C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

I'd like all of you to at least skim this, even if your past experiences with me suggest you aren't going to agree with it. I think on this one, you just might.

This holiday season I heard "don't lose sight" a lot. An interesting phrase. I've been mulling it over for a month. It's common in discussions of values. I think that a lot of talk of "theism" and "atheism" is a blind alley. I am an atheist, no doubt about it. But I just don't think the nonexistence of the supernatural is the point of anything I really have been trying to get across. While I am not saying my actual point of view on atheism vs. theism has changed, I think that whole discussion is too often part of the problem. The problem is philosophy that loses eye contact.

Atheists can count the angels dancing on the head of a pin just as badly as theists can. You see where, when secularists are upset that a "higher" or "deeper" person is losing sight of the tangible reality of human relationships, we can easily get distracted onto attacking the "higher" and "deeper". But what's important is not that people are looking "higher" or "deeper", it's that they're neglecting what's right in front of their eyes. Don't lose sight of visible things. So far as I know, there isn't a philosophical "ism" name for that position.

I consider that walking by sight, not by faith, but hey, that's just me. Being more in touch with tangible human relationships than with heavenly abstractions is what I'm all about. We call that "atheism" or "secularism" or a dozen different versions of that, but you might not, and that's fine. Besides, that word is a distraction. What matters is that I make choices that those around me can live with, and that you make choices that I can live with. Agreement on the reasons for doing so are less important to a life well-lived.

A focus on abstractions is just a smokescreen to keep from having to engage the empathy part of your brain and really talk to the people in your life. This is why so many of the teachers and students I remember from fundamentalist Christianity were so emotionally stunted and clumsy in relating to people. Philosophy that loses eye-contact is an avoidance technique. The best way to switch off your empathy is to focus on ivory-tower abstractions and lose sight of human relationships. Look at every atrocity committed by any philosophical branch. Religious people point at the secular ones, non-religious people point at the religious ones, but notice the one thing they all have in common. It's "the state", "god", "society", rather than the suffering of their victims. Even Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber were into pretentious manifestos.

How does it come about that someone softens up toward homosexuals? One of their loved ones comes out of the closet and they're not just an abstraction. How does it come about that a person can become cruel and destructive toward others, for a metaphysical position? Philosophy that loses eye contact. How do you become an abortion protester who hasn't even thought through what will happen if they get their way? Philosophy that loses eye contact. Some of them squeeze their eyes closed to recite their philosophies to themselves over and over in prayer. This alienates them from the reality in front of their eyes, and all too often, they lose sight as hard as they can. It happens in politics too.

My emphasis ought not to be on the metaphysics of the supernatural plane, or millions of years ago. When a religious person in a conflict tries to resolve it using such abstractions, I'll just say "Look me in the eyes. If I want to talk to God, I know where to find him-- I want to know what you think. This is an issue of discomfort between me, and you. You are trying to move it off of that discomfort, but it won't really resolve it. You are responsible for your position, not God. If I'm wrong, I accept responsibility for that. If you're wrong, no one is to blame but you."

Repeat "you" and "me" as often as necessary. Maintain their eye contact on you, if necessary using your index and middle finger in a V shape positioned in the eye-line. Bring them down to the visceral, human level of having to use actual conflict-resolution skills. To take responsibility for their own position. To say, "It's not about God; it's about a problem you and I have with each other's behaviors. It can only be resolved on that level."

The manger scene in front of the civic activity center near R's new apartment.


The sign reads "THIS DISPLAY DOES NOT REPRESENT ANY ONE RELIGION." That is counterfactual but I'll give them an "A" for effort. The photos were taken last week; when I drove past this morning, the sign had been torn down.

Every Christmas Eve and Easter I get paid to operate a video camera for the services of the church I used to work for. As I sat listening to the sermon titled "Yes Sam Harris, There Is A God", in between moments of slack-jawed astonishment that any pastor would make a favorable comparison between Santa and one of the most intellectually sophisticated ideas in human history, it also occurred to me to wonder: "If we secularists are really all that intolerant, how would he explain my presence here?"

I'll tell you how I explain it. Friendship. It's not some forced artificial obedience to an ideal of tolerance, it's sincere friendship with the pastors, staff, and members, pure and simple. I was no less chummy with the organist just because he thinks I shouldn't like technology so much, no less nervous around the cute girl just because she thought R should have treated her medical problems with prayer, no less friendly with her dad just because he agrees with Jerry Falwell about 9/11 being a punishment from God, because one learns that ideology is best left on soapboxes and set aside otherwise. With doctrinaire standards, none of us could have any friends. Better yet, I like to think of my life as a web-comic starring a cast of eccentric and opinionated goofballs like myself. That makes everybody seem lovable and their quirks enrich my experience. If that's not toleration I don't know what is.

