Non-Theist Gatherings in Kalamazoo

So two weeks ago Saturday, I ventured to the first meeting and last night to the second. I went to the first assuming that while it could work out as being a pretty interesting time, the odds were more favorable for it being rather awkward. I was quite pleased to discover it was the former. And not only was it interesting, it was really quite an enjoyable time. The first time around I think there were about ten of us, while last night there were nine of us, four of whom were not there the first time. We decided that we'll be meeting twice a month, one Wednesday and one Sunday. We're hoping to find a space that we can have rather more control over for the Sunday meetups, so we can actually engage in activities and more formal speaking - both from within the group and hopefully some outside speakers.

But as it stands, we have had some very interesting discussions, from philosophy to science, to the social sciences, to culture and society - all intertwined with each other and of course, with religion and the lack thereof. All around, I have to say that this is off to a excellent start and the way things are going, this could turn into a very sizable group of diverse and interesting people.

If you are relatively close to K-zoo, MI, you should check us out. If you aren't, but would like to find other people near you, who are atheists - you should check out this map that Greg posted a while back....

When I Dream Of Bloggers...

...Weird shit happens. I should note that this doesn't happen often - actually I rarely enough even remember dreams. But in the wee hours of this morning, I was dreaming - in and out of sleep, about Orac, Dr. Steven Novella and medical woomeister, Bill Maher - thanks I suspect, to Dr. Benway's comments here and here. (this is all in regards to Maher receiving the Richard Dawkins Award at the Atheist Alliance International Convention)

The last time I had a blogger dream - indeed, the only other one I remember, was a steel cage non-death match between Greg Laden and Comrade PhysioProf, over who was going to get to be my post grad mentor. The funny thing is, I am really not that arrogant and not only are neither of them in the field I am going into - they aren't even in the same field themselves. I honestly think it was a combination of finding the thought of them in a steel cage match terribly amusing and suspecting that both of them would be excellent mentors that did it to me. In any case, it was a fucking brilliant dream and well worth remembering. And no, I am not going to say who won. Suffice to say, if they were in my field and locale, I would be totally thrilled to have either as a mentor...

So in my dream, not only was Orac a computer, so was Steven. And this takes place in deep space, aboard a science vessel - where there is to be a competition between Orac, Dr. Novella and Maher, for the Richard Dawkins Award. I am unsure whether it was something Orac or Dr. Novella did, or if it was the science vessel itself rejecting him, but moments after boarding the ship, the cabin he was in was decompressed and Bill Maher was ejected into space (to be picked up by the shuttle that dropped him off - no one was irrevocably harmed during this dream), thus removing him from the competition before it really got rolling.

So the competition was soon down to the two worthy competitors - Dr. Novella and Orac. At first they fought computer against computer, until it was realized that both are just too good natured to actually battle each other for the win. There was some tampering of circuitry by their respective well meaning fans, but both were balking at these potentially damaging attacks. Then someone came along with the idea of motherfucking battle bot avatars. The battle was fierce and grueling, but the outcome was inevitable for several reasons. So at the end - in that holographic rendition of a Roman Colosseum, Orac eventually vanquished his frienemy, Dr. Steven Novella.

First and foremost, Orac simply has vastly more experience as a computer. On top of that, Orac is just a touch more "vicious" than Dr. Novella - vicious of course being a relative term, as both computers are really very decent sorts. And finally, it was my dream and while I really do like Novella, I actually read Orac's blog with far greater frequency.

I have to say though, amusing as the dream was (especially seeing Maher pop out that airlock - seriously, that was totally fucking rocking), I really rather would have slept more soundly and not woken up before five am for the second morning in a row...

And while I won't admit who won the battle between CPP and Greg, I will leave you with the visual that haunts me to this day (keeping in mind I only have a picture I made up, of what CPP actually looks like - just trust me, it is haunting). The steel cage non-death match, involved loin cloths, bear grease and bowie knives...

