Keeping Both Wonder and Curiosity

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/07/study-some-atheists-with-children-attend-with-religious-services/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-howard-ecklund-phd/some-atheist-scientists-w_b_1133958.html?ref=religion

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/devon-corneal/keeping-the-faith_b_1137893.html?ref=religion&ir=Religion

I don’t have children, nor do I feel like I understand them as well as I should, but something I think about seriously from time to time is how to raise my future offspring. Many would say there should be a base tradition to raise a child from, but I’d strongly disagree with that. Being raised strictly Christian with little to no exposure to Judaism and Islam, let alone the other religions in the Dharmic traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, for instance, stunted my religious education in general. It wasn’t until high school that I had an opportunity to look deeper into various religions and perspectives on faith, including Deism and atheism. If children are allowed to make their own decision about religion without proper education on all religions, then the inevitable choice is biased because of the limitations and social pressures that have been commonly instilled. In my case, my social isolation and help from my parents to be an individual, eventually creating deep friendships, actually strengthened me to eventually sever the bonds from my church pretty conclusively. I don’t think I’ve been there in at least two to three years now. Any time I went before was for Easter, since even Xmas was basically tossed out the window. Though now that I’ve graduated from college, I think my family is even less insistent about me going, since they realize I’m an adult and am making my own decisions. Educating children about religion isn’t all though. There’s a key mistake that many parents probably make and that is not educating their children in skepticism and philosophy as well. If you don’t have that as a contrasting influence, your beliefs aren’t well thought out most of the time even if you know a great deal about various faiths of the world. There has to be a balance between inspiring a child’s wonder at things and maintaining the child’s curiosity that makes them the best kinds of philosophers, according to Gareth Matthews’ text, Philosophy and the Young Child from the early 80s. That message still holds true today in terms of educating children about both sides of the issue of belief and nonbelief.

Education about religion is important since it’s prominent across the entire world and colors a great deal of cultural practices, literary references and philosophical arguments. Even if you yourself don’t believe any of the metaphysical, epistemological or various other unfalsifiable and irrational claims, you can still expose your child to it as a source of knowledge people draw on. Taking children to church could be done for a time. But you shouldn’t just visit churches. Any parent can give the illusion of saying they’re giving their children a varied education about religion by saying they’ve had their children visit a synagogue or a mosque or the multitude of “heretic/false teaching” churches once in their lives. My own home church did something like this, having the young members learn about Mormonism, Judaism and other “Christian” churches. However, this doesn’t constitute sufficient exposure. In the limited scope of maybe 50 miles from where the church is, you could conceivably have had these kids learn about Unitarian Universalism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and other much more foreign religions. But in the limited span of time they had at Vacation Bible School, they probably only wanted to stick with theistic religions. The very idea of multiple gods or no god/gods at all would’ve apparently been too confusing for children ranging from as young as 3 to as old as mid adolescent. We seem to do this not only with philosophy for children, but very much so with religious topics. They’re presented in such a simplistic way that when they find out there’s much more diversity out there, it throws them off and the strategy relies on a likelihood that children will retreat into the only thing they feel remotely secure in. So with a crafty psychological tactic, children could conceivably learn about such things if they go onto college in an introductory religion course, but wouldn’t stray from their native faith. If you’re going to educate children about religion, do it as comprehensively as you can with basic limits on how it progresses. You don’t want to leap into complexities of theology from the start, of course, but that should be something you’re willing to explore eventually if the child is curious or has even had actual experience that they want to tell you about. Being even remotely knowledgeable about these sorts of subjects can also smooth over potentially rough relations between yourself as an atheist parent and a child who converts at some point or another, usually post college graduation. Knowing the arguments and terminology, but also bringing up counter arguments and criticism without appearing to be an outsider can make the situation easier to pacify and adjust to a state of relative coexistence. It therefore benefits both you and your child in different ways throughout your lives to learn about religions even if you both eventually conclude that they’re nonsense.

