Can you take a little more godlessness?
- Sean Carroll has a nice discussion of this remarkable article in the San Antonio Star-Telegram. Atheists…in Texas? A newspaper article that writes sympathetically about the godless? How gratifying!
- Religion as an addiction—an excellent summary of the real problem.
Yet, if we’re going to think clearly about the right-wing juggernaut’s use of religion, and not function as its enablers, we must realize that we’re dealing with an addict. Right-wing political-religious fundamentalism can destroy us too if we’re like the dependent spouse who protects, defends, and covers-up for the family drunk.
Read the whole thing. That’ll make a few people hyperventilate.
- Heliologue has found a list of the religious beliefs of comic book superheroes. There aren’t many atheists, I’m afraid, but there is actually a hero called The Atheist, whose super-power is “a voracious and uncompromising logic that lets him cut through any problem like a scalpel”.
I’ve actually read The Atheist. Sadly, it’s just OK. Also, unless I missed something in the first issue, it never really says explicitly whether
Antoine Sharp is an atheist or not; that’s just his nickname.
It’s time for all of us moral atheists (yes, contrary to what my dad thinks, people who don’t believe in a all-watching god figure can lead moral lives) to step up and bitch-slap the fundamentalists who want to tell us how to live…..I’ve had it with playing nice, which, ironically, makes us nice atheists better christians than the Christians….
Captain Canuck is a MORMON?! WTF?
Hey! Of course there are atheists in Texas (just not that many). I live in Austin, and despite being a liberal enclave in a sea of fundamentalists, I think that still counts :). Admittedly I’m English, but many of my friends are at least secular if not out and out atheist. There’s even a cable access show here run by the Atheist Community of Austin.
Mind you, if you want to see something really scary, just read the Republican Party of Texas Platform:
http://www.texasgop.org/site/PageServer?pagename=library_platform
And remember, these are the guys in power here.
It is absolutely hilarious that J. Jonah Jameson’s — Peter Parker’s boss — religion is listed as “hates Spider-Man”.
The strange thing about the Star-Telegram article is the way atheists are described as appearing normal. How else would we appear? Can people actually be so ignorant and sheltered that they think non-believers are alien freaks?
I’m curious of an explanation why, as the article states, more men than women proclaim atheism.
I can’t wait for the inevitable angry letters to the editor.
Sort of speaking of which, what ever happened to Fred Hutchinson? Did he give up on you or what?
Speaking as a devoutly atheist Jew, I am pleased to find that about 20% of superheroes are nominally Jewish.
Clearly, if you want to find (or be?) a superhero, your odds are much better among what Eric Idle called the Red Sea Pedestrians, with the caveat that many smaller communities may have representation that cannot reliably be assessed due to the relatively small sample (~250 respondants) or even, it seems possible, due to bias in obtaining the data.
I feel alienated – Wolverine is no longer atheist. Now I have no more superheroes. Sigh!
BTW, isn’t is funny how many supervillains are atheists?
I can repeat with minor adjustments what I just said on another thread here:
Sean Carroll is discussing both the Stoeltje article PZ links to, and the earlier discussion here and at Mooneys blog about “how we should speak about science and evolution and religion in the public sphere”.
I find it interesting that Sean “think that the truth-telling attitude has its strategic benefits” in a “broader cultural conversation”. He exemplifies why in a link.
Stoeltje’s article is an interesting view of society at large, and it starts out well. “People may harbor negative views about Jews, Catholics, Muslims and evangelicals, but they know they’re not supposed to voice those views, so they don’t. But it’s still OK to say anything bad you want about atheists.”
But, as Sean also discusses, the article ends badly with saying both that atheists base their morals on reason alone (so they have no feelings or sympathy) and that it emerged naturally through an evolutionary process. Two common mistakes, but here combined into mere nonsense.
In the days of the Comics Code, superheroes were morally suspect anyway, so they had to shore up their moral values and appease the censors wherever possible. So they all got kitted out with beliefs tailored for the Miss Grundys of 1950’s America, with just a hint of Jewishness for diversity.
Also, I guess it would be hard to be an atheist when, like the Fantastic Four, you actually get to meet God.
The superheroes page has taught me of the existence of Mr. Terrific, and for that I am grateful. Do check out his entry; I like how his adherance to the concept of “fair play” is so strong as to suggest it is his personal religion. Great stuff.
There was also this surprising critical-of-religion David Horsey cartoon in the Seattle PI: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1351
Of course, since this is Seattle, I’m sure they got only a handful of complaints.
