Religion No Longer Essential For Ethics

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/13/dalai-lama-facebook-religion-is-no-longer-adequate-science_n_1880805.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-derr/beyond-religion-altogether-religious-notes-on-dalai-lama-post-religious-ethics_b_1885346.html

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/news/regions/asia-pacific/dalai-lama-tells-internet-religion-no-longer-adequate

http://markandrewalward.blogspot.com/2012/09/dalai-lama-religion-is-no-longer.html#.UF54Vo1lRXM

The Dalai Lama has brought himself into the spotlight yet again with a Facebook and Twitter post 2 weeks ago stating, in brief, that “grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate.” He’s brought praise from atheists and humanists, to say nothing of preaching from Christians and others who insist that you can’t have ethics without a spiritual or a religious basis. I spoke in part about Gyatso’s text “Beyond Religion: Ethics For A Whole World” which he referenced in a Facebook post I spoke about in “An Ethics For Everyone” These claims are controversial, but a remotely objective look at them, without presuppositions on either the sacred or secular, we can see there are commonly held values that we can utilize in a shared ethics and morality. The distinction between ethics and morality is difficult, but I have one perspective I’ve read on that is both concise and accessible. It is also pertinent to lay out these shared ideals about right and wrong, of good and evil, and elaborate how they make sense in a secular worldview, with no recourse to divine revelations. And finally, the supposed inconsistency of absolutist and relativist ethics can be resolved by a moderate point of realism, or even pragmatism if we want to be more philosophical. Ethics and morality are complex areas of life, but we shouldn’t needlessly complicate them with unnecessary or otherwise irrational factors that aren’t pertinent to our basic determination of what is right and wrong.

Ethics can be explained as an individual’s code of what is right and wrong, developed through experimentation in a sort of practical fashion. Morality, on the other hand, is a shared societal or cultural code which people are expected to conform to. The former is more individualist, but not so opposed to collaborative efforts, while morality creates a sense of collectivism that is concerning, but doesn’t deny individuals to a certain extent. In short, ethics are personal tenets and more experiential in nature, developed by an almost scientific methodology, while morality is a cultural set of beliefs concerning what is good and bad, almost to the effect of mores and norms, which are closer to taboos; related to acceptability instead of culpability. The distinction of individual and group values could potentially create a polar dichotomy, where each opposes the other. But instead I would suggest a prioritizing of the individual without eschewing the collective, more specifically, the community of which we are inevitably a part of in one way or another. Any community is composed of individuals to begin with, so the nuance is recognizing that there will be some disagreements, but there will also be common ground that exists by necessity of the average human being functioning remotely normally (i.e. not a sociopath). In that way, you have coexistence without conformity to the letter of the law. The spirit would still be recognized, so that’s not gone either. A society where one can have ethics that don’t necessarily conflict with morality, but morality doesn’t override ethics is an ideal and possible existence we can work out.

The values that are essential to ethics, according to Tenzin Gyatso, are: love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness: and can be found and discerned outside of religious authority. Objectors will claim that in scientific and secular reasoning, since ideals and values are non material things, they can’t be verified or demonstrated in the way we demonstrate gravity or other things with clearly physical properties. The problem with that argument is that it applies to numbers, yet they are believed to be extant in their own sense, just like concepts of truth, justice, even logic, which are immaterial and abstract in their nature. The verifiability and falsifiability of something isn’t strictly limited to the physical, especially when, by its very premise, it is admitted to be non physical. It’s more important in some cases whether it has practical value or relevance to human affairs. Love, compassion, forgiveness, patience and tolerance all have some basis in neuroscience, no doubt. But our experience and practice of them is more important in considering their universal value to everyone. When you love, you can understand compassion; when you are compassionate, you can practice forgiveness; when you practice forgiveness, you gain patience; when you gain patience, you develop tolerance. The interrelation of these values is complex, no doubt, but I would say the basis is compassion, which is a form of love that is nuanced, not granting it without some degree of reciprocity, but nonetheless understanding and not becoming either selfish or abusive. With compassion, you understand love, forgiveness, patience and tolerance, since they all have their connections to compassion, the core value and the one commonly misunderstood as passivity, but should be an active practice.

Ethics can be objective, true regardless of our opinions one way or the other, without being absolutely and ultimately true, which would suggest no critical thought on our part. And they can be subjective, dependent on the individual’s perspective, without being hard relativist, where there is no underlying ground for making claims of truth and fact to begin with. This is a hard position to convey with people tending to have fairly simplistic ideas of how right and wrong or good and evil work, thinking many times in black and white, but ironically admitting of grey areas when it comes to their own gain or loss. That entails we acknowledge in some way the relativity of ethics, but only when it applies to self interests. If it involves much more people, we try to sound more consistent and morally upright, but our hypocrisy cannot be pushed away. To accept the relativity of morality and ethics is not to abandon them as binding on us in any sense. It’s a basic necessity of human life to have rules that restrain us or otherwise guide our actions. But we shouldn’t take them as unquestionable or not subject to alteration or even abandonment if they merit it. Cultural influence on the acceptability of something should not be the primary voice. Popularity is not an acceptable standard, especially if it’s just based on conformity instead of critical thinking. Our voice of reason, even a sort of innate common sense or conscience, should guide us, especially when the practice being judged as condonable is, in fact, damaging in one form or another. Dehumanizing people through slavery or even trying to appear equal through such a thing as civil unions contrasted with marriage is not ethical and should not be painted as such for the sake of social expediency. We should work hard at always improving our ethics and not letting them remain easy for us to follow. As the proverb goes “Familiarity breeds contempt”. Skepticism about ethics shouldn’t go to the level of nihilism, but it shouldn’t be abandoned because it might breed insecurity or fear. It’s how we face the fear and insecurity that further tempers our future principles.

