about Wittgenstein and the idea of language games.
Evidence as a term means that which tends to prove or disprove something, or it can be grounds for the belief of something. What a definition like this does is make anything potentially “evidence” for any proposition you care to make. I could say, for example, that the Wingabonga lives in the winter jasmine in my garden and cite as evidence for that belief my dream about the Wingabonga, and the fact that I found the Wingabonga’s favourite food near the plant. This counts as evidence because the dream and my finding orange peel on the pavement in my yard are the grounds upon which my belief in the Wingabonga’s residence took hold. They are also evidence for the existence of the Wingabonga. Does this really count as “evidence”? Sure, why not? It meets the limits of the definition.
Looking at the term “proof” doesn’t help because all it means is “evidence sufficient to establish a thing as true”. Ambivalence: that’s the nature of words.
What Wittgenstein showed with his language games concept is that what the word “evidence” actually means is how it is used within a specific language community. So Dawkins, being a scientist, has an idea of what evidence means that is established by how “evidence” is used in the science language community. This involves, amongst other things, checking to see if Wingabongas actually exist in the empirical world. This fact checking with respect to the empirical world acts as a guide to whether a Wingabonga can possibly live under my winter jasmine. My dreams and my orange peel evidence are secondary to the empirical fact of the Wingabonga’s non-existence. This empirical fact (the Wingabonga’s non-existence) negates the evidence of my dreams and the orange peel detritus. It doesn’t say I didn’t have the dream and that I didn’t find the orange peel, just that the dream and the placement of the orange peel mean something other than what I thought.
This is the kind of empirical evidence Dawkins wants for god. And of course there isn’t any.
So what counts as evidence for a theist? There are a good many, but most of them have to do with the human community. There are things like the fact that all human cultures worship some form of divine, for example. Why isn’t this good enough for Dawkins? Because it is like my orange peel evidence. Sure the orange peel is there. Does that mean a Wingabonga lives in my winter jasmine? No. There will be another explanation, although I may not be privy to it.
Then there are the arguments for god that try to base themselves on empirical evidence. I think these kinds of arguments have arisen (like creationism) because science and its idea of evidence is clearly successful and powerful. Science and empirical evidence has become the one to beat. The problem with that is that the natural “territory” of religious language includes the word “evidence” but it isn’t the kind based on empirical data. That word has rules, and one is to test the hypothesis for empirical validity, and, because of that, the god test keeps failing.
What appears to me, though, is that those who keep bashing up against the empirical wall don’t seem to realize that there is a fundamental difference between what they took as “evidence” for the existence of god (their church, their feelings, their family belief, their assessment of odd events as they relate to their story of origin) is not the same thing as the “evidence” that supports things like evolution. So they keep doing silly things like the banana proof without any apparent clue to how foolish they appear.
So which “evidence” is right? Neither of course. However, if you use the theistic form of the term in the scientific language community you’re going to get intellectually smashed. Expecting otherwise is not a mark of intelligence.