Secularism

"We should all be secularists" - PZ Myers

Reading Assignment for 4/27

I wanted to focus more on a specific current event this week, the recent Harvard study on prayer.

Overview
Religious Tolerance.org: On Prayer
NY Times Article

Theist Viewpoint
Science and Theology News Article

Atheist Viewpoint
Study and Commentary

Questions to Ponder
Should science study religion?
Can science study religion?
Do these results have anything to say about the existence of God?
Would the religious community have acted differently if there was a positive correlation?

Controversy? Over the Bible? No way!

http://www.eastvalleynews.com/appeal/article.cfm?i=7277

Here we go again: Georgia's lookin' to have elective classes devoted to the study of the Bible taught in public schools...

I'm really not sure how to feel about this one. The Bible can be read in so many different ways -- literal vs. metaphorical, historical vs. mythical, Old Testament vs. New Testament -- that it seems to resist the sort of objective analysis that a high school course would require. Now, if I were to teach the class... well, I'd probably get fired.. but the point is that no two people would read or present the material in the same way, and yet it would be equally troublesome to attempt any definitive interpretation of the text.

Ideally, the first step to curing the disease of fundamentalism would be a personal exploration of the Bible itself, without the interference of a priest, parent, or professor. But would high school students embark on such a biblical journey alone? No. Of course not. Most of the polls I've seen have found that the majority of American adults have not read it either. So maybe an open and innovative discussion class would get these kids thinking and, most importantly, talking, about the "realities" of Christianity. When religious correctness is so prevalent that the media won't even challenge the insanity of Islamic fanaticism, or the absurdity of creationism, I say that it's time to revive the country's true values -- education, dialogue, and reason.

Discuss.

Bible Belt? More like Bible Suspenders...

I found this picture of the distribution of religion across the US with the darker shades representing higher concentration of religious people. Does anyone else find it interesting that the higher concentration of religious people is found in the middle of the country instead of in the South? The 'Bible Belt' border seems to be incorrect according to this data. Look at Georgia compared to Minnesota.

Prayer and God

There was a study done that concluded prayer not only isn't helpful, but is harmful.

I think I'm going to call being 'on deck' for the week after this week because I want to research about prayer. For example, why do we think that God listens to us at all? Is prayer in the Bible (I haven't read it)? The overall question is how are prayer and God are related?

I think that we can't look at the research on prayer and make statements about God based on it. We can only make statements about prayer itself and its effects. We cannot deduce based on this research, for example, that God doesn't exist. In fact, it seems to suggest that he does exist. He's just a jerk.

The Myth of Sisyphus

http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/sisyphus.html

In response to Capper's post, I'd like to add a little bit more of what Camus wrote about the "absurdity" of human life. Here's a passage to begin with:

"Mere anxiety, as Heidegger says, is at the source of everything. Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: 'tomorrow,' 'later on,' 'when you have made your way,' 'you will understand when you are old enough.' Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it's a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it."

It is that recognition of the inevitability of death and the inherent meaninglessness of the universe which he called "the return to consciousness," whereupon a person can reclaim his freedom through a state of continual revolt against the illusions of objective values that would otherwise limit and enslave him. When he and Nietzsche put forth the message that "God is dead," they were identifying two things. First, the arbitrary nature of custom and daily habit, which is what sustains popular religion and allows people to live day to day without considering the significance or consequences of their actions. Of the "morality of custom" Nietzsche writes, "Self-overcoming is demanded, not on account of the useful consequences it may have for the individual, but so that the hegemony of custom, tradition, shall be made evident in despite of the private desires and advantages of the individual: the individual is to sacrifice himself -- that is the commandment of the morality of custom." The second thing they identified was the power people have to reject custom, to think for themselves, and to create new forms of self-expression. Everyone seems to associate Nietzsche's "Will to Power" with the image of the tough guy, the Social Darwinist, the "Big Money" CEO, the John Waynes and the George Bushes of the world, when what he really meant by power was essentially the act of affirmation and the state of self-awareness, wherein a person may consciously assert: "I am here; I exist." It is an artistic, creative vision of mankind, which results in the transfiguration of the individual and ends with an eternal "Yes!"

And I'll wrap this up with two passages, both Nietzsche:

"To perceive all this can be very painful, but then comes a consolation: such pains are birth-pangs. The butterfly wants to get out of its cocoon, it tears at it, it breaks it open: then it is blinded and confused by the unfamiliar light, the realm of freedom. It is in such men as are capable of that suffering -- how few they will be! -- that the first attempt will be made to see whether mankind could transform itself from a moral to a knowing mankind."

"Indeed, we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel, when we hear the news that 'the old god is dead,' as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again. Perhaps there has never yet been such an 'open sea.'"

Penn and Teller

Penn and Teller prove that the Bible is incredible...ly inaccurate.

Science, Religion, and the Search for Human Nature

Science, Religion, and the Search for Human Nature

This past Thursday we got to talking—as we seem often to do—about death and the possibility/lack of an afterlife. An afterlife of course suggests a meaning and purpose beyond our own individual experiences, a sort of cosmic shape that, as Karen Armstrong writes, many people require (we had read the "Afterword" of Armstrong's book The Battle for God). Some, however, do not "recoil in dread from the emptiness of the cosmos." Armstrong mentions Albert Camus: he "believed that rejecting God would enable men and women to concentrate all their attention and love upon humankind" (366).