Of course it will be difficult for many people, who tend to only be philosophers when it comes to things that have already passed, mulling over them. Or we fixate on religion and spirituality as something of more philosophical import than the fundamentals: logic, ethics, metaphysics, aesthetics and epistemology. Speculating on the mysterious and awe inspiring can be done right or it can be wasted contemplation without underpinning it with sound thinking. Understanding things and also recognizing the limits of our knowledge of them are both essential to having a well thought out and realistic worldview. We shouldn’t live seeking to merely go through every day in security, especially if it ruins any possibility of change, innovation or progress. Of course, not all progress is good, not all innovation is beneficial and not all change will make things right. It is our response to these things is reflective of our character. Patience is a virtue and compassion is the ideal from which we develop that. And we don’t need any supernatural underpinning to discover compassion’s importance. Until next time, Namaste and aloha

Profane Political Platform

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/03/national-atheist-party-faces-challenge_n_1182062.html?ref=religion

http://www.usanap.org/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/atheists-face-uphill-climb-with-new-political-party/2012/01/03/gIQAjs4oYP_story.html

I’m clearly not the most politically active person, especially when I reveal that I haven’t voted in 2 elections, once for Bush/Kerry, the other Obama/McCain. This doesn’t mean I don’t take action in more indirect ways for issues I feel strongly about, such as petitioning, writing letters to the editor and blogging about solutions to policies about gay marriage and such. But I’ve always felt slightly out of place as an atheist amongst what is a demographically Christian country, the affiliations divided between Democrat, Republican and Libertarian, amongst the other smaller parties that can field candidates.  Troy Boyle, out of Kentucky, was inspired by Richard Dawkins’ talking about why atheists weren’t more politically active in an interview. And so he created what was first called the Freethought Party on Facebook. The group wasn’t as popular, but the interest intensified when the name was changed to the National Atheist Party. The basic idea is that it stands for a secular America which does not favor even atheism, so as not to seem partial to nonbelievers. No one group gets more say than another so the government treats all groups as equally as possible. I can definitely get behind this group, especially with its platform as of now very much in line with my own political policies. They’re for gay marriage, abortion rights, stricter gun control, legalizing marijuana, reforming immigration policy and green energy development, amongst other likely issues, such as foreign policy. There are some difficulties that exist with the group, one of them being the name, which is less important, another being the group’s relative political influence in the country. But there are definitely good points to this sort of party’s existence in what has become a very theologically heavy climate for politicians and policymaking.

The name of the group is slightly problematic in the association people have with the term atheist. I suppose it’s a better choice in the long run than National Secularist Party, since secularism is touted even more by many politically motivated preachers as the ultimate enemy, so atheism is probably a lesser evil to portray in a positive light to a population that distrusts secularism even if they also ironically support it in their own ways with a selective separation of church and state. There’s also a difficulty that even if atheism becomes acceptable to the extent of other worldviews, there’s a difficulty with presenting a campaign for an atheist candidate, even at lower levels, such as mayor or governor. It’s one thing to not talk about it and use the platform previously described, but making your atheism something that compels people to vote for you would be more difficult on the grounds that people may never trust atheists enough to vote for them.  This goes back to the old stereotypes about atheists not being trustworthy and thus not even accepted as witnesses in court for a time in the U.K.  That kind of discrimination doesn’t exist, but the stigma of being an atheist in the context of politics still remains and running under the National Atheist Party ticket might seem obnoxious to some atheists, since it’s making a big deal of your position on the existence of God as opposed to your political persuasion that indirectly relates to your nonbelief. Therein lies the biggest criticism of the idea from within the atheist community, such as it is; when you make the focal point of your politics the fact that you’re an atheist, it smacks of the same issues that many Republican candidates have brought up as of late. When Bachmann, Cain or Huckabee appealed to people by using their faith, it seemed disingenuous and underhanded, so atheists appealing to other nonbelievers to vote them because they share skepticism would be a potential abuse and interpretation of their intent in campaigning. But the reasoning for most of the policies doesn’t require that you be an atheist, strictly speaking, so people can associate with it because they agree with the platform, not because they’re an atheist. The name is due to most of the people in it happening to be atheists and starting from an atheist perspective of secularism, which is not absolutely foreign to religious people, strictly speaking. So one doesn’t have to feel excluded, but I can understand if people decide to vote independent because they hold more unique political positions than the NAP does, which is admittedly a bit more left leaning than you’d expect. This might isolate more conservative atheists, but they could structure their own platform in an alternate secular party if they felt compelled to. Of course, setting up any candidate for election can’t happen until the group is permitted to do so. The best they can do now is advocate for issues and put money into that, but it’s at least a step up from not having any real representative party for atheists. There will always be those that prefer to be Independent Party instead of allying with the National Atheist Party for one reason or another, but I can see this developing some popularity on a state level, even if it never grows to the national level for a presidential candidate.

This is not to say there isn’t a silver lining to what seems a bleak issue. Atheism being represented politically in any sense is a benefit to the reputation of atheists as good, lawful, and most importantly, patriotic Americans. American Atheists did it with their 4th of July planecampaign, so why shouldn’t there be a party that advocates policy changes on the basis of secularism? It certainly doesn’t advocate atheism as a state religion, but neutrality to all positions of religion in terms of decisions that affect all people, religious or not. And the benefit of being able to put money behind big issues like green energy and gay marriage is something that atheists should want to do in and of itself, even if there is the association of atheism on a superficial level. Being able to affect political change and also spread awareness of atheism in the process is killing two birds with one stone. That’s not to say there isn’t a delicate balance here. One shouldn’t confuse advocating atheism and secularism in other venues with supporting political policy that affects believers as well as nonbelievers. We should be considerate of believers’ first amendment rights as well, but only within reason. There shouldn’t be favoritism or prejudice towards nonbelievers or believers respectively. That’s the main goal in all this, especially as advocating a fair secularism.