Teaching children to be skeptical of religion, pseudoscience and the like is equally, if not slightly more, substantial because of how it enables the child to grow up and not simply believe in things by authority or faulty reasoning. Even if the child converts and believes things vastly opposed to your own, you can fall back on what you taught them, if only to moderate those beliefs by the very education you instilled in them. The child may not be able to get over the mental block that was initiated by some near death experience or other mystical encounter with the “sacred,” You may be able to make them reexamine their beliefs more critically and possibly reject them in favor of less ridiculous ones. Or if nothing else, you’ll make them realize the need to maintain  equanimity with you in terms of discussing a subject you’re not only familiar with in terms of the basic tenets of that faith, even if it’s an eclectic one pieced together, but also able to objectively examine and see whether it holds up to reason and evidence. They won’t be able to convert you so easily, if at all, since you educated them and hopefully haven’t softened in terms of practice. But you can also be much more civil than a parent who would otherwise be too harsh in criticizing the child for believing in something for reasons that you thought you communicated were illogical without showing them this directly from those faiths in question. If you realize that the child was bound to consider religion at least partially, it’s better than being excessively secularist to the sound of antitheism, opposing the very existence of religious belief even at the cost of human liberty which you also value. To teach children about science, philosophy, and other subjects of worth can be done by the educational system, but encouraging them to think critically about those subjects and engage with religious people and a religious culture such as America is something a parent is responsible for much more than any school is. It can be difficult to strike a balance here as well. Being staunchly anti religious would be counter-productive, but simply encouraging philosophy can be too weak, since a certain segment of religious believers have significant philosophical training and can twist the principles around with theological sophistry to make a person reject their disbelief rather quickly, not only because of their authority as an instructor, but because they genuinely know philosophy better than the student. A person who has cultivated understanding of both belief and nonbelief in the supernatural is better prepared for not only the world of philosophy in general, but also interpersonal relationships with people you may fundamentally disagree with in many ways, but can be friends with regardless. Most of my own friends, for instance, online or otherwise, are supernaturalists of one form or another. But our shared interests have trumped what could otherwise be a contentious subject that we rarely, if ever, bring up. A disciplined secularism is far better than one run amok with emotional baggage.

Simply educating children about religion without the counterbalance of secularism and philosophy is just as potentially bad as just teaching secularism and philosophy itself. The child could become an arrogant intellectual who regards religious people as beyond and below them, not even being polite or courteous to them in any sense because of their unjustified sense of entitlement as one who doesn’t believe whatever believers affirm as true. It would also reinforce the negative stereotype of atheists all the more if you bring up an adolescent being as fundamentalist and rigid in their beliefs as the religious people they criticize. The irony would be palpable, yet painful. You also don’t want a child to simply speak about religion as if they know about it without also being able to criticize religion for the nonsense it more often than not claims as truth. Belief in the resurrection of the dead, miraculous healings, attributing ethics and metaphysics to the divine instead of to humanity where they originated, and so many other inanities that would make most people grind their teeth in frustration. But if you comprehend where the believer comes from in their perspective about the world and how they think it came to be and its inner workings, then you’re better equipped to show them how it’s not only unnecessary to believe many of these things, but unreasonable on its face. Better conversation from both sides of this battle of worldviews starts with good education. Neither lackadaisical teaching about world religions nor rigid adherence to logical positivism will make for a well adjusted individual. 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.