I was struck by Camus's idea, but skeptical. First, is there any evidence that atheists are more loving and kind than religious people? (They certainly don't attract much loving kindness: witness polls which reveal that no single group or demographic is more distrusted by the population in general than atheists—which raises another interesting question: why?) Second, what is it about atheism that would encourage a greater sympathy for humanity? Does Camus (of all people) suggest that humans are naturally inclined to love, and so once supernatural beings are set aside the love will naturally flow to one's own earth-bound kind? I find this notion appealing, of course, but I remain unconvinced (would, in a world of atheists, such love extend beyond family and friends?).... It did seem to me that minus a deity there might be a greater tendency to revere the earth, this world, our own time and place. But then I may be projecting.

Emerson's Ceremonial Smackdown

I'm taking a break from this Transcendental paper-writing marathon I'm on to offer an interesting sermon I read, given by Emerson just before he resigned from the Unitarian ministry. I'm unfamiliar with Unitarianism, but what he says is pretty shocking and defiant for a man living in the 19th Century in the wake of a nationwide religious revival. And as a former Catholic who never quite "got" the Eucharist, it has some added significance for me as well. Here:

"To pass by other objections, I come to this: that the use of elements, however suitable to the people and the modes of thought in the East where it originated, is foreign and unsuited to affect us. Whatever long usage and strong association may have done in some individuals to deaden this repulsion I apprehend that their use is rather tolerated than loved by any of us. We are not accustomed to express our thoughts or emotions by symbolic actions. Most men find the bread and wine no aid to devotion and to some persons it is an impediment. To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another. It is of greatest importance that whatever forms we use should be animated by our feelings; that our religion through all its acts should be living and operative.

The statement of this objection leads me to say that I think this difficulty, wherever it is felt, to be entitled to the greatest weight. It is alone a sufficient objection to the ordinance. It is my own objection. This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed that it was enjoined by Jesus, on his disciples, and that he even contemplated to make permanent this mode of commemoration every way agreeable to an Eastern mind, and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I should not adopt it. I should choose other ways which he would approve more. For what could he wish to be commemorated for? Only that men might be filled with his spirit. I find that other modes comport with my education and habits of thought. For I choose that my remembraces of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I love him as a glorified friend after the free way of friendship and would not pay him a stiff sign of respect as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, the provoking each other to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a glow of love, an original design of virtue I call a worthy, a true commemoration.

In the last place the importance ascribed to this particular ordinance is not consistent with the spirit of Christianity.The general object and effect of this ordinance is unexceptionable. It has been and is, I doubt not, the occasion of indefinite good, but an importance is given by the friends of the rite to it which never can belong to any form. My friends, the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. Forms are as essential as bodies. It would be foolish to declaim against them, but to adhere to one form a moment after it is outgrown is foolish. That form only is good and Christian which answers its end. Jesus came to take the load of ceremonies from the shoulders of men and substitute principles. If I understand the distinction of Christianity, the reason why it is to be preferred over all other systems and is divine is this: that it is a moral system; that it presents men with truths which are their own reason, and enjoins practices that are their own justification; that if miracles may be said to have been its evidence to the first Christians they are not evident to us, but the doctrines themselves; that every practice is Christian which praises itself and every practice unchristian which condemns itself. I am not engaged to Christianity by decent forms; it is not saving ordinances, it is not usage, it is not what I do not understand that engages me to it -- let these be the sandy foundation of falsehoods. What I revere and obey in it is its reality, its boundless charity, its deep interior life, the rest it gives to my mind, the echo it returns to my thoughts, the perfect accord it makes with my reason, the persuasion and courage that come out of it to lead me upward and onward.

Freedom is the essence of Christianity. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us."

Biological Blinders

Laura informed me that I missed out on a discussion about entheogens last night, and so I thought I'd make up for it by sharing a passage from "The Doors of Perception." (See below... That's right. Keep scrolling.) It reminds me also of what you guys were saying about our natural psychological tendencies to separate the world and other human beings into convenient categories, and to see them as fundamentally different. I don't mean to suggest that it's necessarily a bad thing, either. There are obvious evolutionary advantages to this way of thinking -- it allowed us to survive and adapt to a harsh environment, and without it we wouldn't be capable of things like problem-solving, creating an orientation for ourselves in time and space, or constructing and maintaining a coherent view of reality.

On the other hand, however, our "normal" consciousness sometimes amounts to a collection of biological "tricks" which attempt to bring certainty to a confusing, chaotic, alien universe: what I gather from my senses is reduced to simple concepts and the lowest common denominator, often focusing on pairs of opposites (think: the conservative O'Reilly worldview which tends to see all things in terms of black and white -- good versus evil, right versus wrong, "us" versus "them" and so on). Even our religious imagery evokes these themes. The Fall in the Garden of Eden is a symbolic story of man becoming conscious of himself -- of his desires as well as his limitations and mortality -- and thus separating himself from nature and from "God." It could almost be read as a condensed version of our evolutionary history, as we became more and more dependent on the intellect and on our abilities to manipulate the environment.

To the extent that we discover what can be known, though, there is a heightened, innate sense of the Unknown. Intuition tells us that beyond what we see and experience there exists an inaccessible, immense, profound mystery. No scientific achievements will ever diminish that -- rather, they will only intensify the feeling of awe that one gets when contemplating the new horizons. Because of this, we need to recognize first that we have all been co-opted by our own biology into accepting a fragmented and incomplete view of ourselves and the universe. Unless we find some way to explore the deeper regions of the psyche, either through conventional disciplines of concentration or (dare I say it?) drug use, we will continue to miss out on a huge part of what life really is.

What I like about this passage are the clumsy metaphors he uses as he tries to explain himself using scientific terms and uniquely modern ideas. I can imagine people one day looking back on the book as a sort of rough sketch highlighting the early attempts made to unify scientific and religious thought...

Okay, take it away, Huxley:

"Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C.D. Broad, 'that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any given moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.'

"According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet... Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate 'spiritual exercises,' or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception 'of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe' (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality."