Believers, Uniting

The religions of the world, it seems, are largely in agreement;
They’re seeing different facets of one God
Not long ago, faiths disagreed on what, exactly, “we” meant
So this putative agreement just seems odd.

Religions had their enemies (and likely always will)
But their foes are vastly different now (we checked)
While interfaith “believers” have one message to instill
Through their histories, they’ve battled other sects!

Why, the Catholic’s bitter enemies were Methodists, at first,
Till the Baptists formed a bigger, badder foe
While today we see the atheists among the very worst
Were the godless problematic then? Well, no.

Cos the Christians fought the Christians (and the Muslims and the Jews)
And the atheists were folks you never met
But what could hammer unity from once-opposing views?
Is it possible the godless are a threat?

I’ve written before of my personal experience with what once appeared to be a bunch of separate religious views seeming to change over time to come together in a common cause (whether for political gain or to oppose atheism, I can’t say). Today, my aggregator throws at me an essay describing the same phenomenon over the past centuries of American religions. The essay speaks of the phenomenon as the effect of a religious free market, where competition among producers of religion for the limited consumers of religion was fierce:

The nineteenth century saw a fervor of religious inspiration, entrepreneurship, and frantic competition. In 1800, most Americans belonged to no church or denomination; many others were only nominally committed to the stuffy and stern established churches of several states.

But now, a host of young, energetic, and plain-speaking preachers evangelized all across the country for new denominations like the Methodist Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, and dissident Baptists.

The Catholic Church, rooted in a continent where people were born into a faith and never left it, was shocked by the competition. One priest dispatched to Maryland complained in 1821, “There are Swarms of false teachers [Methodist preachers] all through the Country, in every School house, in every private house—you hear nothing but night meetings, Class meetings, love feasts &c &c.”

Historian of religion Martin Marty described “a competition in which the fittest survived,” one in which backwoods ministers found that their “first enemy was neither the devil nor the woman but the Baptist” – or any number of evangelists. (Later in the century, even atheists came together in formal association.)

I won’t quote more–it’s a really nice read, though, and while not a huge surprise (given the Bartonian mythology of America’s early years, though, it’s probably a huge surprise to someone), it’s refreshing to see.

Only just last week I was reading something about “the overall message of all religions”, which seemed a bit of a desperate attempt to gather allies, at the expense of historical accuracy. I guess it always seemed to me a bit of an insult, to have the Jehovah’s Witnesses at my door claim common ground with other Christians, with Muslims, Jews, and others, when trying to show how reasonable and commonplace belief is. I mean, if there is such agreement, why the various sects? These are differences that once merited banishment from a state, or discrimination in the workplace, or war–how is it that now you all believe the same warm, fuzzy things?

I don’t have an answer. If wishing worked, I’d find indisputable evidence that the great coming-together was a reaction to the growing threat of atheism. But it could be simple political pragmatism, and the functional equivalent of coalition-building. Or maybe each religion is evolving… Nah.

“Reality Beyond The Material”

“All of human experience, over millennia, suggests a richness and complexity of reality beyond the material.”

I’ve heard there’s a heaven, its streets paved with gold,
Where diamonds and platinum gleams
It’s as real as my hand is, or so I’ve been told,
Though it might just be Swedenborg’s dreams.

I’ve heard I have angels who watch what I do
And act, if I do something rash
The lady who told me, she swore it was true
Then she charged me a whole lot of cash

I’ve heard I can heal any ailment at all
But first, I just have to believe
No matter what problem, how big or how small,
But science just cannot perceive!

I’ve heard there are miracles, wonders, and more,
Overflowing reality’s cup
And I’m thinking it’s something I ought to ignore…
Cos it looks like just making shit up

So yeah… my aggregator threw this at me today. From the Jamaica Gleaner, it’s “Science and Religion: a clash of two faiths”. The title alone tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the author’s position. The only additional info you might need is to note that this article is a response to a previous article… or, as the present author puts it:

Every now and again, some of the puff-chested doctors-cum-priests of science and a wide variety of coat-tail-hanging quacks emerge to advise us that religion, and particularly Christianity, is terminally ill. This is especially strange since modern science is irrefutably a product of Christian faith, more particularly of Protestant Christian faith.

So here comes another one, Dr Patrick White, who holds a doctorate in engineering and has led research groups at Bell Labs, puffingly announcing ‘Christianity losing race against science’ (Gleaner, July 1, 2013).

Initially, I was a bit confused as to whether science or puffery was the enemy. Turns out it’s science.