Atheism being represented politically, even if it’s just for policy issues instead of candidate support at the start, is a huge step forward from being subsumed into other parties or taking the radical independent step. Being part of a group of like minded individuals united by secularism as a political platform of is invigorating. The NAP may never be able to sponsor candidates, or at least not on the level of presidential or house representatives, but perhaps mayor or gubernatorial level.  Basing a party around atheism might be a bit tricky. If the party was the National Secularist Party, it would be clearer, but there may be more opposition on the grounds of a vernacular understanding of what secularism is. And there’s a potential for abuse that is probably not the case for the NAP at present in terms of discrimination against believers, but the mere possibility does not mean we should reject the party outright. The name is one thing, but the basic intent of the people involved should be the primary concern. If you agree with them more than Democrats or Republicans, then you could associate with them. If you’re a believer, they don’t care, but I can understand if you don’t feel accepted. Independent party candidates can suffice as well in their own way. What’s key is creating political diversity in an atmosphere that is feeling a bit too similar on all fronts, from Ron Paul’s more libertarian Republicanism to even Barack Obama’s use of faith as a point to rally votes. You don’t need belief in God to motivate people to care about politics, just belief in humanity. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

A Synthesis of Sacred and Secular

http://pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Religion-and-Secularism-The-American-Experience.aspx

http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2010/02/13/religion-and-the-myth-of-coexistence/

This topic is rife with contending sides and positions, so I’ll try to give as balanced a perspective on the two main views on an issue I’ve confronted slightly  in “Religion and Secularism’s Questions and Answers”. This time, I’ll give a short exposition on the two subjects and then detail the two prominent perspectives on their interaction. Religion and secularism’s relationship has been lukewarm at best, though it isn’t necessarily always combative by nature either. There are lay theologians in Christianity, not to mention the “secular” monks who did more worldly things as part of their duties, like the monastics in convents and monasteries who gardened, wrote, etc, as opposed to primarily contemplative behavior. But these days, we seem to have a very contentious environment of the profane and the sacred, the nonbelievers and believers of various stripes. This is especially the case in the U.S., but it isn’t necessarily resolved perfectly in any sense around the world. Japan maintains an interesting blend of secular and sacred, though the more immanent and pantheistic form of religion makes this easier. The transcendent nature of religions more prominent in America makes the separation into spheres much more common and thus the resolution of any conflict becomes either a truce or a retreat of one into its own area in surrender. So, my question is twofold: what are religion and secularism (in the basics) and what is the nature of their relationship?

Religion is much more complex in definition than secularism, since it has existed for longer in history and language, but admittedly has two formulations, one more Western, the other more Eastern, though there is always an overlap, such as Wicca or Sikhism for two examples. As I explained somewhat in “Looking At Eastern Religion From the West”,  Western religion tends to be much more based in sacred scriptures and belief in God or gods. There’s more ambiguity in Western religious studies about nontheistic religions and whether they actually are religions or philosophies. Buddhism, Confucianism and even Daoism in some sense are either pantheistic or nontheistic in some sense regarding the existence of gods and whether they matter. There’s a term formulated by Paul Kurtz, sometimes called the father of secular humanism, made up of three Greek words. The prefix eu, meaning good, the word praxis, meaning practice and Sophia, meaning wisdom. Eupraxophy refers to worldviews and philosophies that are secular in nature and don’t rely on the supernatural in order to advocate being a good person. The three religions enumerated beforehand fit in this classification with some possible qualifications. Religion at its heart could be specified to be that which regards the supernatural as relevant to human life and makes a system of tenets that people are expected to follow. This is, of course, very simplistic, but for the purposes of this discussion I think it suffices to distinguish it from secularism.

There are two kinds of secularism we could discuss when confronting this topic: the first is more political in maintaining a strict separation of some form between church authority and state power, but not always completely keeping it out of the public square. Turkey and France based their form more on laicite, one form of the second very strict and philosophical position on religion in the public and political square. This contrasts a great deal with America’s which is more permissive in a sense of religious expression by private citizens within the public forum without favoring any single religion. Secularism is not a religion, contrary to rumors and accusations from theists, though secular humanism might be considered one. But most secularists are not secular humanists, though all secular humanists are secularists technically. Fundamentally, secularism is some position about religion that desires to keep it at least separate for the most part from policy making and a much more religiously diverse society or is fundamentally opposed to religion’s claims and wishes it to be put in the spotlight and actively criticized for its falsehoods and also reserved to the private sphere it originated in.

Secularism and modernity have done two things for religion in my estimation. First is that religion and beliefs about it have become more private. Believer or not, you are very individualist about it. Secondly, religion has still kept a certain place in the public square in the face of separation on the grounds that as a part of the history of the country, religious expression in public is very much part of the culture and may stay that way for quite a while longer, particularly for political gain as we see with virtually every Republican candidate to one degree or another, as I mentioned in “Conservatives Clamor For Christianity” . Altar calls and other such identifications to a larger group are what make Western people religious, as opposed to in the East, where it’s very much an eclectic and syncretic approach of the culture at large and not so much a matter of affirming particular creeds or such. With the Western method of voluntaristic religious affiliation, there is a strong element of competition between religions and thus they have to constantly change tactics and also allow the existence of their opponents, even if they disagree with them, so as to have opportunities for conversion. There is both a freedom of individual conscience and also communal association with any religion or lack thereof, but still holding what tend to be religious beliefs. The concept of civil religion further complicates the issue of religion’s presence in what is supposed to be a more secular country in the sense of not favoring any religion in its decisions. It is commonly understood to be the sorts of things that have become intrinsic to the American identity, which includes the unconstitutional and divisive motto of the country, “In God We Trust” Religion in America, shared or esoteric, reflects a unique and compelling approach to how it overlaps with secularism as a whole.