Sam Harris might agree. He's one of my personal heroes, and I don't think the pastor's unflattering interpretation of "Letter To A Christian Nation" was more accurate than Harris' unflattering interpretation of the Christian bible. Harris, and Dawkins, and Dennett, are remarkably civil and even gentle. It's difficult to recognize that, because faith has had sacred cow priviledges for so long that any opposition is seen as ugly.

I recognize good people. I've learned that the virtue or monstrousness of someone's opinions seldom has any correlation to the virtue or monstrousness of their behavior, so we must be judged by actions. Given a set of extremely different drivers who approach your broken-down car on the highway, one driver who is a racist pig, another who is an atheist, another who is devoutly religious, and so forth, the odds of which one will pull over to help you is pretty much even. Sweet and kind people can mouth the most awful atrocities while on a soapbox but not go through with them when they witness real people in real pain; the other side of that coin is that sociopaths can be very gifted at faking what you want to hear.

That goes to show that Matthew 12:34 is another place Jesus of Nazareth was wrong, by the way. On that note, if I ever write a book of the type Harris, Dawkins and Dennet have written, one advantage I have that they lack is a knowledge of theology.

Happy Holidays, everybody. And no, there is no formulation of well-wishes that would offend me, so don't worry about it.

Edge.org brought my attention to responses in the letters column of the New York Times (quoted below the cut), by the three atheists most prominently cited in the resurgence of outspoken atheism-- Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. They plead for the simplicity and gentleness of their positions, against the reputations they are acquiring from those who have only heard about them from their detractors. Those who take the time to actually read their books find out that far from over-reaching, cruelty, or arrogance, they gently point out obvious ennobling and enriching insights which it has been impolite to mention.

In a free society, most secularists are far more interested in ending the immunity which religious faith is granted than we are interested in the hopeless folly of attempting to end faith itself. Unfortunately, it seems that faith reacts badly to challenges to its sacred-cow status, resulting in the mischaracterizations of the New Atheists.

A frequent objection is made that Harris, Dawkins and Dennett mischaracterize religion. Exactly what religious adherents are those objectors looking at? It doesn't matter that the top 1% most sophisticated religious people are not as bad as all that. They aren't the 99% who are making problems for us. There is a No True Scotsman fallacy at work here.
Argument: "Religious faith isn't a problem."
Reply: "I'd be wealthy if I had a nickel for every example of family, friends and local leaders in the past couple of months making an appeal to credibility, where no attempt in the slightest has been made to establish that credibility, and any such attempt would be considered disloyal. They call that 'faith'."
Rebuttal: "Well, no true religious faith is a problem." The remaining rebuttal consists of the flavor-of-the-month redefinition of religion and faith to have nothing to do with the tactic we encounter in our lives from about 325 million users of the English word "faith".

Few of those who call the New Atheists "mean" notice the focus on beautiful, ennobling, enriching, and motivational answers offered by secular world views to traditionally religious questions ... even for traditionally religious purposes such as understanding your brain and genes well enough to seek how to be happy and find meaning! This New York Times article about a conference of scientists dealing with religious objections to their findings is typical in that it focuses on how many of them were combative, but in this social climate the article is remarkable that it notices their positive alternative offering at all.
( Read more... )

The phrase "the Alpha Male Monkey" may be the most useful new explanatory tool I've encountered in years. paranthropus gave it to me in a recent LJ post about primate group psychology. It was an inspirational and motivational insight into the evolutionary biology of my psychology which has kept me up at night thinking of the implications. I wrote about it in this subsequent LJ post, but it occurred to me that this is valuable for explaining myself to bible-believing Christians.

We're genetically programmed to see an Alpha Male in our primate pack as the source of truth and moral law. This explains the difficulty I have in communicating alternative models of truth and moral law to bible believers. It's not that they reject the model I present, it's that they literally don't know what I'm saying. It's a mental block. We take away the concept of the Alpha Male Monkey in the sky, and they think we've declared truth and morality to be nonexistent, because to them, "right" is defined as: "whatever the Alpha Male Monkey says." By definition. ( I put the discussion behind this link ...with drawings. ) Morality doesn't look like this:

It looks like this:
( Read more... )

I may write a book someday about my experiences with experiments with Un-churches. One of the chapters would concern Universism. For those who don't know, Universism is a "religion" like Unitarian Universalism except that instead of embracing all religious heritages, it rejects all of them in favor of "faith in reason, inspiration in nature, and hope in progress". The emphasis was "on the attitude and spirit in which you address religious questions, and the tools you use to do so, rather than focusing on any conclusions that you may arrive at". Those tools were personal experience and reason. Flaky new-agers did not find a very welcome home among us, despite their attraction to the idea of experimental religion, because they didn't enjoy our disapproval of blind faith, prophets, and gurus.