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!11!!!!11!!!

This Atheist In Love

I love Juniper in ways that are impossible to describe and really attempting to would only demean that love.  Excepting my love for my children, I have never experienced love as perfect as my love for her, yet perfect as that love is, it is also messy.  It's messy, because love is messy - people are messy - life is messy.  And people are all too often broken, broken like me or broken like you.  But we are what we are and we generally do our best to make the best of it - eventually, if we ever start to grow up for realsies.

Love is beautiful, perfect love is a thing of remarkable beauty.  Yet in that perfect, remarkable beauty, it is messy and imperfect.  Like snowflakes and other crystalline structures, it is those very imperfections that make it so wonderful.  Indeed, it is those very imperfections that make it worth the pain and turmoil it produces - inherent side effects of even the most perfect love.  Because in the most perfect love we want so badly to care for our partner properly, that we worry ourselves over it and sometimes care for them in a way that causes some detriment to ourselves.  Allowed to fester like this, love could become rather unhealthy.  But in the most perfect love, both partners feel the same way and it generally works itself out in the end - or more accurately, the succulent beginning. 

Unlike academia, love isn't a motherfucking care-bear tea party.  Neither is it a Walt Disney production, with fairytale castles and beasts who turn into hot princes.  Love certainly isn't a beautiful house with the white picket fence and two and a half kids.  Love is two flawed humans connecting their flawed lives and their flawed perceptions of reality.  And sometimes - just sometimes, those flawed perceptions of reality do not include forays into magical thinking that would artificially inflate the expectations of the participants of that love.  This is where I am at now and I can't tell you how relieving it is to have only my baseline brokenness - our natural flaws to deal with.  Not feeling this need for everything to be fucking magical is wonderful.  Not believing that there is some power beyond ourselves to bless or otherwise interfere with our relationship, thus relieving us of any small part of our responsibility for our relationship, instills such a sense of freedom.

This freedom is important - especially for people like me and Juniper.  Our lives are not ideal right now and while our time together hasn't been perfect, it has been spectacularly wonderful.  I don't need to throw out some saccharine line of shit and claim that I am now even more in love with her than I was before - I'm not, because what I felt before was wholly incredible and it is enough to say that now that we have been together in person for a few days, I am still so very deeply in love with her and she with me.  But even though this has been a spectacularly wonderful time, there are those who could have the same experience that we have had and decide that there were several signs that things are just not meant to be - I know this, because I was once one of those people and so was this wonderful women I love so very much.  Because when one is so into this magical thinking and looking for signs and wonders, one tends to look at things that go wrong as signs that the relationship is wrong.

They aren't and it's not.  Remember, life is messy and so are people.  And while some people, including earlier versions of both my love and I, could look at our experience and focus on the bad signs, or focus on the fact that (this may shock you) we have even had some minor conflicts and decide that it is just wrong, I look at it and think; "Holy fucking shit!!!  We have fallen in love, never having met.  We are two neurotic fucking people with neurotic fucking quirks and mannerisms and we are both moody as all fucking get out.  And yet we are still in love and have only had very minor conflicts, in spite of suddenly finding ourselves not living together, not getting to know each other in moderation, like most people manage, but staying together in a small hotel room and spending virtually every waking moment together - all that and we are still deeply in love!!!!"

You want fucking magic?  The magic is two flawed and broken people developing a relationship from more than twenty-five hundred miles apart, over the course of months finally meeting and discovering that those months of falling in love weren't a wash.  The magic is - I love Juniper just as much today, as I did seven days ago and her feeling the same about me.  The magic is there is no magic, only love.