I would imagine that superheros religious beliefs (or lack of) would directly reflect the religious beliefs of the original writers/creators. I wonder if you compared the analysis there from what those superheros believe, to what their creator/writers believe, if the result would be directly concordant or if they decided to explore another religion through their characters.
I don’t care what anyone says. Batman is either an atheist or he has some shaolin leanings, and that’s the end of it. I also think Lisa, of the Simpsons, is on record as being an atheist — the list says Buddhist.
“J. Jonah Jameson, Religious Affiliation: Hates Spider-Man”
Now that I think about it, whenever I try to come up with well-recognized figures in popular culture who are athiests, agnostics, or something of the like, the only images I can conjure up are of some of the Star Trek characters.
We need more atheists on TV, and not just as the token bitter guy in a sitcom.
Superhero religion is a complicated thing, because many of them have actually MET gods, as well as seen mutually exclusive belief systems interact.
Thor himself was a founding member of the Avengers, and the JLU had an angel working for them. Hell, the angel told them that YHWH was going to start a new creation because Tezcatlipoca was going to destroy this one.
Not to mention that superheroes hardly ever express any religious feelings… I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen a superhero go to church or even express any religious sentiments…
A more substantial version of the Stoeltje article, with interviews of several atheists, appeared in August, 2005:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/salife/stories/MYSA081405.1P.atheism.1c0e39e0.html
There aren’t many atheists, I’m afraid, but there is actually a hero called The Atheist, whose super-power is “a voracious and uncompromising logic that lets him cut through any problem like a scalpel”.
Since when does being an atheist implies posessing “a voracious and uncompromising logic etc”?
The Startlegram is the Fort Worth, Texas newspaper. They picked up the article from the San Antonio Express News.
Back in the mid to late 1980s, I had an account on the StarText online service, which was the Star-Telegram’s foray into cyberspace at the time. They were providing full-text news articles plus the columns from their own writers, and a variety of the AP articles that made it into the paper. This was a cool thing at the time, and they had a lively user community with subscriber columns. Around 1990, they had a customer interaction meeting, and I pushed the idea of integrating Usenet and Internet content into their system, and essentially acting as an ISP for their customers. The response? They’d had a look at this Internet thing, and thought that their content model was superior and there wasn’t any reason to spend their time on that Internet stuff. They had some notion that newspapers across the country would follow their lead, and the online experience of the future was just going to be a lot more of what they had already been providing.
Oh, the topic was atheists in Texas… There is an Agnostic and Atheist student group at Texas A&M. One of Diane’s committee members was the faculty sponsor for that group for many years.
Does wearing blue tights imply that you can fly, or do all wolverines have retractable adamantium claws? Lighten up, this superhero stuff isn’t logical :)
Plus, that scalpel stuff sounds like it was inspired by Occam’s razor, and as we all know he was a monk… So I’m sure nobody’s claiming the principle is limited to atheists.
I can’t believe they missed Warrior Nun Areala!
bmurray: “Captain Canuck is a MORMON?! WTF?”
Even more bizarre, Sasquatch is Jewish.
How does that even work? Were the Mormons almost right, only it’s the native hominoid population that are the lost tribe of Israel, not the Indians? If we get Sasquatch DNA and it contains Hebraic mDNA, will that vindicate genetic science in the eyes of the LDS?
fireant writes: It’s time for all of us moral atheists (yes, contrary to what my dad thinks, people who don’t believe in a all-watching god figure can lead moral lives)…
That’s a very interesting topic, and I’m not sure what the answer is. Here’s some off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts about it.
Let’s consider a “prisoner’s dilemma” type game: You and your colleague are each given two choices, to cooperate with each other, or to sell the other guy out. The payoff is highest for you if you sell out and the other guy cooperates, but if you both cooperate, the outcome is better than if you both sell out.
The rational choice is to sell out: No matter what the other guy does, it is to your advantage to sell out. Even if you have a moral commitment to ethical behavior, there is no reason to cooperate, because without a similar commitment on the part of the other guy, your noble gesture will get you nowhere.
Now introduce a fictitious vengeful God who promises to punish you for unethical behavior. If you believe in this God then you will tend to do the ethical thing, and cooperate. If you both believe, then you will both do the ethical thing, and you will both benefit.
So, I think that it is possible that commitment to something irrational can be beneficial to a group as a whole. Of course, instead of being motivated by fear, it works to have other irrational motivations, such as love of one’s fellow man. But, in my opinion, it takes a lot more work to inculcate the latter in the minds of the general public.