WDAD: What Do Atheists Do About Religious Norms? Part 1

http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutreligion/p/StudyReligion.htm

http://atheism.about.com/od/christmasholidayseason/p/AtheistsIgnore.htm

http://irregulartimes.com/further6.html

http://atheism.about.com/od/ideasforatheistactivism/a/AffirmSwear.htm

Being an atheist in America is still difficult even after attempts by many prominent nonbelievers over the decades to normalize it as part of modern culture. Madalyn Murray O’Hair comes to mind, as well as Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. Christopher Hitchens has American citizenship as well, originally from Great Britain, and Richard Dawkins, a British native, also has made strong strides for nonbelievers. American Atheists is one of the most prominent groups to promote atheism as a culture and community that also shares many values with Christian Americans. But there are many persistent preconceptions people have about atheism that cannot be solved with even the prominent ad campaigns American Atheists has done, as I spoke about in “Atheists Patriot Ad Campaign,”  There are so many, in fact, I have to divide this into two parts. This week will be issues of atheists studying religion and whether that is hypocritical, whether atheists can celebrate holidays of a religious origin and whether atheists must swear on the bible in court.

Something I encounter virtually every time I speak about my undergraduate major, religious studies (sometimes phrased as religion), is that if you are studying religion, you’re presumed to have considered going into ministry. The idea that religion has to be studied from the position of a believer always irks me, since it suggests that one cannot really study religion in an academic context of its effect on culture, on people, as philosophy, as literature, etc, without believing that it reflects reality. The default notion historically for studying religion (understood intrinsically as Christianity and Judaism by association) was to minister to people about theology, to be someone people could consult about these sorts of issues. Pastors can serve that purpose, but only in a limited framework, since their primary goal is counseling more than actually educating people overall. I am in no way doing a disservice to religion or even insulting adherents of any particular religion if I study it and reach a conclusion that I personally don’t believe it, but still find it interesting to read about. A good 20% of my personal library is texts about Christianity, primarily theological or apologetic in nature, if only to see what believers present as enumerations of beliefs and defenses thereof. I can finish any of those texts with an improved understanding of Christianity and yet remain an atheist at the end of it. I would say my study of religion actually helped me a great deal in confronting my own beliefs and comparing them with texts presenting other convictions from their individual perspectives. I gained skills to analyze things that benefit me even today and that is nothing for anyone to denigrate by claiming I’m being disingenuous. If that’s the case, then many Christians who do the same thing in their spare time and ultimately conclude they don’t agree with it are basically as guilty, even if they don’t do it academically. They’ve still looked at something they disagree about with a partly discerning eye and come away a more knowledgeable person (I hope).

Another issue that persists even in spite of pretty clear secular manifestations of such things as Christmas and Easter (the two most prominent religious holidays celebrated even by so called religious people who only come into church two times a year) is a prejudice of atheists being supposedly hypocritical in taking part in religious holidays when they don’t believe in God. While Easter may have more explicit connections to God, Christmas is agreed by even theologians and many more fundamentalist Christians to not be historically justified or have any theological relevance to Jesus. Jesus was more than likely born much later or earlier than the winter, especially with cultural considerations of the shepherds in relation to their sheep. The date decided through church practices in the past coincided with Saturnalia, a pagan practice that Christians sought to co-opt and it has remained that way in spite of historians of varying faiths, Christians included, concluding that it is purely a matter of popularity, not dissimilar from All Hallow’s Eve in the Catholic calendar following Halloween chronologically. A certain group of Christians don’t even celebrate either Christmas or Halloween, for instance, suggesting that they have been so intertwined with non Christian religious practices and are not worthy of devotion. There’s also the observation that Jesus never said to observe anything related to his birth, but only related to his alleged resurrection as he spoke to his disciples. Easter is the more contentious of the holidays, since it is agreed upon by all Christians to focus on God and its involvement with the world through Jesus’ Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection. But, like Christmas and Halloween, there is a way to celebrate Easter without being clothed in reverence to a deity. Merely celebrating spring and new life coming to be through that season seems sufficient to me. I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to appreciate spring, since the sunrise will happen every day regardless, as far as I’m concerned. Regardless of the sacred overtones or undertones of any day, it doesn’t exclude atheists from participating in a different, but similar, way. I can get married, but that doesn’t require I pledge my fidelity before God anymore than me getting candy eggs at Easter means I have to believe Jesus came back to life. It is in no way contradictory to celebrate a holiday’s non religious virtues and ideals, since, in all cases, they have already long since been separated by the practice of consumer culture inculcating in us the desire to buy not only candy and presents in convergence with Xmas, Halloween and Easter, but decorations to adorn our house to let others know that we celebrate the holiday. But this in no way establishes (mostly) whether you’re Christian or otherwise. Similarly, I can share time with family and have a good experience, but I don’t need to have extraneous beliefs attached to a special day like Xmas in order to appreciate it. The mere shared experience of happiness and enjoyment is special in itself.