The movement gained worldwide attention, hosted live internet chats with John Horgan, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins, and many appearances in radio, television and newspapers. Universist YouTube videos still circulate.

Today I found out how that chapter of the book ends. Many of you met Universism's founder, Ford Vox, when he visited me last year and accompanied me to the weekly gathering of fans at Tio's in Ann Arbor. He has replaced the Universism website with a retraction of the desire to present an opposing force to faith. Much of what he says is true and valuable, but no reason to back down. ( Read more... )

And so concludes another discussion, this time with someone who says he is "completely objective now as faer [sic] as is humanly possible". According to him, the way to become objective is to stop hardening your heart against Christ, and instead harden your heart against anything other than Christ. I particularly love how he prefaces a statement by saying "LOGIC:" Isn't that cute?

On the one hand he is proud of his higher education and expects me to take his word for it because of this; and on the other hand he simultaneously considers universities to be in the business of deceiving people. He is really impressed with pseudoscientist Creationists who have not published any papers through peer-reviewed journals. In those rare moments where he stops telling me what my motives are and attempts to put together an argument, this is the main thrust. He eventually concludes our exchange with a frustrated series of insults couched in love and friendship. He specifically denies that I got to him, but obviously I did. Poor guy.

Not trusting e-mail alone to keep my records, I am archiving it here even though it will be of limited interest to you. I am also removing the name of my correspondent.
( Read more... )

At one time or another I've faced down most of the arguments listed on this site: Over 300 Proofs of God's Existence collected from discussions with religious people on the Internet Infidels forums. It just keeps getting funnier and funnier.

17. ARGUMENT FROM INTIMIDATION
(1) See this bonfire?
(2) Therefore, God exists.
( Read more... )

You know I am not having a very good day when I tell a Republican Party Organizer on PCCboard the following: "If I see even one judge or their families get hurt with the contact info you're distributing, I'm taking your words straight to the authorities to make sure you get put behind bars where you belong."

This is because he said, "we identify liberal judges. We publish their pictures online along with their contact information. When they make bad rulings, we call them at the office, at home, fax them, email them and let folks know who their family members are as well. ... Federal and state judges do not want to be the next abortion doctors. Nobody wants to walk around with a target on their back."

When taken to task by other fundamentalist Christians for being a low-rent South American dictator, he replied: "Don't act so self righteous. We're at war for the heart and soul of this nation and its very survival depends on restoring Godly rule to our country. Unless you are willing to get down and dirty, you won't win, and we must win for our childrens' sakes. Ronald Reagan said it best, "When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.""

Elsewhere on the many mouth-foaming and ranting threads on that site about the Schaivo case, I said this to a reporter (also a graduate of PCC) covering Pinellas Park right now:
"It may interest you to know how these events [you are covering, such as demonstrations and riots and signs saying we deserve for God to shed our blood] are being perceived by the blue states. I have met almost no one who cares whether Terry Schiavo lives or dies. By this I mean your opponents are not angered by the thought of her body continuing to live.
However, we are angered and scared by the conservative protesters, pundits and preachers who we see on the news and on talk shows. We are not disturbed that they want Terry's body to keep on chugging away, but we are disturbed by their reasons and arguments.
There is a lot of talk about the Red States (or as they are now known, the Vegetative States) as an enemy nation like the Islamist theocracies, because of the perfect equivalence of what we hear out of the mouths of the fanatical and gullible mobs that fill their mosques and churches and spill out into their streets."

This is why the feuds among some of my friends are so unimportant and I take no part. Feuding power struggles or cat fights in a science-fiction fan club reveal an amazing lack of perspective about what is worth getting mad over. I want to tell them, "How can you call this person an enemy just because of your personality conflict? Have you listened to the theocrats lately? You don't know what an enemy is."

This morning two of my friends from Alabama in the Universism movement were guests on the Russ and Dee Show. After some Alabama listeners were discussing on Universism's "Faithless Community" chat room what they heard on the show, I called in and spent almost a half hour on the line with the host, my two friends, and a guest theologian. The Universists on the chat room were ecstatic about how I came off on the radio and responded to the theologian. I think it's been recorded and maybe I can eventually get it as a download for you.