Why is altruism a harder sell than fear? Because even though most people want to be good, they even more don’t want to be chumps. They aren’t going to take the high road if they believe that it means they are going to be taken advantage of. So to engage in ethical behavior, it is not enough that you believe in goodness, you have to believe that your colleague believes in it, and believe that he believes that you believe in it, etc. In contrast, if you fear punishment from a vengeful God, then you will take the ethical course regardless of whether the other guy does. So it’s a more stable solution.
Even more bizarre, Sasquatch is Jewish.
How does that even work? Were the Mormons almost right, only it’s the native hominoid population that are the lost tribe of Israel, not the Indians? If we get Sasquatch DNA and it contains Hebraic mDNA, will that vindicate genetic science in the eyes of the LDS?
If I recall correctly, Sasquatch is Dr. Walter Langkowski. Jewish? I could see it.
Don’t scoff. Texas actually once hosted one of the largest communities of freethinkers in the country:
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/1998/april98/scharf.html
They were mostly destroyed as a community by their refusal to support the South and/or their conscription into the Confederate Army (many were even executed for refusing to fight).
Mr. Terrific, unfortunately, doesn’t even believe in souls. Which in the DC universe leaves him a bit silly, as a recent issue has him debating the supernatural with a guy whose cloak is, well, made out of human souls. Sheesh.
Last I heard, the Texas Freethinkers were doing fine til a couple years ago when Tom Delay redistricted the whole area where they lived such that it got divided among 6 different Repubican districts. They haven’t been heard from much since then.
Yep, there are still plenty of athiests in Texas. I am one, and if anything, I am even more stringent than PZ. It is my personal opinion that religion poses significant barriers to further enlightenment for the rest of the world, and that may have serious consequences. (Global warming, environmental conservation, species depredation, etc.)
Our numbers, though, are depressingly low.
BruceH,
I think people need to seperate those who are strong enough to claim the descriptor of ‘atheist’ with the multitude that are closet atheists.
The former may be around %5 the latter is a large undercurrent that would swell the ranks into perhaps an equal footing. It’ a matter of public acceptance.
“So it’s a more stable solution.”
Daryl, while I agree that game theory may have some interesting thinngs to tell us, you are assuming much that isn’t necessarily true.
First, cooperation isn’t always advantageous. Inside companys, markets, and evolution, competition is. Ie, while there are components of cooperation, its core isn’t a cooperative effort. Also, some unethical behaviour is advantageous here.
Second, there are other stable solutions to games.
Third, reciprocal altruism (tit-for-tat) with forgiveness (and a very small amount of defections, I believe) is an astonishingly successful strategy in repeated ‘games’ of the type you propose. It can be beaten if other player build cooperation groups, but not easily otherwise it seems.
So a complete ethical behaviour may be rational in a level playing field (no ganging up from other players) there you expect to meet the opponents again, like in a community.
The flip side is that a complete unethical behaviour may be rational for causal encounters. Maybe you can substitute the
fear of gods with fear of reconvening?
That was wrong. Casual encounters isn’t the flip side, since tit-for-tat is best as long as one doesn’t know the number of plays.
The flip side is if you have a strong belief (or perhaps probability) that there will be no more encounters. Like in a big city.
Hah, tacitus, Husband and I are atheists in LUBBOCK. We’re acutally afraid of losing our jobs if we come out (and Husband, a corrections officer, could possibly be physically harmed if his lack-of-belief was known).
When my sister and brother-in-law left for Iowa, I am pretty sure the Lubbock atheist population was halved.
Beat that. Unless you’re an atheist in, like, Snyder. Then I bow to you.
torbjorn writes: So a complete ethical behaviour may be rational in a level playing field (no ganging up from other players) there you expect to meet the opponents again, like in a community.
Well, that’s part of the problem with modern society is that the players are often quite anonymous. In small groups, there is an incentive not to behave badly because it will likely cost you friendships that you need to survive. But as the group size becomes larger, it becomes easier to interact anonymously with people who don’t know you.
Jared Diamond credits religion for making large civic units (the city, the nation) possible, because the religion provides additional incentives for behaving ethically even among strangers. (Diamond also “credits” religion for making big wars possible. In smaller groups, people may conduct raids on other villages, but they don’t tend to have long-lasting wars with massive casualties on both sides. Religion makes people more willing to fight and die for a cause.)
Daryl,
I agree with you, but not Diamond. ;-)
Anonymity (and alienation) is a problem for morals. It’s not easy to construct and support morals for varying circumstances.
Morals is what makes cities, trade morals and civic morals. Religious morals as such aren’t needed. I live in a nation where secularity is the norm, and it works fine.
Religion isn’t what makes wars possible. I agree that many faith beliefs may be used for helping make wars, though. :-(