The final question asked (for now) is something actually more easily solved by historical progress. Atheists, from what I recall, were historically not trusted to give oaths, though outspoken atheists didn’t exist prominently until probably 50 years ago or so. But now atheists are trusted to give oaths, albeit technically they are called affirmations in legal terminology. The distinction lies between making a claim without religious sentiment that you will tell the truth and nothing but the truth as opposed to swearing to God, which some Christians would argue contradicts what Jesus says in Matthew 5:37 “Simply let your yes be yes and your no be no,” If atheists can assert that they will tell the truth because it makes sense to and that there will be repercussions if they are found to be lying; while Christians seem to think they have some moral high ground when making an oath to God and also doing it partly because they might be charged with perjury; perhaps the former is simpler than the latter. This is one of those questions that has a simple answer and yet is complicated by a basic lack of education. If you are in a court of law, you have no compulsion to take any religious oath, and if you want to put your hand on a bible and swear to both your god and the court that you won’t lie, I can’t help but chuckle, because it’s unnecessary on its face. Why can’t you just not lie because you don’t want to be lied to? Is it that much of an obsession that you need to tell God you won’t lie in a criminal trial?

Atheists have no problem with a religious culture existing and being practiced by people, but they do not need to be practiced by everyone in that sense and there shouldn’t be any pressure to conform by believers. There are secular manifestations and practices of religious holidays and norms, such as the alternative of affirmation versus swearing on the bible for atheists and the like. Not to mention there’s common ground to be found in sharing time with friends and family that transcends those borders between the believing and the unbelieving. Next week, we’ll confront the norms related to patriotism and also that little superstitious phrase uttered when you sneeze with its own history and irony when saying it to atheists. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

WDAD: What Do Atheists Do About Ethics?

http://civic.bev.net/atheistsnrv/articles/definition.html

http://carm.org/can-atheists-be-ethical

http://www.ethicsmorals.com/ethicsatheist.html

http://www.atheism-analyzed.net/Ethics.htm

http://www.atheists.org/Ethics_Without_Gods

If atheists aren’t accused of trying to take over America (along with Jews?), they are most likely being told they are immoral, amoral or otherwise without any moral basis for their actions. While there may be atheists that behave and believe this way, I’m willing to wager most atheists are more than capable of discerning between right and wrong and good and evil in a variety of situations. Hesitating because of particularly ambivalent issues or general moral gray areas does not make you amoral, it makes you that much more moral for actually considering whether the action is justified. And just because you lack a belief in a creator, the so called arbiter of morality, hardly suggests that you think all morality is completely arbitrary. There’s diversity amongst theists about morality and ethics on issues like abortion or capital punishment, so that already gives me an indication that morality is flexible but not haphazard. Atheists might not have stringent and unbending orthodoxy on what’s right and wrong, but I guarantee we have less likelihood of leaping to unsound ethical judgments based on tradition or authority.