Give That Moderate Theist A MotherFucking Cookie

Addendum - My lovely partner (and Thomas himself) has pointed out that Thomas isn't particularly liberal. So we can add that he is also one of those delusional fucks who pretends that anyone who can't afford healthcare doesn't deserve it. What would you feel, if you suddenly lost the coverage you have. Seriously, if you did, would you just stoically accept that it is all your fault and that you simply don't deserve it? Because shit happens motherfucker, shit that you just can't plan for. What you have today could be gone tomorrow - through no fault of your own. So tell me, if you lost it all and needed help, can we assume you would be good enough to stand by your convictions? How about if you get desperately ill and your insurance company finds a way to squirrel out of covering it? Hmm?

Exhaustion has prevented me from getting nearly as much done with all this as I was planning, but there you have it. Eleven hours in the car yesterday, with a seven year old and a twenty month old, then another hour and a half after we dropped them off was rough. Getting on the road this morning by eight was also rough. But here I am...

Some moderate theists have been on the defensive, as of late. Philip H. was rather resentful of some characterizations of moderate theists. And a certain Thomas Joseph rather resents being lumped with extremist, fundamentalist loons. He whines that he's different - better. He's a liberal and all around decent fellow. And, and - he accepts evolution... Well YAY!!! Thomas, how about a motherfucking cookie? Because you deserve a cookie for being such an upstanding fellow who is apparently only mildly delusional. And dammit man, I am so sorry if my criticism of religion was in any way offensive - after all, it's your personal thing and your god forbid, I should criticize you're personal beliefs as though they have any impact on the society and the world in which I have to live and raise my family.

Except that they do.

But no, sputter the Thomases and Philips - we're decent people and don't believe monstrous things. We support gay rights and a woman's right to choose - we're decent liberal folks, who just want to be left alone to our faith. Don't alienate US!!! RESPECT!!! RESPECT!!!

I will most certainly not, fuck you very much. More to the point, I will happily respect you. I will respect your political stances when I agree and argue them when I don't. I will not, however, have the least respect for your religion. The fact that it is moderate, even liberal, just makes it more insidious and less worthy of my respect. To be clear, little more than a year or so ago, I was one of you. I spent the vast majority of my life wallowing in destructive ignorance and bullshit, not a whole lot different than your own. Moreover, I was a fundamentalist way back yonder, when I was quite young. I worshiped, with all of my heart and mind, the same genocidal maniac that you worship.

Eventually I got better and started recovering.

It is not the orthodox, fundamentalists and other assorted extreme theists who perpetuate the very worse that faith has to offer our society. It is the moderates who foster this mentality that says we should allow parents not to vaccinate their children, because some imaginary being told them not to. It is moderates who foster the notion that kids should be allowed to be "educated" at home, with little or no real monitoring from the state and allowed to wallow in ignorance, because that is what their religion demands. It is moderates who foster the attitudes that we should allow them to opt their children out of vital aspects of education - some of them lifesaving, because their gods don't want them to learn about science or avoiding STIs. It is the moderates who foster the belief, that I am a very nasty man indeed, for daring to criticize ignorant fucking bullshit, or for simply not believing in magical beings.

It is fucking moderates who foster the social phenom that makes the fringe fucking loons and their egregious behaviors acceptable.

And to make this whole conversation more delicious, Thomas is a bloody Catholic. So Mr. Nice Liberal Fellow, supports an organization that bears the brunt of the blame for the scope of the AIDS pandemic that is decimating massive swaths of sub-Saharan Africa. He supports an organization that hates most of my friends, simply because they prefer to have relations with members of their same sex. He supports an organization that believes women should not have the right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. He supports an organization that believes that birth control is fucking evil. He supports an organization that has repeatedly shown blatant disregard for the welfare of children, by not only allowing pedophiles in the clergy to have continued access to children, but also by actively fighting against those sick fucks being prosecuted or their victims receiving reparations.

While I am certain there are areas in which Thomas and I agree, in which he is even worthy of my respect, he has given up all credibility when it comes to discussing criticism of theism. In that, he gets nothing but my utter disdain.

Bloody Hells, Am I Glad That's Over...

The fucking semester from hell, which officially ended last Thursday, is now finally over. I took my psych final this morning (it only posted this morning) and sold the book they would buy...