The U.S. Constitution almost seems to necessitate that there be a conflict between religious and secular interests by the notion of separation of powers given within it. Not to mention the first amendment creates a sort of ambivalent interaction of the exercise of religion on the one hand and the neutrality of the government towards it on the other. With the historical nature of the U.S. being a country with economic demands of a free market comprising radically diverse people with varying beliefs, there was a necessary development of religious pluralism as well as the secularism that creates a barrier against any one religion or any religion becoming influential for policy making. Christianity, the dominant religion of America, surprisingly has theology within it that allows for more advocacy of separation of church and state than you would think. There’s a basic relationship between the religious and secular communicated through the idea of two kingdoms, one of the world and one of God. Jesus’ saying “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” comes to mind as well as Augustine’s treatise called City of God where he elaborates the differences between the two spheres in the Christian understanding: the profane and the sacred. Of course, there will be flux in the exact nature of this exchange of religious neutrality and religious tolerance, but it actually seems more compelling than what has become the other popular position, especially with the mistakenly titled “New Atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Antitheists in particular claim it is questionable as to whether actual tolerance exists in religions, since they are commonly very prescriptive and absolutist in those normative claims about how the world ought to be. Not everyone is this way, but fundamentally, religion takes time to get away from that sort of mindset and there is a likelihood that people cannot completely get away from the tendency to convert people, to influence people in their way of thinking, indignant that others would believe heresies and false spiritual teachings. Thus, true coexistence of the religious and secular, in a sense of non overlapping magisteria similar to science and religion, demands that religion change very sharply and drastically. The kind of tolerance religion in America necessitates is generalized and not anything beyond a bare acceptance of the existence of various competing systems that most believers in any of the exclusivist religions would say are wrong at heart. Religion would have to become much more inclusivist or pluralist in nature. The only other alternative would be to retreat into the churches and make religion a much more private matter, like it was allegedly back in the times of America’s founding fathers. But history may not take that turn any time soon.

Any sort of religious/secular fusion in society will necessitate that religions be propagated more, of course. We should promote a free market of ideas, even those that are delusional. But we should also spread critical thinking about religion and the criticism of it, rejecting the notion in popular culture that religion is sacrosanct and not able to be held to the same standards we hold every other belief to. Once you do this, there is a balancing out of what can be negative traits of religion with the agreement of many religious people that we need to carefully examine out beliefs to hold them consistently and reasonably, even if we disagree. Religion must be willing to not only be in the public square, but also be subject to rigorous criticism which we give to anything else, such as science and politics, and not given a special place. The religious questions should be taken seriously, but they shouldn’t be said to be purely one way or the other. One can accept religion’s existence as a phenomenon without assenting to any beliefs that they have. Atheists can appreciate religious as part of American culture and history, literature, etc, but nevertheless not hold religious views, but more philosophical ones based in reason. The irreverent and the pious may always be at each others’ throats to an extent, but one can hope there could be a better truce arranged in the future between them. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Aversion To Atheism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/30/study-explores-distrust-o_n_1120869.html?ref=religion

http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~will/Gervais%20et%20al-%20Atheist%20Distrust.pdf

I’ve spoken many times on the prejudice against atheists, even if that might be considered too strong a word. After all, defenders of this bigotry say, no one is doing violence against atheists. I’m skeptical of that claim in the larger scale of the world instead of the U.S., which probably still wouldn’t treat violence against atheists as a hate crime if it happened. The stigma against atheists has existed for a while, though it is due in no small part to the association many people still have of atheism with Communism in Russia and other totalitarian regimes that, people claim mistakenly, had atheism as their state religion. Not only is this not true on its face, since atheism itself is no more a religion than theism, but the stance of these dictators was antitheism, active hostility against religion and belief, willing to suppress it in order to maintain their own power. I imagine that the unofficial motto of the U.S., “In God We Trust,” held sway amongst many in America since the period in the 19th century when it started to be printed on coins and then in the 50s when it was printed on paper money. This divisive credo, along with the paranoia of secret Communist agents lurking behind you and trying to turn everyone to atheism, an indirect result of McCarthyism in post WW2 America, only reinforced the idea that atheists are not to be trusted. A study from the University of British Columbia shows that this prevalent distrust of atheists in American religious thought is the primary reason for the intolerance against them that remains even today.

We should distinguish between dislike in the general sense that can manifest specifically in distrust and dislike which escalates to disgust in its extreme form. The former is what the study is referring to and the latter is what I hope is a minority position amongst modern Americans. To outright hate atheists would be missing the point of what Christianity teaches in the still somewhat trite expression to “love the sinner, hate the sin”. To hate atheism would be fine to me as long as you don’t project your hatred for that disbelief onto those that disbelieve. Distrust of atheism has been prominent at various points, even when the term didn’t strictly mean one who rejected all God claims, but specific God claims, such as pagans calling Christians “atheos” and vice versa for Christian/pagan relations in the early church. Eventually the vocabulary expanded for what to call pagans, such as polytheists and, of course, heathen. Not to mention the general ideas about atheism became more precise and sophisticated as time went on, though for many hundreds of years, no one claimed to be an atheist without putting themselves at great risk of persecution from the theist majority, uneducated as many of them were. But today, people can be out about their atheism with little threats to their lives. At the most we will get claims that we have no absolute basis for morals or other things I’ve spoken about at length in my “What Do Atheists Do?” series you can find through the tag “wdad” But in today’s mostly civil society, there can be discussion about how atheists can affirm an absolute moral basis without recourse to an inflexible and cryptic religious scripture. If we affirm something is absolutely wrong, it is not so rigid that we cannot see that there are nuances to any action and the intent behind them. The mistrust of atheists manifested a century or two ago with them not being trusted in legal cases, from what I understand. Not to mention the presence of blasphemy laws putting atheists in jail, like George Holyoake, or making them retreat into agnosticism or deism, both obvious facades that were acceptable in the days when people were more prone to ignoring basic human decency and succumbing to a basic human ill, xenophobia, fear of the stranger.