The biggest stumbling block I’ve found for theists even acknowledging the possibility of atheists being moral in any sense is the idea that they have no accountability to God. But as I’ve said elsewhere, I’m fairly accountable already to my fellow humans, especially because they can directly confront me and punish me if necessary for correction. Not having my actions monitored by some entity that doesn’t appear to intervene except when it chooses to (so called miracles or other “acts of God”) doesn’t mean that I think I can get away with anything. Justice system aside, we have a conscience built into us that has nothing to do with a soul or the afterlife, but simply a recognition that we have done wrong in the immediate sense.  The notion that humanist ethics are completely relativist is mistaken on its face, since there is, if nothing else, a persistent factor that remains for consideration at all times: humanity and its capacity for suffering. When I deliberate an action, part of my motivation should be to harm the least amount of people possible and to help the most people possible. I’m not a strict utilitarian, but the notion that I should strive to help people instead of harm them does cross my mind. There are times, however, when making people suffer in some sense can be a benefit to them in the future. All in all, though, to say my ethics are in any way claiming that I can do anything I want without consequences ignores the crucial parallel aspect of many atheists to theists: we both take the suffering of a fellow human seriously. I do good things to advance human flourishing, I avoid bad things to lower human suffering; simple and yet complex in the flexibility of situations that come about.

The insistence that atheists might have morals compelling them to behave in a certain way is countered by saying they have no absolute to base those morals around. They are, even if not relative normatively, they are relative descriptively. Morals to an atheist, theists claim commonly, are not consistent across generations or in general because of the multitude of perspectives and lack of an ultimate source. There is also the claim that atheists follow experimental ethics; what works is good. As if this is a completely bad thing: if I find something is beneficial in a particular situation, but not in others, it behooves me to be particular and not general. Focusing on practicality in ethics should not be the absolute focus, but it shouldn’t be thrown out either. Ethics don’t require absolutes, but consistent principles that govern behavior. It shouldn’t focus on conformity with the letter of the law, but the intent behind it (or the spirit if you’re of a Christian or Jewish flavor). Lack of a God as foundational to one’s ethics does not automatically render one a relativist.

Christians usually admit atheists can be ethical, even if they can’t be righteous before God. Even if I am not following your God’s law completely, many would argue I might actually be following the law better than Christians, albeit they would also insist I’m a legalist because I’m following the law for fear of punishment instead of doing it out of genuine goodness in my heart.  That notion has always disgusted me since I heard of it. Atheists can be virtuous people for the sake of virtue just as much as Christians. In fact, I’d argue all the more for atheists, since they don’t pretend to have some reward for them or any sort of holiness surrounding their actions.

And in terms of considering the pain non humans suffer, atheists are not by any means so anthropocentric (centered on only humans) that they cannot concede that animals deserve to be treated humanely, even if they don’t deserve treatment as human equals, since they couldn’t understand that concept. I treat my cats with respect, occasionally play-fighting with them, and do not consider it permissible to let animals become feral just because you don’t want to take care of them. Treating animals humanely also involves the decision of euthanasia that is equally controversial for humans. But in both cases, there are factors outside the individual that apply. With humans, there is the relation of that human to other people and so they must consider that in their decisions. With animals, the humans that own them have to make the decision for them in a reversal of the choice a human makes for assisted suicide. To think atheists don’t contemplate these sorts of things is to give us too little credit merely because we don’t believe in something that is either unverifiable or generally useless.

Atheist ethics only differ significantly and originally from theist ethics in how they relate to the supernatural. Atheists don’t derive any ethical obligations from the supernatural, so there are no moral duties to respect the gods or rest on a Sabbath or any such thing. The focus is instead on humanity and duties to it as a community and on interpersonal levels as well. In that sense, even if atheists don’t have absolute ethics, I’d say they have far better ethical priorities. If your focus is only on pleasing God and following all of its commandments and looking for its approval, humans are at best a secondary concern, since you don’t have to please humans to be good in God’s eyes. With that thought, I honestly tend to think that theist ethics are not only indefensible from a humanist perspective, but anti humanist in nature, since the goal is not flourishing for humanity, but flourishing for individual humans or particular groups of humans in heaven, whatever that specifically entails. The question remains; which would you rather trust: an atheist who has well thought out but not absolute ethics or a theist who has absolute adherence to ethics they haven’t thought out? Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Reason and the Holiday Season

