Reason Rally
On the National Mall, Washington, D.C. Saturday, March 24th.
It was a spirited time even in the rain. A lot of people delivered their A-game. Tim Minchin was most often cited as a favorite. His was certainly the most energetic performance. (Anybody know how I can get his song out of my head? …But a lovely ballad, that.)
Speakers, entertainers and the whole bill of faire moved along with about 15 minutes each to do their thing. Dawkins was sharp and none of the speakers seemed dampened by the weather.
It was also interesting to see the promotions for various up coming secular meets. Everyone I spoke to thought there are a lot more than there used to be. We all concurred that that’s a good thing. I hope there’s never a burn out factor with more meets than there’s interest in. For now, these things do seem to give us a sense of community, energize us, and help to raise our profile. That was the theme and urging of the Reason Rally–Come OUT. Be visible. Run for office. Get involved. We can stop hiding. Do it not only for those who will come after, but for us, here and now.
Thanks to Dayton Freethought for organizing the jaunt for us. I got to know a few more of their friendly faces and hope to know more and more as time goes by.(I sent my 20 bucks in.) The Rally bus we were on broke down about 2:30 am Sunday morning–which ended the sleep period because it stimulated a lot of punchy wit from the bus-lagged crowd. Fortunately, nobody thought to sing Tim Minchin’s song while we waited. (I think I heard that on Youtube a while back. Maybe that’s why it’s sticking with me so much.) A short five hours later, we were on the road again.
Anyway, it was all fun and for a good cause–OURS.
Our larger community is perking. It’s exciting. We have a future. Let’s make it happen.
Are we Angry Atheists or Effusive Enlightenees?
- The following is my response to a discussion on the wesite: Evolution: The View of Life, but I thought it was of broad enough interest to be posted here. It is also someting of a synopsis of my book Post Script to a Christian Nation. My focus group didn’t like that title (C’mon, focus, Group!), so I trying this out: Religion is Gods Way of Showing Us it’s Earlier in Human Evolution than We Thought.
- The thread of that blog starts under the Religion heading on “Evolution The view of Life” blog.
- Fool into the fray, I can sympathize with both points of view. (Background: my wife reads my stuff and says I’m an angry atheist) I also railed against the US congress’ reaffirming In God We Trust as the national motto titling my comments: that it was “…the religious equivalent of marking territory.” (couple of blogs ago).
Where I zag spiritual is based on the fact that many/most people do have that Faith Instinct that Nicholas Wade explains in his book.
Look, we know there is no spiritual realm or supernatural beings. BUT something we inherited has us looking for those things nevertheless. Further, our psychology/anatomy rewards us with neurochemicals (seratonin, dopamine, etc.) for “spiritual” thoughts and behavior.
People have attributed much historically to things done “under the influence” of spiritual epiphanies. Since there are no spiritual beings or spiritual realm, those folks don’t have much on us.
I think we express our “human spirit” through similar avenues. Writing, art, academics and many more.
As an aspiring humanist, I like the life-affirming accomplishments, especially those of a secular nature, not so much of those of a religious nature (also, an angry atheist, remember?).Our need for fulfillment may come from that same neural complex, same neurochemical rewards.
Inspite of Rick Warren’s warning that humanism isn’t about to take over religion’s turf, I think, eventually, that it will still come to pass–as a cooperative effort.
Like your favorite ball team, we’ll all have our different teams–we’ll wear our decal–Born-agains, Catholics, Buddhism, Jewish traditions, Humanist, Freethought, Atheists, and others, but we’ll value the game, the family of man, that’s what will pull us together.
It’s a big table. Let’s set it for the guests we want and establish the etiquette that should be observed.
Deeper in: Dan Dennett’s Scientific Study of Religion at CFI
This is an eclectic traipsing through the conference in several parts.
Andrew Newburg, the first scheduled presenter on Saturday was ill and couldn’t make it. Neurotheology is his specialized area of investigation. He’s PET or SPECT scanned the brains of Buddhists in meditation and Carmelite nuns in prayer. He was high on my list of want-to-sees. I wanted to see what he thought of how evolution might have put together the neurochemicals and their receptor cells with some propensity toward religiosity or religiousness or spirituality.
Most of the presenters, I think, are opposed to anything like religion as a package deal being selected for as an evolutionary adaptation. For others, it’s a matter of onion skin layers –and the thesis and proponents of what might have evolved that can be found at that layer. Nobody thinks you could inherit, let’s say, Catholicism (or any fullblown religion). Not many think you’d inherit the worship of a supernatural being, per se. But as you keep peeling off layers, you’ll come to a level we might call a “religious impulse.” That idea has followers. See Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct. I believe, also, that you can consider E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology, Consilience & David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral, in on that one (and me).