It’s not necessarily the case that people are afraid of atheists, but the term distrust could imply, even apart from its definition, a sort of anxiety or vigilance that people would have when they are aware of someone’s atheism. My own family on the whole may not be aware that I’m an atheist and chalks up my sitting in the back pews at family reunion church services to something else (mid life crisis?) But if they were, I wonder if they would still strive to be friendly and loving to someone of their own flesh and blood even if they didn’t believe in God? Or would there be a tension in the air as they reflect what I think the study concluded from the sample they took? People have a general sort of prejudice, a prior judgment, about atheists, that they are untrustworthy because they don’t believe them to be faithful in their narrow idea of what it means. It’s not so much that they don’t think atheists can be moral people, it’s that they don’t think atheists are as reliable on moral issues as religious people. The study theorized that part of this may be due to our social associations of trustworthiness with affirming a belief in a higher power, connecting back to the oft held notion people argue for today about any moral law requiring a moral law giver, e.g. God. So apparently if you don’t believe in God, you don’t think you’re accountable to people; which is patently wrong if I’m even a single example of that.

A problem with this mindset about atheists is its implication that there is some sort of organization in atheism, when this isn’t really the case except in communities of people, like American Atheists, which shares the single unifying factor of atheism, disbelief in God to one degree or another. There can be disagreements about ethics, about politics, and many other things, just as Christians in groups are prone to. As I said before, there is also the fallacious association between atheism and communism, which is a confusion of the nuance of atheism as something of an umbrella term that can apply to many different labels reflecting distinctions between one’s regard towards God. Not to mention atheism says nothing automatically about your political positions, including communism. Antitheism, for instance, is the strongest form of atheism in affirming that God belief is dangerous and should be opposed. This is what manifested in communism as it existed in Russia and China (and still does to an extent in China today, from what little I understand of the subject). This should not be confused with atheism, which doesn’t explicitly claim that religion should be opposed violently, but with words, with peaceful and civil actions.

With all these issues I bring up about distinguishing atheism, I should also say that this applies just as much to atheists in their sweeping claims about Christians. There are pro gay Christians, pro choice Christians and many other seemingly unlikely believers, such as those who think that even nonbelievers like us will be reconciled to God even in our defiant denial of Jesus’ divinity. If you don’t dialogue with believers, you can’t know about their beliefs except in the most general sense of their belief in some God without adequate evidence. The same way Christians lump all atheists into the category of raving God haters, such as their caricature of Dawkins and Hitchens, atheists can be guilty of suggesting all Christians are like Pat Robertson or Newt Gingrich. There’s diversity on both sides and when we start recognizing that, we’ll start being able to build bridges, however rickety they might be. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Religion and Secularism's Questions and Answers

http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/against-the-%E2%80%9Canswer-bank%E2%80%9D-theory-of-religion
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/09/college-becomes-nations-first-to-offer-major-in-secularism/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/us/08secular.html?_r=1

This time we have an interesting pairing of topics. The first is from an article I found over a month ago and recently decided to comment on, since the bin Laden story and everything preceding it caught my interest and demanded my thoughts more compellingly than this, which is more of a speculative topic. As much as I like reading Stephen Prothero’s blog posts, I still have yet to read his popular book concerning religious literacy in America, let alone his work from 2010 called God Is Not One, which is sitting somewhere in my ever growing library. But this essay he linked to from one of his posts on Belief Blog intrigued me enough to add it to a growing backlog of topics I want to talk about, including one I tend to avoid: evolution/creation/intelligent design and the debate that goes along with it (humanities major before science enthusiast, see.). But onto the actual topic.

When we think of religion, we usually associate it with those who believe they have answers, usually about questions of existential significance: when the world will end, why bad things happen to good people and so on. The group that believes the world is ending May 21, 2011, comes to mind for eschatology. Or Westboro Baptist Church, who asserts that America is being judged daily by a God who likes to play Risk with real human lives just to punish us for accepting homosexuality, as to why soldiers get blown up on a near daily basis. The list could go on forever with any person who flaunts their religiosity as the basis of their worldview. Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and other 2012 Republican nominee hopefuls would also be part of this group. Prothero calls this an “answer bank” theory of religion. It’s most popular with religions focused on orthodoxy, or correct teaching. Christianity is notorious for this in the form of accusations of heresy by the Catholic Church towards many thinkers, including Thomas Aquinas in at least one isolated incident, I believe. Origen and Eckhart, on the other hand, are better known by heresiologists (yes, that’s a word), those who study heretics. In Christianity, if you don’t believe the right things about God, Jesus, salvation, etc, more often than not, you’re regarded as heretical, teaching false doctrine or other expressions depending on denomination and level of education. On the other end of the spectrum are people who are more flexible in the long run than their counterparts. The ones I speak of focus on orthopraxy, or correct practice. The common example is Judaism, though from my experience Buddhism can work just as well. But Judaism serves as a more accessible faith for a counterexample to the faith it un/intentionally spawned. The distinction of cultural and religious Jews attests to this, not to mention the “relative” coexistence as I see it from my limited understanding of the Jewish community, excluding Zionists, I suppose. Jews care less about the precise teachings and more on practicing what you preach, though that tendency does exist in Christianity as well. This is where the divisive and confusing nature of studying people’s beliefs comes up.