Science is replete with its own pet prejudices, bigotry and religious zealotry. At its epistemological core, science, as preached by many practitioners and bandwagon believers, operates on two weak assumptions: The reductionist view that reality is purely material, the interplay of matter and energy; and that the only way of truly knowing is by ‘scientific method’.

All of human experience, over millennia, suggests a richness and complexity of reality beyond the material. Science has been quite glibly willing to dismiss the mountain of evidence of non-material reality in defence of its own pet prejudice and in a deliberate and concerted effort to get rid of ‘god’ and the supernatural, which might be more properly described as the ‘othernatural’ rather than the ‘supernatural’.

Go ahead and read it… look for the critique of religion that matches the critique of science. Science is critiqued, and by virtue of a version of special pleading, religion is there to pick up the pieces.

Taking science on its own ground, no hypothesis of origins can be established by scientific method because it simply cannot be tested, a key requirement of validating hypotheses. Origin, whether of matter or of life, is a unique, one-off, non-replicable event of the distant past without human witnesses. Scientific method proceeds by examining replicable phenomena for attaining reliable and valid results. In matters of origins, we all ultimately stand on a platform of faith.

The only rational, purely natural ‘scientific’ position is that we, conscious and self-reflective human beings, find ourselves here. We do not know where we came from. We do not know why we are here. We do not know where we are going.

Science can answer none of these critical existential questions. And science can assign no value to human life. The object cannot value itself. Value is derived from being valuable to another.

Sure, religion can’t answer scientific questions, but that’s not its fault:

Religion, and Christianity in particular, has often been its own worst enemy in the contrived conflict with science. The Bible is not a science text and was not intended to be. The pronouncements of the mediaeval Roman Catholic Church upon cosmology which led to its ‘routing’ by Copernicus and Galileo, over which Patrick White now gloats, had no warrant in data sources available to the Church.

The article concludes

As powerful and productive as they have been, science and scientific method are not without boundaries of competence to define and to examine reality. Trespassing outside those boundaries is definitely not scientific, and bluff and bluster by the doctors, priests and quacks of science cannot change that simple fact.

which the casual observer will note does not advance the cause of religion one inch. The argument is, roughly, “if it is not the 4th of July, it must necessarily be Christmas.” Sorry, but knocking down science (worse, knocking down science based on your inadequate understanding of it) does not strengthen religion.

Tearing down my neighbor’s house does not strengthen my own. Pretending to tear down my neighbor’s house is just as futile, with the added benefit of making me look like a fool.

What Type Of Atheist Are You?

While atheists are privative (defined by what we’re not),
That doesn’t mean we’re all the same—the whole ungodly lot—
Analysis finds atheists of many different stripes;
Most recently, the factors give us six distinctive types.

They found them scientifically; the factors loaded well
But because the subject’s atheists, there’s one thing I can tell:
While others might be sortable—these groups are there to see—
I’ve looked at all the labels, and there’s not a one fits me!

So I was on the road Monday when the news broke on this–some more data-crunching has been done on the Non-Belief in America Research data. Earlier, a factor analysis on data from interviews yielded six types of atheists: the Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic, the Activist Atheist/Agnostic, the Seeker-Agnostic, the Anti-Theist, the Non-Theist, and the Ritual Atheist/Agnostic. Follow the link for fairly detailed descriptions of each type (here it is again).

Monday’s numbers show the percentages of atheists (in a sample of just over a thousand) who self-identify with each category, as described at the link. They also, briefly, present some of the relationships between atheist type and various personality measures. It’s interesting, if still in the very early stages.

My favorite bit, though, comes at the end. This report is addressed to the public, not to a peer-reviewed journal, so the authors take pains to put their findings in context:

If prejudice continues to exist towards atheists in general, one source may stem from the perceived negative experiences by religious people interacting with a very small sub-segment of the overall population of non-believers, mainly the Anti-Theists. In other words, our research showed over 85% of the non-believers sampled to be more or less your “average Joe” when it came to being “angry, argumentative and dogmatic”, they fall right in line with current societal norms, nothing strange here – sorry non-believers, you’re pretty normal when it comes to being psychologically well-adjusted.

It is also important to recognize that the “angry, argumentative and dogmatic” vignette,as used here, does not mean that these Anti-Theists don’t have a right to be any of these things or that they are not even proper psychological responses when recontextualized in light of the Anti-Theists’ life experiences to date. For example, many of the Antitheist typology had responded as recently deconverted from religious belief or socially displeased with the status quo, especially in high social tension-based geographies such as the Southeastern United States. If we engage in a small thought experiment by taking on the perspective of a recent deconvert from a religious tradition (many times a very conservative one) to atheism, it may be easy to see how this small sub segment is, and perhaps deserves to be, angry and argumentative after having previously accepted a worldview at odds with their current beliefs, or lack there-of, especially in areas of the country where high social tension exists between believers and non-believers in general.