Daniel Dennett & Pascal Boyer don’t think (and please correct me if I get this wrong: I’ve read both their books & took copious notes, but my memory is almost nonexistent) there’s continuity between the early religious behavior of hunter-gatherers and today’s religions. Boyer says they have only Religious Thought and Belief and nothing like capital R Religions. Richard Dawkins & Steven Pinker (not at the conference, but icons in the pantheon of the New Atheism) whom I admire, as well, give reasons unworthy of their intellects as to why they reject the likelihood that natural selection could have put together anything supportive of religion.
I’m not saying that evolution created a whole new brain center, large neural structure, and maybe not even anything unique or specially dedicated to support something like a religious impulse. Selection would have had the easiest time (and selection operates without any intent or purpose–results happen and they live or die –or thrive–or have a slight reproductive advantage) selecting, slowly accumulating, accreting, minor changes in what allowed the human brain to trigger neurochemicals or neurotransmitters and thereby reward itself for thinking lofty, especially pious, thoughts. Some religious behaviors would accrete over time that would coax out, in a supportive way, more of this mutually supportive neurochemical rewards and voila` you’ve got a mystical experience or, more likely, a subliminal perk when someone whispered in your ear that Jesus loves you.
That’s what I wanted to ask Andrew Newburg about. J. Anderson Thompson, MD gave the first presentation instead, The Song of Serotonin and the Dance of Dopamine and may have come closer than Dr. Newburg might have to affirming the likelihood of a heritable religious impulse–if it can largely be based in neurochemistry. Along with selection stringing together some religious behavior be it chant, dance, and/or trance, I think it might just be. When he acknowledged the contribution of Nicholas Wade to the field and work, I believe that might have been the affirmation.
Randomly firing neurons inspired by the Dan Dennett conference
Just a few scattered thoughts on getting back from “Daniel Dennett and the Scientific Study of Religion.” I intended to go deeper into some aspects of the conference later.
Great conference. I enjoyed a bagel with Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained). Sat with Paul Kurtz at lunch (He started the Center for Inquiry 20 years ago and the publishing company, Prometheus Books, He wrote the Humanist Manifesto II, and many important books of the humanist movement to the effect that he has been called the father of modern secular humanism).
Now, even more random: Most of the presenters at the conference were scientists. I hugged a Christian in the first session on Saturday (you had to be there). That presenter of the same session acknowledge a reference to Nicholas Wade. I found myself recommending Wade’s The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures. Apologies if I didn’t remember the subtitle correctly. I’ve listened to The Faith Instinct as an audio book probably 10 to 20 times and told Mr. Wade it is the most important book of my life. (I should disclaim for Mr. Wade that he remains neutral as far as I can tell with respect to his position on theism/atheism. It is the evolution of religion along with the recent evolution of mankind which is of most interest to me. Many of the rock stars at the Dan Dennett conference and other icons of the New Atheism seem to reject the thesis that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. This is in opposition to Nicholas Wade’s thesis which I support almost totally (with a minor insignificant point of difference). More on this later.
Thanks to the fellows who took me to Santano’s Pizza for supper. More depth on the conference to follow.
Affirming motto In God We Trust is the religious equivalent of marking territory
Affirming the motto In God We Trust is the Religious Equivalent of Marking Territory
The next time someone asks why are atheists so strident–so militant? Just hold up the headline–Congress passes the nonbinding (unnecessary) resolution reaffirming “In God we Trust” as the national motto.
But why are atheists so angry? Because it’s RUDE. It’s Believers Behaving Badly.
In every other sphere we suppress our antisocial and baser instincts for the good of society, harmony. But religion gets a pass. NO, not really religion, just Christianity. The one that claims the Golden Rule even though similar sentiments were expressed before it came along.
How shall we observe the Golden Rule in your seeming violation of it? Do you want the same treatment in return? Is this the treatment you want from nonbelievers or the other religions?
On the face of it, they say the resolution before congress wasn’t divisible, but those who should know say it was. Boehner probably didn’t get my email. He governs me, but evidently doesn’t represent me. Why should I pay taxes to a religious organization–the U.S. government?