The importance of religious studies shouldn’t be overstated, but it shouldn’t be underestimated either. When people hear I’m a religion major; or even if they hear my major expressed as religious studies; I guarantee 50% will ask this question first, “Are you going into the ministry/Are you going to be a minister?” It’s ironic that saying you’re a religion major is such a conversation starter, when talking about religion outside of an academic framework, on the other hand, is more often than not a conversation stopper. But religious studies’ value lies with the questions it inspires rather than the answers various writers and traditions pose to those questions, such as you’d find in theology. Many of the faithful would no doubt object to this, on the grounds that they feel more comfortable with having these big questions settled to a certain extent, even if they also admit they have faith in these things. But as I said in an older post of mine entitled “Comfortable Certainty or Chaotic Contentment,” religion is a starting point, not the end of human endeavors. But many religious people, such as Augustine of Hippo (Christian) and Averroes (Muslim), said that religion and philosophy can have a mutual relationship, though I wouldn’t reach the same conclusions they do. Faith seeking understanding is one thing, but balancing it with understanding seeking faith can work in a paradoxical sense in the discipline of religious studies.

Interestingly enough, a college in South California has brought up what may be called the flipside of the coin that religious studies offers in terms of the big questions about life. When you bring up a “secularism” major in a conversation, I imagine people would react with confusion or hostility, depending on their understanding of the term “secularism”. If they view it as the enemy of everything good in the world or a progenitor of the New World Order, either way, they’ve already missed the point. Secularism isn’t perfect; I don’t think anyone would claim that. But it does try to solve questions in terms of substantive issues; whether something is true or not; as opposed to the problem of interpretation in religious studies; let alone its distant parent theology, who sired the notorious bastard child I’ve studied under for years alongside its ancestor.

The growth of secularism intrigued Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of religion who’s written books and articles on the spread of nonbelief and cultural distance from religion. This was a large part of his desire to start this major as the first of its kind, along with its relevance in a growing secular culture even in America. One can only hope that this spreads across the country, if only to inform people more of atheism, agnosticism, freethought and such. As people begin to understand that irreligious/nonreligious people are not necessarily hostile to religion when they have ceased to believe in God/etc, the relationship between believers and nonbelievers can improve by leaps and bounds. Once you understand why skeptics are slow to believe in such things as the resurrection and auras, you may also begin to see why people choose different belief systems in general, supernatural or natural. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Cordoba Community Center Censorship

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/04/lawsuit-challenges-ground-zero-mosque/

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/04/dodds.mosques.new.york/index.html

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/04/muslims-welcome-in-lower-manhattan-says-mayor-bloomberg/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/23/my-take-no-conservatism-in-gingrichs-attack-on-the-ground-zero-mosque/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/19/my-take-ground-zero-mosque-good-for-america-and-new-york/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/06/my-take-christian-group-is-latest-ground-zero-hypocrite/


The persistent issue in New York for the past few weeks has been the misleadingly named “ground zero mosque,” It’s a misnomer because 1) it’s not at ground zero and 2) it’s not a mosque. Technically, it has been a prayer center/mosque already since it had been purchased and the plan is not for simply a mosque to be built where a Burlington Coat Factory used to be. The community center would have many other areas to make it a place for both Christians and Muslims (among other faiths) to spend time together and understand each other as well, such as an auditorium and a fitness center among other facilities reminiscent of the YMCA. The opposition to the construction falls on two objections, though the first is overshadowed by the second. With the landmark status of the area where the center is to be built denied, the argument that the Cordoba House would be demolishing a historical building representing Italian Renaissance palazzo style is pretty well shot.

The second argument holds a stronger grip on not only New Yorker’s hearts, but those of anyone who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. With the building only two blocks away, people like Sarah Palin and even the Anti-Defamation League for a short time argued that the construction of a Muslim cultural center is insulting and insensitive to the feelings of people who were deeply affected by the attacks almost ten years ago. And others suggest that the mosque is just a political move to try to solidify Islam’s presence in America even more. Newt Gingrich compared the issue of building a mosque near Ground Zero in New York to that of a church or synagogue in Saudi Arabia. The comparison is troubling on a few levels, the first being that Saudi Arabia is decidedly stricter on the building of non Muslim places of worship because of the strong presence of Islamic theonomy (that is, law based on religious tenets such as the Quran). America doesn’t have such stringent standards as to where one can build a mosque, a church, a synagogue or any other place of worship. Not to mention that the argument against the mosque being near Ground Zero reduces itself to a childish form of censorship. The gist of this argument seems to be “Having anything Muslim near Ground Zero hurts certain people’s feelings and makes them feel like the terrorists have won, so no mosque, even one associated with moderate Islamic sects such as Sufi or Ahmaddiya, should ever be built near Ground Zero, because we might hurt some people’s feelings or cause them to misinterpret the intentions of the Muslims behind the Cordoba House.”

This doesn’t work for the same reason that the lawsuit against the local commission that denied landmark status to the building. Trying to use landmark status to protect something that would become what you think represents Islam trying to dominate the West is more underhanded than spouting prejudiced thought against all Muslims, even if they’re trying to build bridges of understanding. The lawsuit is trying to reverse the decision because they think denying landmark status to the building is showing favoritism to Islam, not to mention a concern that the funding for the center is coming from sharia law countries in the East. This isn’t only paranoid thinking, some victims perpetuating the idea that every Muslim is out to get them, but it’s reinforced by dangerous prejudice towards Muslims that just fans the flames by suggestions that Islam is just a political movement or a cult. It’s not surprising that with misinformation spreading quicker than any accurate kind people are more commonly speaking against Islam as if they have had first-hand experience with Muslims when more than likely they are just parroting what fear-mongering pundits in the GOP or Tea Party are telling them.