It is very important to recognize that these comparisons are being made only within “non-belief”. In other words, these results are not juxtaposed alongside “believers” or any subset of population that identifies as “religious” and therefore no conclusions or empirical inferences can be currently draw as to how the two groups, or rather sub segments of the two groups might stack up against each other. Certainly additional research should explore these typologies in relation to believers to see if such conclusions can hold true for outside perceptions.

And then, even further down, a little bit on the limitations of labels in scientific research. Factor analysis may show us which traits load together, but labeling that cluster of traits is up to the person doing the analysis. That person, as the researchers here, does their best to come up with a name that captures the feel of that subset of the data, aware that any one label must be incomplete, but needing one label. In this case, the label is supposed to represent a type of atheist–so good luck finding a label to please people, many of whom (like the crab in the William James quote they present) proudly reject labels of any sort:

As we finish writing this brief synopsis, Coleman is actually sitting across the table from a good friend (who we will call Bob which is not his real name but allows a reference point for this conversation) who self identifies as an “Anti-Theist” however, he says he does not consider what he, labels himself as, to be a reflection of our very specific research description of a typology we call “Antitheist”. To the readers’ credit, no doubt many of “you” might also share our friend’s sentiments as they speak directly to any social scientific construction of every typology.

As social scientists we are forced to label, yet at the same time, we recognize qualitatively the limits inherent in any label. Certainly this was a research challenge for the project, one that almost derailed our process. Many of the participants disagreed about common use of terms of nonbelief but there was common agreement related to definitions of nonbelief. With this said Bob is not alone. Many of the participants were concerned with issues of social agendas and the separation of church and state. Furthermore, individuals like Bob were in many respects critical of the religious institutions and their agendas. The differences here in typology relate to the mode and value each participant places on how they engage issues of ontology. In other words, what is their preference for debating and considering the place religion and secularity play in our society? For many participants they question such social structures and are critical (antitheist) but their mode of behavior and belief may be different from the group we label antitheist. These labels were chosen by the research team to be reflective of the emotional, personality, and cognitive structures of value these people place on their worldviews (types).

So… take a look at their types. Which type are you? Are you, perhaps, a sub-type? (They are actively looking for subtypes at least within their first category.) Do you defy type? Myself, I suppose I mostly fit in the first category, but I see bits of me in the others as well.

God Did It

I don’t know how the flowers bloom
Or how the spring rains fall
I don’t know how the seasons change
I don’t know much at all

There’s lots of stuff I do not know
And though it may seem odd
Let’s please not call it ignorance—
I’d rather call it God. [Read more…]

Should Atheists Pray?

“Should atheists pray?” the paper asked
And commenters all had to share…
Seems nobody knows what an atheist is,
And nobody understands prayer

At the New York Times, the “Room for Debate” opinion page asks “Should Atheists Pray?”.

With atheist church services this month in Louisiana and New York, nonbelievers are borrowing some of the rituals of believers: gathering, singing, sermons.

Would it be fruitful for atheists to pray? For believers and others, what is the point of prayer?

They ask 5 people, only one of whom is an actual atheist (Hemant Mehta). The others include a professor of psychology and former pastor, a professor of preaching, a visiting professor of the new testament and co-pastor, and (naturally) Deepak Chopra. Of course, the real fun is in the comments to each essay.

We find, among essayists as well as commenters, that there are myriad understandings of just what atheism is–from simply not believing in a god, to specific denial of a god even if evidence for one was shown, to those who specifically hate the Christian god, to frankly incoherent quasi-descriptions. Oh, and it takes more faith to be an atheist than to believe, but you already knew that.

There are also a wide spectrum of beliefs about prayer. Now, atheists are sometimes accused of being the only ones who really take the bible seriously (thus, our claims about what believers believe are simply straw men), but honestly, there is no perspective of religious belief that I can conceive of that doesn’t have its manic proponents–from Chopra’s new-age touchy-feely amorphous blobby bullshit to prosperity gospel “god wants you to be rich, so ask him for money” to “prayer is not asking for anything, it’s thanking for everything”, to “prayer is the same as meditation” to anything under the sun.