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/30/dueling-billboards-face-off-in-christmas-controversy/
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-521921
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101202/ts_yblog_thelookout/atheists-slick-ad-campaigns-sometimes-meet-with-resistance

The holiday season’s coming around, and I mean every holiday. Christmas, or Xmas as prefer to call it, might be the most popular, but Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Chinese/Japanese/American New Year deserve consideration as well. I thought I’d return to blogging schedule with a billboard in New Jersey that many have taken offense to, for a variety of reasons, most of them confusing atheists with antitheists or anti-religionists. But American Atheists, as far as I can tell, even with Madalyn Murray O’Hair still leaving its reputation somewhat in tatters for especially curious people digging up dirt on atheism, is a reputable organization. They even spelled out their basic intent with the sign as threefold: “1) To address those atheists who “go along to get along”, and to encourage them to come out of their closets, 2) To attack the myth that Christianity owns the solstice season, and 3) To raise the awareness of the organization and the movement.” The third is not unlike what any group does, like Answers in Genesis told me in no certain terms by slapping their name on multiple billboards. Or the Catholic League in response to this particular billboard, asserting that Jesus is to be celebrated instead of reason.

The American Humanist Association’s ad campaign still tops American Atheists’ billboard price, mostly because the latter is centered on a highway in the Northeast United States. Not to mention this one has more direction than just comparisons of misogyny and bigotry in Christian thought with humanist notions that are ironically shared by many Christians today, particularly Episcopalians on the ordination of women, causing a whole other scandal I won’t speak on. Criticizing people going along with the ancient fabrication that Jesus was born in the winter in Jerusalem is something I imagine many Christians, particularly those that disagree with Christians celebrating Christmas on scriptural and theological grounds, would find some agreement with. The latter part of the message advocating the celebration of reason is what would make people less than comfortable.

The discomfort lies in people attempting to connect reason in any sense with their celebration of togetherness and family, which generally leans more towards the emotional and faith based aspects of life. I honestly liked the bus campaign two years ago calling to “Be good for goodness’ sake” in relation to the Santa Claus is Coming to Town carol better, but creativity can be tricky when you’re focusing on rhymes. It’s not as if people couldn’t celebrate Christmas in the sense we celebrate it now anyway; emphasizing the spirit of generosity and love, parts of this being emphasized in more religious carols I grew up with, but the overall message not really foreign to anyone. The notion that Christmas has to have an explicitly religious and faith based aspect to it seems to bring the holiday down. The warnings year after year around this time about a “war on Christmas” makes me remember the legal issues that have arisen over nativity scenes and a menorah sharing public space. There are Christmas holiday parallels around the world, such as the Festival of Lights in Hinduism, called Diwali, though technically it’s already long since finished. The Japanese celebration of Christmas is probably a better example to use, since the Japanese have such a minority Christian population, their use of “Merry Christmas” is more religiously neutral and doesn’t have any of the tone of some Christians in America who’d bite my face off if I referred to Christmas as Xmas. Even if I tried to calm them by noting that it’s an abbreviation, not a crossing out, of Jesus’ name, they’d be so incensed they’d still try to proverbially crucify me for my blasphemy. As I recall, the letter X was used historically for an abbreviation of Jesus’ name, at least the first letter of his name in Greek. It’s where we get the mnemonic device still somewhat popular today of IXOYE, using the first letters of the Greek words for “Jesus Christ God Son Savior” in that order.

I can’t say there’s a direct way to celebrate reason during Xmas, but I can see an advocacy of using reason in the context of approaching Christmas. Instead of seeing the reason for the season as a real historical event, we should focus more on Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman and such to represent the aspects of the holiday season that coexist across the religious borders we arbitrarily create in such a time when there’s little opportunity for children to really learn about these different holidays as they’re celebrated. Children at my native church, much younger than me, had some exposure to other flavors of the Abrahamic faith and even a few non Christian faiths, but I fear that their learning about it was more in the sense of the cultural practice and not seeing them as belief systems people held to. It’s that kind of sheltering of kids from inquiry and skepticism about such things like Christmas or Easter being celebrated in ways different from your parents that drives families apart as the children grow out of it or reluctantly conform so as not to confront those issues in a reasonable and respectful fashion.