This action is an outstanding example of what’s wrong with modern day Christianity especially in politics. This is an act of religion. Worse, religion is so confusing to the victim’s mind, and yet it dopes them with neurochemicals to the effect that they feel confident in their action. Perhaps, they feel a tiny nano-rapture.
This is the kind of thing that goads us to make our rhetoric sound almost as programmed as theirs. This is what makes us crazy.
Are they crazy? A lot of us think so. Or maybe they’re just deluded? That’s closer. They are undeniably under the effect of religion and guilty of VUI–voting under the influence. Obviously, they need an intervention. A 396 member intervention. Let’s plan one for March. Peaceful though, only First Amendment solutions. None of that stuff that their sacred text recommends they do to us.
It’s sad that they can’t differentiate God from Country. Nor do they seem capable of admitting they have a problem. (See elsewhere my thesis of how radical God & Country really is in this brand of believer. And believe them when they invoke it, because the people come in a distant third.
If you go deep enough, though, in the soul of the believer, you’ll find at the final depth, that they’ll throw over Country in favor of God. It’s only at the last, though, when they must stand as Christian soldiers and reveal themselves as being for God over country or people. You may have heard Newt Gingrich describing how his leader of the freeworld couldn’t be trusted if he didn’t pray. That might take you nostalgic folk back to George H.W. Bush’s comment that he made while he was president that he didn’t think atheist were citizens of the U.S.
Because religion is so intertwined in our genes and there fore in our minds, a majority of people are unable to see these actions as the unAmerican activities that they are.
It is the invasion of the body snatchers and they are screaming God. If this was an alien presence invading our citizens we wouldn’t let them suffer. But the snatchees have control. How do they rationalize it–with the cry, Christian Nation! Yes, sadly Christianity has had its fist around the heart of the nation since the beginning. True patriots–those who didn’t think someone’s religion should come before our country–struggled to birth the nation in religious freedom.
If you’re not sure that they are talking only about the Christian God, ask them if you can display the name of every god below ”our” motto as they will display it in public schools and public buildings. No, they’ll say, that would be tantamount to prayer in the schools. Oh right. But wait! What’s the difference between a religious affirmation on the school building and a prayer inside? Nothing if we do it right, they’ll whisper.
It promotes our one religion at the expense of everybody’s beliefs and for that matter, at everybody’s expense–and they buy it because they’ve never been able to break our grip on our government, it’s a tradition, you know, like slavery and has to continue.
Dousing the Constant Fire?
A couple of months ago I discovered Point of Inquiry, the internet radio show/podcast of the Center for Inquiry. It’s an oasis in the desert of uplifting secular audio that’s (not) out there. Go find it–there’s a lot there for us–a true resource.
I’ve been working my way backward through the audio archives there. One program that caught my eye was the episode named “Spirituality: Friend or Foe? – Adam Frank and Tom Flynn.” Adam Frank takes a somewhat similar position to my own–that there can be secular spirituality, something that’s fulfilling to the human spirit. That’s great and gives us an avenue worth pursuing.
Unfortunately, I’m goaded into writing about Tom Flynn’s position. He says this dabbling with the ideas we call spiritual puts those of us who are asking these questions in a domain that can’t be called “hard atheism.”
This I have to wonder about. I’ve taken Jennifer Michael Hecht’s test (Doubt, a History…) and I am fully and 100% hard atheist according to her test. I didn’t have a single answer that wasn’t materialist and atheist. So is Jennifer’s test incomplete or somehow faulty? I don’t think that’s the case, but certainly I might not be objective since I’m one of the defendants in this case.
It’s not coming through here, but I was really downed by Tom Flynn’s words. I wish the talks could have been reversed so that the upside could have been the last thought, but it couldn’t be that way. Without the introduction of the idea of some sort of secular spirituality the topic wouldn’t have had a starting point.
Chris Mooney, host for that episode, argues in the general direction of Adam Frank and that there might be a secular way to accomodate a sort of scientific spirituality–awe in the presence of the universe and it’s wonders, for example.
Flynn says we confuse the issues when we say we are atheist and materialists and then say we are spiritual. (You might note that my thesis that we are “spiritual” because we evolved into religiosity [I'd call it a sort of spiritual drive or need] might be a special case that does overcome that problem and clears up the impasse that the language seems to hold).
Flynn says the average person thinks “spirit” means God and disembodied souls, and in the U.S., there is a spiritual order to the world. Further, that we (godless) defeat our goal for rational understanding of the world and misrepresent our world view when we use that language.