No one is forcing the family or friends of victims of 9/11 to go to the mosque or even agree with Islam. Like television shows you don’t want your kids to watch or that you just don’t want to watch yourself, you can change the channel or turn off the TV. In this case, all one should ask is that one tolerates the existence of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero. You don’t have to go there, you don’t have to fund it, you just have to let it exist, especially if its goal is to educate people about Islam and allow Muslims to not be misunderstood. I’m reminded of Jesus saying something to the effect of “forgive those who hurt you and pray for those who slander you,” and with many of the protestors no doubt being Christians, I wonder how much they’re taking Jesus’ teachings seriously if they continue to try to push away any attempts at reconciliation or interfaith dialogue. I guess they think Jesus didn’t want to really discuss anything, especially when they take his saying of “brushing the dust off your feet and leaving” when you can’t convert people to your faith.


Things like this happen when you take a charismatic figure’s words so seriously that you start cherry picking what you want to hear and toss out the rest. Jesus indeed spoke wisdom, but he certainly never claimed he was the end authority of all things in Christianity, since he tended more often than not to shift responsibility to God in such things as the end of the world and the most important commandments. And one of those commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself. How much must you hate yourself when you start saying that Ground Zero is sacred and can’t even have mosques 2 blocks away from it? Paranoia and fear don’t create love, to reference the bible’s idea that “perfect love casts out fear”. The first step to any kind of reconciliation is allowing your so called enemy some form of acceptance. Although ironically, mosques have existed in New York for at least half a century before the terrorist attacks, so any resistance towards a mosque in New York in general is as regrettably ignorant as the persistent delusion that “In God we Trust” has always been our national motto. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

On Secularism and Censorship

Less than a week after I blogged on the billboard in North Carolina, that same sign has been vandalized. The perpetrators, still at large (not that their punishment would stop future attempts to interfere in this protest against atheist discrimination), spray painted an arrow with the words “Under God” being guided to the point in the sign between “One Nation” and “Indivisible”. The sign will be repaired, if only to persist in countering what this incident demonstrates about the pledge in its current state. Contrary to the popular insistence that the pledge unites the country, it actually has divided it with the insertion of “Under God” in the pledge in the 50s, the so called McCarthy era, where Communism was the enemy of freedom and we were afraid the Soviet Union was trying to infiltrate the country from within, among other things that fostered a sense of paranoia and nationalism. And this American exclusivism has reared its vicious fangs again in this vandalism of a sign that had no intent of insulting believers in God by displaying the pledge as it has existed for over half a century. In fact, it would be the reverse, since the original pledge formed in 1892 had existed unaltered for over 60 years before the insistence that America had to be understood as a Christian nation, which thankfully our present president has countered since his election in 2008.

The secularist group that funded the sign seems to be the more patriotic of the two groups in this underrepresented conflict in present issues. We can try to classify the two groups as traditionalists and revisionists; the traditionalists representing the secularists and other citizens (believers in God or otherwise) that don’t agree with the addition of “Under God” in the pledge, preferring it to be in its original form and the revisionists representing the theocratic and “Christian nation” fanatics that insist that if you don’t believe in God, you’re not a real American, though the latter is dangerously close to the vein that would suggest that only Caucasian Europeans who are explicitly Protestant Christian and Republican are the purest form of American citizens. I’m not insisting that every believer in God is the second group, since there are those that believe that religion and politics have distinct spheres and are only overlapping within very particular parameters (like Jon Meacham for example). A church doesn’t need the government’s approval to exist for example, nor does the government need the church to persist in its management. If people in the government start believing less and less in God, it does not necessarily have a negative effect on how the government is run as long as they still persist in following principles that are agreed upon on a more fundamental level, such as the importance of a governing document like the constitution and protecting the rights of citizens as elaborated in that document. Whether one is atheist, theist or anywhere in between, it’s not as if you can’t be a patriotic American and have pride in what the nation’s ideals are, such as inclusivism without hard relativism, tolerance without blind acceptance and freedom of expression to the extent that you don’t push that freedom into “might makes right”. If we began to think that perhaps not all the traditions we were raised in are always the right one or the end standard for how we should behave in every situation, then we might begin to work towards returning the pledge back to its original form. The problem here is our attachment to familiarity.

Even my parents are in a generation that didn’t really know a pledge without under God even existed. Their parents would’ve been raised in a time when the pledge was probably just said “One Nation Indivisible”, but with their age affecting their survival into the next generation as well as the more general attitude of raw progress that affects even my own generation to the exclusion of archaic or outdated modes of thought from the early 20th century, it’s a wonder any of them have tried to protest and revise the pledge from how it was when they were in school. I’m thinking the next time I have a chance to talk with my grandparents and even the surviving great grandparent I have, I would ask them about this event and what they think of it, what they remember and what should be done about this. I’ve never really gotten the feeling that my elders have been especially intolerant of people that differ from them in such ways as not believing in God at all (as opposed to just being Jewish, Muslim or Catholic for example) or not being white or particularly democratic (such as in the Middle East or China with recent events), but if it does happen to be the case, I would want to at least try to understand why they would believe that way in a time when, however sheltered they may have been from many cultures outside of North America, there were ideals that at least took the phrase “live and let live” seriously. America seemed to follow the original motto more to the letter, e pluribus unum, from many, one. People were different, but they were all American. There are always clarifications, since racism was almost a tradition back then as well, but evidently the relationship is mutual: the old can learn from the young, but the youths can learn from the elders as well. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Palin and Gingrich: Disinformation Duo

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/04/09/2263037.aspx

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/ap_on_re_us/us_republicans_gingrich;_ylt=At7r5MxKnBUw_w5pWTEAMpis0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJrN29vY2NhBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNDA5L3VzX3JlcHVibGljYW5zX2dpbmdyaWNoBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA2dpbmdyaWNob2JhbQ--