I probably won’t emphasize the Christian elements of Christmas with my children, though I will tell them about it for basic education’s sake. We might even lean more towards the “pagan” Winter Solstice celebration that emphasizes the use of things like the Yule Log and other more ancient European practices. Or just incorporate practices give a similar sense of togetherness, like the practice in Japan of giving Christmas cakes. In any case, it’s not as if someone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas with any real connection to supernatural events is being hateful towards the holiday. Just pointing out that Jesus was historically not born on the 25th of December is hardly cause for offense, since, when you think about it, he would’ve frozen to death and with some research, you see a correlation of dates showing that the tradition was more than likely associated with Saturnalia in Rome instead of any genuine date of birth of Yeshua. And I should emphasize again that there are Christians that share many of the sentiments of this billboard ironically. So, nearly a month still from Christmas Eve, I wish everyone happy holidays and good fortune for the New Year as well, so I don’t forget in the future. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

American Atheists Convention On Easter

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/03/easter.atheists/index.html?hpt=T2

While Easter Sunday is nearly to be celebrated (early in the day, no doubt) by Christians across the world, on this same weekend, the American Atheists are meeting in their 36th convention. This year’s goal in particular is to note that while there are still widespread stereotypes about atheism (one of them especially mistaken, since worshipping Satan as a god would decidedly negate the idea of atheism, lack of god belief) atheists are becoming more accepted, albeit in limited ways. The main way David Silverman, best known as an animator for The Simpsons, observes the change is in the publishing of books such as The God Delusion and The End of Faith by authors Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. While this is a step forward, the dominant stereotype does seem to be ironically reflected in a sense with the group itself. The stereotype that atheism is somehow a religious or ideological movement seeking to destroy Christianity would potentially be seen as validated with the existence of groups such as American Atheists and the Rational Response Squad (popular for the Blasphemy Challenge online). But this line of thinking is mistaken on a few levels.

Groupings of a group that share certain beliefs or lack thereof in the case of atheists does not suggest they are actively seeking to eliminate groups that differ from them. Otherwise the suspicion of Christian bible study groups or the like trying to erase Jews, Catholics and Muslims from the map would probably have some credulity. Yet it is a minority of those groups that seek to eliminate some group, such as Army of God advocating the justified use of violence against abortionists. I have yet to see a group of atheists that is well known in public having any agenda to eliminate religion as a phenomenon from the world (except perhaps the Brights, but I’m not sure of that). If anything, the advocacy is more along the lines of fair treatment of atheism as a minority position in America, alongside such like minded beliefs as Buddhism, Jainism or Laveyan Satanists, all decidedly minorities in this country and all lacking a belief in any deities. The American Atheists want to be recognized equally as Americans alongside Protestants, Jews, Catholics and Muslims, though modern thought doesn’t exactly grant them a lot of trust as I’ve observed. But when Mormons and homosexuals (supposedly viewed by Christians as blasphemers or abominations respectively) are trusted more than atheists (many of whom were more than likely raised Christian), the issue lies with education. If people are told such deceptions as atheists being without an objective source for morality or being against capitalism or other American pastimes (even though there is such a thing as Christian communism), then it’s no wonder atheists are treated like black sheep in America.

Not to mention people have the wrong idea about why the convention for American Atheists is held on Easter. It’s demonstrably paranoid to suggest that they’re using the weekend as a venue to attack Easter. Makes sense for them to choose that weekend, since as Silverman puts it. “The hotels are cheap, and everybody has time off." The choice is little more than an economic expediency, like someone hoarding their sick days and then using them all up for a holiday, not something uncommon to Christians and atheists alike within the right job, I imagine. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.