Flynn goes on to say the average person thinks they’ve just caught us in an inconsistency or being hyp0critical. And that we, too, need something trandscendent (acutally, Flynn calls it ectoplasm–a Ghost Buster reference?) to get us through the night.
Chris Mooney says the word spirituality may be undergoing change. Flynn says it hasn’t completed that change and that he’d like the language dropped altogether. If not, society will assume that we, too, need an “invisible” means of support.
Flynn says he thinks Sagan, Einstein, Asimov might all be called religious humanists. When he was trying to find his way, he examined their thoughts, but when they spoke of this awe in high blown terms he moved on looking for purer atheists.
Flynn says the “spiritual” language is unnecessary. It is rather loose language that we need to clean up and state more clearly. Flynn does offer that if we mean what we say by that language, then we certainly have a right to say it that way.
Mooney asks what is the appropriate way to address the explanation of meaning in our lives.
There is no big “M” Meaning because we don’t believe there is such meaning out there. That each of us finds our own way to determine the meaning of our lives. And that such an effort is far superior to an imposition of an external meaning upon our lives and world (I took quite a bit of license with the latter, but I think it is consistent with what Flynn said).
Flynn says there’s a lot of lore in religious circles to the effect that there are no true atheists because everyone needs something transcendent in their lives. Flynn says there really are atheists and it is us and we need to be recognized, that we do exist, and that we need to set an example to show that we can lead good lives.
I can see both side’s points.
What do you think?
Poetry as atheist spirituality, maybe any spirituality
Trapse through freethoughtblogscom. The blogs in the right margin of the site will become an ezine of sorts for you.
My previous post touched on a couple of blog posts there. From the most recent Republican debate, Newt Gingrich’s position, which I too heard him say, is troubling. (See previous post).
I was nspired by another freethoughtblog on poetry (relax, I wasn’t inspired to write poetry) that refers to poet Stephen Fry’s urging the poet to arise in all of us, Fry is quoted, “I believe poetry is a primal impulse within us all…”
(This touches on one of my pet inspirations, we all share by inheritance, I think, and from a truly organic source, the evolution that made us human, our our urge to be spiritual. Don’t overlook the fact that this is from a very secular source–200,000 years of evolution AFTER we became anatomically modern humans. The upshot: believer or non, our spiritual need/longing/quest comes from the same secular source–our long, tribal past–200,000 years without science or knowledge–only belief. In the absence of knowledge, humans did what it was that they could control–they believed.)
I think Fry’s primal source of poetry is that urge from within for spiritual achievement. To obtain… To reach… Even to become… We’ve let religions fill in the blank. To become what ______?
Though we must deal with the institutions of religion to take our spirituality back, it is worth it. Why? Our psychological well being is at stake. We could take an example from the New Agers. They found the existing religions to fall short. To be inadequate or no longer relevant. And they did something about it.
Well, we are doing something about it, too. The rising chorus of our millions of voices. Our new activism, our new visibility. Our dialogue with each other and society and those religions.
That all points toward our goals and it can have some hidden “spiritual” goals, too. In this empowerment, this self-actualization our spritual goals are embedded. We achieve some fulfillment as we gather for community like at the AAA/Texas Freethought Convention, like the upcoming Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Conference in New Orleans.
It is so easy to become negative. We negate religious belief. We can fall into the habit of negating society and everything else. After all, a number of believers perpetually negate us. Just as belief had previously done, we jump to conclusions. We fall into the trap of our primate brains, our believing machines as Michael Shirmer terms them.
Don’t forget the positives. Be open to life affirming things as well. Look at all our new liberator–the internet– has done for us. It’s truly revolutionary. Celebrate! Reach out. Blog.
a row of posts RE: freethoughtblogs.com
If you like the flow of different ideas steadily washing over your mind, there’s freethoughtblogs.com. Several blog posts of interest were That Allegedly Liberal Media on a Pew study of positive vs. negative media reports on presidential candidates.
The Newt Gingrich article was of special interest as I saw him in the last Republican debate make some rather inane observations. “Does faith matter? Absolutely.” Gingrich said. ”How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” As this article points out, and I was so stunned to hear, Gingrich said that Americans should value religion first, above morality and knowledge.
This ties into related posts I’ve made about that radical connection from deep within our evolutionary (which is now deep within or gene) of GODANDCOUNTRY. I’ll leave those arguments for the other posts. I’ll let Herb Silverman (Secular Coalition for America) have the last word on this topic, “We may be the last minority against whom intolerance and discrimination are not only permitted, but also sometimes promoted by politicians.”