So, should atheists pray? Near as I can tell, That’s about a thousand different questions, with about ten thousand reasonable answers, and about a hundred thousand unreasonable ones. Me? I have had more than a handful of occasions when I would have prayed, back when I was religious. Some of you know. I have had occasion… but I have not prayed in over 25 years. Never had the slightest inkling. My parents have prayed, my sister has prayed, and I don’t think any less of them for it. Not in the slightest. There is every reason for them to believe in prayer. Every reason but the right one–that it works. I know the studies on intercessory prayer. I know the evidence. I’ve pissed off my whole family by correcting my sister, in her hospital bed, when she credited prayer for her recovery. My own opinion–should atheists pray? No; nor should anyone.

Do I think any less of anyone for praying? Absolutely not. Depending on your own views, and your own definitions of prayer, there are maybe a million reasons to pray. None of the good ones involve there being a god, though. All the good reasons to pray involve us being human, and frail, and scared, or hopeful, or happy, or angry, or… oh, yeah, there are probably a million or so bad reasons to pray, too. So like I said, on the whole, my own opinion is anti-prayer.

But any question that takes a spectrum and requires a black or white answer is a bad question. And that is what the NYTimes has done.

Maybe they should have asked more atheists.

Maybe they should have asked me.

Those Dead-Eyed, Soulless Atheist Types

The eyes are the windows to the soul
Or at least, that’s how they are credited;
And demons show up in a camera’s view
When the image is printed unedited—

The atheist hordes have no spirits inside,
You can tell from their cold, lifeless eyes;
Of course, they will claim it’s a trick of the light—
They are liars, so no great surprise.

Yes, I know that a flash will reflect in your eyes
It’s just physics, that’s all, I’m aware—
But I choose to believe that it’s more than just that…
They’re just atheists—I really don’t care.

Ok, this was weird. The good news first: The Secular Coalition for America just announced that they have met with the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships:

Edwina Rogers led a group of several representatives from the nontheistic community including several of the Coalition’s member organizations, which included Aisha Goss, Deputy Director of the Secular Coalition for America; Wendy Kaminer, Secular Coalition Advisory Board member; Amanda Knief, Managing Director of American Atheists; Maggie Ardiente, Director of Communications and Development at the American Humanist Association; Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University; Jason Torpy, President of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers; and Michael DeDora, Director of the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy and CFI representative to the United Nations.
Edwina Rogers said it was important that a variety of Coalition members were at the meeting in order to show that the movement is unified. The religiously unaffiliated or “nones” now account for more than 19 percent of the American population. Among people aged 18-29 that number is even higher, with a full 35 percent identifying as unaffiliated, and 42 percent of that segment identifying as atheist or agnostic. The religiously unaffiliated are a growing and politically important demographic-the nones now represent the largest “religious” bloc of registered Democratic voters, comprising 24 percent, according to statistics from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
“It’s impossible for the White House to work individually with every organization, but as a unified group the Administration can more efficiently work with us as a community,” Edwina Rogers said. “The role of the Secular Coalition is to be the unifying voice that speaks on behalf of the nontheistic and secular community–we feel this meeting was a prime example of our mission in action.”

But, see, I didn’t find out about this from the press release. I found out about it from The Blaze, where they think it strange that atheists would be interested in meeting with a government Faith office. Where, strangely enough, the commenters focused on… the photograph. If you take a look at the first (SCA) link, you’ll see a normal photograph, like those you have seen in stories on any number of topics. If you click on just the photo itself, though, and open it, you’ll see the unretouched version, before the very minor edits to get rid of flash artifacts in most of the eyes. Anyone using the photo for any story would do what they did, and simply get rid of those nasty white dots.

Anyone but The Blaze, it seems. Their story uses the unretouched (and unflattering) pic, and commenters were quick to point out that

they certainly have strange eyes. The camera doesn’t lie.

and

No indeed something does NOT look right in their eyes. Soulless…sort of like our Dear Leader and his “You can never spend too much of the citizens’ money” wife… If God does not inhabit; evil WILL enter. Indeed….

and

Look at their eyes. Reminiscent of Poltergeist!

and

I know people will just say it is because of the lighting, but take a look at each one of their eyes in the picture…..something doesn’t seem right. They all look evil.

This last commenter was responded to, and doubled down:

@Lucretius…I understand what you are trying to do and the point you are attempting to make. Yes I realize that there could be several factors that cause their eyes to look like that…such as the light from the flash reflecting off of the lenses in their eyes, although they do have this relatively new invention on cameras that stop that…maybe they just didn’t have it turned on. Or maybe it was dust particles reflecting back…..I get that….however, it does not take away from the fact that these people still look dead inside and evil…..and I”m not the only one that has pointed that out, just read through some of the other posts.