Both Sarah Palin, new and bright face for conservatives, and Newt Gingrich, senior conservative even older than Rush Limbaugh, have taken stabs at President Obama recently. Although with Palin it's hardly surprising as she has apparently taken a deal for a reality TV series as well, so it's clear she enjoys the spotlight she's put herself in. Her criticisms started with Obama's passing a bill limiting nuclear armaments in both the U.S. and Russia, in the form of a sarcastic pronunciation of nuclear (dunno how that's supposed to be funny except to her ill educated supporters). She also parodied Obama's "Yes We Can" slogan noting “yes we can – spread the wealth around” as if doing so is bad (though she seemed oddly unspecific about that; how is spreading the wealth to those in dire poverty a bad thing in contrast to being excessively generous?) and “yes we can –spend money that we don’t have,” suggesting that Obama’s spending is somehow a surprise when the government has spent money it hasn't had to some extent since we've had a deficit. She also used her oft used slogan regarding changing health care with a nice gun quip, "Don't retreat, reload," which contrary to her insistence that it is not a call for violence, would probably only be seen as such to Tea Party activists. Or has Mrs. Palin never heard of retreat as a tactical solution? Guess she only thinks brash heroism will save the country (lot of good that'll do). The conclusion of her speech came in the form of another encouragement for her to run for President in 2012. Ironically people were chanting her name, which reminds me of the very thing that had people worried with Obama's campaign. Chanting of a name, first or last, suggests to me that she's become a cult figure. And contrary to her other claim that she is not seeking to be the leader of the Tea Party movement, her persistent presence and people's clinging to her as an authority figure is cementing her place within the upper echelon of the grassroots movement becoming a potential (potentially dangerous) third party.

Gingrich was more specific and generalizing in his critique of Obama, saying he was "radical", "socialist" and surprisingly "secularist". Radical change is something the U.S. adjusts to well enough in my limited observation. Not to mention said change comes through the electoral process he supports no doubt (so why complain?). The socialist accusation is nothing surprising, though I have to wonder what his alternative would be in solving problems of poverty if not through some use of money or distribution thereof. And his claim that the GOP is not afraid to speak on issues of faith in contrast to the Democrats seems misguided as well, unless Mr. Gingrich suggests that Obama hosting a Seder in the White House is not recognizing faith in the midst of politics. Unless Gingrich is an (gasp) anti-semite of some stripe. Not making any accusations, though Gingrich is retirement age (a couple of years past 65) so who knows if he is in touch with how religiosity or “Jewishness” is expressed in the 21st century. And from the article's observations, Gingrich seems to be with Palin in mobilizing intent for Republican presidential candidacy in 2012. Newt is more decidedly aligned with the GOP than Palin, though both of them are contenders for the future nomination that will take place in nigh 2 years. All things considered, this is a cause for concern to me at least. And who knows how John McCain will fare if he runs for Republican nomination as well? I’ve gotten the feeling through some conversations that many Republicans (particularly Tea Party supporters) don't like his policies very much. Anyway, that's my attempt at delving into political issues, so until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Sam Harris and Ethics/Morality

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/25/ted.sam.harris/index.html


I’ve read Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation and own both versions (hardback and paperback) as well as a paperback copy of The End of Faith long recommended to me by my second roommate. While I don’t share his enthusiasm or background in philosophy and neuroscience, I can agree in principle with the thoughts he espouses in this article, which line up with what I recall being important in Letter to a Christian Nation. Religion in the sense of a fundamentally unquestionable system does limit one’s perspective of moral and ethical issues. Fundamentalism, legalism and theocracy all express this type of dangerous thinking in one form or another. His more controversial thesis that has popped up in “atheist/secularist” videos I see on Facebook or the like is the connection of science with morality/ethics. The idea seems contradictory and paradoxical at first glance, and the clarification Harris puts forward makes for a mind-bender.

Normally religion/faith and science/logic are categorized as being concerned with two different spheres: beliefs on the one hand with faith and facts on the other hand with science. With ethics, one is concerned with what are termed normative claims much more than descriptive claims: that is, with what one ought to do over what people believe about ethics in general. The argument, then, is that science, being concerned with brute facts about nature and things above or below the observation of the naked eye, has no reasonable say in the area of ethics, since it is concerned with what are termed abstract facts. Concrete facts are those such as observation of gravity, measurement of mass/volume/etc as well as investigating the galaxy we live in down to the subatomic world of the very stuff that we’re made of. Abstract facts look into what are universal ideas to humanity, but manifest in diverse ways, conditioned by environment and genetic predisposition: including belief in God, belief about good and evil and what makes something true and false. Two out of these three admit to such diversity that the question boils down to faith, with truth or falsity breaching into the scientific disciplines in terms of verifying hypotheses and models (otherwise called theories in common parlance).

But Sam Harris argues that while there are things that are inexplicable and almost transcendent that we experience (he has been involved in Tibetan Buddhist meditation and Hindu spirituality to some extent), there are facts that are scientifically observable that are not conducive to human flourishing and consciousness thereof. The example of pouring battery acid on a girl’s face because she wants to read is extreme, but relevant no doubt with Harris’ focus on the issues that come with Islamic theocracy and terrorism. He notes that every ethics you look at, however much it may boil down to faith in one area or another, is concerned with human suffering, with the consciousness of that phenomenon and how to alleviate it when it is especially heinous. So Harris concludes that we should be more concerned with issues that affect everyone on a day to day basis or on a larger scale than things like abortion, contraception, or gay marriage (however much I speak on two of these issues, ironically). Being concerned with worldwide hunger, poverty, education, and nuclear proliferation strike Harris as much more important in a principled ethics that doesn’t consider things in terms of traditions resistant to change and archaic ideas of what good and evil are. In order to advance society to a point where there is less need to resort to violence or war, we must first take a stand for a form of objective ethics and direct our efforts afterwards towards alleviating the suffering that comes from the issues that otherwise reasonable people ignore in favor of such short sighted notions as protecting marriage or the unborn as if either of them will just disappear one day. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.