What I find so entertaining is that atheists claim to be these “freethinkers” and that they use “science” to explain everything. However, in science you have rules that you must abide by which in all honesty limit your ability to think freely.

And the funny thing? As ludicrous as these comments are, when compared to the other comments at The Blaze, these are the people who are at least commenting on something with some relationship to the real world. There really actually is a photo, and it really does have white spots in some people’s eyes. Sure, there is a simple explanation for it, but it is part of an observable reality. I can’t say the same for many of the other comments there.

Sarah, Rick, And Bill Report For Duty In The War Against Christmas

Dateline: Late June, 2013

Once again, the War On Christmas sees the atheists attack,
But there’s something different this year—this year Christ is fighting back!
Let the godless and their minions rant and rave and do their worst,
Cos our strategies are changing—yes, we’re even striking first!

There’s a book that’s set for launching, and it’s just what you’d expect,
Sarah Palin taking aim at the politically correct.
So it’s festive and it’s jolly; it’s tradition, meant to please,
With first amendment platitudes in pidgin legalese

And in Texas, there’s a notion, and Rick Perry says it’s his,
Making “Merry Christmas” legal which it… um… already is
But this pandering to Christians, even minuscule amounts
Makes the martyrs feel much better, and of course that’s all that counts.

Now I hear that Bill O’Reilly wonders where religion went,
When it’s tough to be a Christian (in the 80-plus percent)
Bill-O wants a Christian country, so it’s worth our fighting for
Which explains the man’s obsession with a six-month Christmas War

Here, it’s summer—barely summer—and the sun is beating down
And there’s no sign yet of Christmas in our sleepy little town
In the churches, stores, and neighborhoods, if Christmastime you seek,
Then you’re just a little early… Christmas season starts next week.

The war on Christmas gets earlier every year! I swear, though, it’s not my fault. This time, it’s a Christmas troika–Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and Bill O’Reilly are harnessed up and pulling their sleigh through… the heat and humidity of summer.

Conscientious Objection The Godless Way

Your conscience is that little voice
Contributing to every choice
For those who let their conscience be their guide
The conscientious types report
If you’re the conscientious sort
You know that voice is coming from inside

For those who know their morals’ source
No Christian God, nor Jedi Force
Is necessary target for our search
But those who lack a moral spine
Whose morals need some source divine
Find conscience in the teachings of the church

For those whose morals are their own
Their stance is theirs, and theirs alone;
For others, moral views are heaven-sent.
I must admit, I was surprised
The moment that I realized
The latter group includes our government!

I guess the laws intend to seek
A very special kind of meek:
Without a god, one cannot show contrition!
Without religion, one can’t choose
From pacifist religious views!
So praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!

See, now, this is where writing in verse is problematic. I finish the above comment, only to find that the problem has been solved. Margaret Doughty’s application for citizenship has been approved, after some very strange requests that her refusal to bear arms in defense of the nation (a 64 year old woman, she would not have been asked to) must be supported by a church’s endorsement. Apparently, conscience (on which conscientious objection depends) is officially seen not as something arising from within, but as something imposed by and supported by a particular religious tradition.

When I started this verse, Doughty represented a clear first amendment violation–that an atheist could object to taking up arms was unheard of. Quakers? Sure. Mennonites? Yup. Brethren? Have your pastor sign on the dotted line. Atheist? Wait just a moment.

I had a nice long rant ready… but Doughty’s application has been approved, so I’ll just go to bed now. You can read all about it here.

Cuttlecap tip to Joan!

By Human Intelligence I Mean…

I haven’t yet written a symphony
And my poetry? Crude, simple verse.
My theorems, my physical theories
And technologies, frankly, are worse

I question the meaning(s) of living,
And I question the Meaning Of Life…
Do my shortcomings say I’m not human?
That’s the viewpoint of some (take my wife*).

(*Please**.)

(**I can quote Henny Youngman, though.)

So, yeah, this is a followup to yesterday’s. In the comments over at NPR, Gleiser is challenged by his colleague Barbara King for his claim that dinosaurs were “stupid”. He clarifies that he means human intelligence, rather than animal intelligence:

By human intelligence I mean the ability to create symphonies, poetry, theorems, physical theories, technologies, to be able to question the meaning of existence and the meaning of intelligence.

Of course, I am reminded of the scene from “I, Robot”: Detective Del Spooner asks (mostly rhetorically) “Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot take a blank canvas and turn it into a masterpiece?” Sonny replies, simply, “Can you?”