Unfortunately, I take the boys back to TN tomorrow. There is other sad news too, but I am loathe to talk about it quite yet - though it will all be fine in the end.

On the upside, I am going to have a little time to write more and get some more of my anthro papers posted, as well as a couple other papers that will actually get expanded a bit.

The first is a summary and opinion on a Community Mental Health board meeting I attended - something I will be doing for the foreseeable future. I will be highlighting in detail, just how fucked this great state of Michigan really is. County CMH's will be seeing anywhere from dramatic, to catastrophic funding cuts, at a time when we are going to be releasing a rather large number of felons who would continue to be in state correctional facilities, were it not for the fact that those facilities are being closed. So they will be ending up the responsibility of the counties and many of them will end up getting priority over people in the community who have lost jobs and who have no way to cover mental health care costs. Stay tuned - because I am more than a little fucking pissed about how this is all working out.

The second is a discussion of the film Out of the Shadows. This was possibly the greatest movie that I will NEVER watch again (not the greatest mind, just the greatest I really can't handle seeing again). It is a very hard film to watch, especially when you can sit there and relate to a great deal of what Millie is going through and what her daughters have and are going through. When you realize the difference is degrees and expressions...

I am becoming one morose motherfucker, but I am also pretty fucking angry, as there have been several well reasoned discussions about atheism and some less than reasoned responses from "moderate" theists and some very unmoderate, lying sacks of shit for Jesus...Stephanie has the roundup and I will be getting on that motherfucker on my way back from TN. That would be a ten hour drive - I can express a lot of irritation in ten motherfucking hours...Though I will probably be filling some of that with light entertainment.

And I will probably fill some of that with a write up about how Greg is yet again, wrong.

Christian Logic: Why I Don't Love My Boys...

Sometimes people wonder why I am so very fucking angry about theism and it's pervasive influence on our culture - and most other cultures for that matter... My very favorite neighbor to the north (you know, one of those Canuckistanians) recently got into a little tangle with someone who is a picture perfect example of where this anger comes from. After that aforementioned tangle with Jason, the cowardly fucking Christian decided to write an offensive piece of garbage about that encounter.

I had a thoughtful discussion with an atheist named Jason about real love. He deemed that it was “hateful” to claim that Atheist are not able to love their children.

Well Denny, that would be because it is a fucking hateful thing to claim. Hateful and strikingly ignorant. But Denny's ignorance doesn't stop there...

If God is love, then it is true that an atheist is incapable of loving their child. Atheist by definition reject God; therefore, an atheist is not capable of loving their children. God’s love never fails; however,an atheist love will fail based on the chemical make up of that person.

I don't reject any god, I also don't accept the conception of gods - Denny and I are operating on separate paradigms. But let's explore this logic for a moment, with the assumption that Denny's god is real and described accurately in the Christian bible...Denny's god demands - or at least used to, before Christ, that parents stone children who don't respect their parent's authority. While it can be argued that said god changed it's mind later on, there is no denying that the god Denny worships used to demand that parents kill their children for misbehaving. On the other hand, when you strike past Denny's stunning ignorance of neurobiology, you would find that there is highly unlikely that an atheist, or anyone else for that matter, is going to go through a neurochemical shift that would suddenly cause them to stop loving their children. It can happen, but when it happens, it happens at the result of a pathological imbalance - what we would call mental illness. And this is not something that Christians are immune to - such neuropathology can happen to anyone with a fucking brain.

Now you can go take a look at the rest, I am not going to keep going through this line, by line. But if you want to comment on it, don't bother doing so there - the comment likely won't get posted, no matter how reasoned and polite you might be. Indeed, I took Denny on his face and made a comment in good faith, which I will post in a moment - a comment that he chose to respond to in email, apparently thinking that posting it to his blog would be a bad idea.

Jason is far from the last line on love and atheists. Not all of us would agree with him, just as not all Christians would come close to agreeing with your assertions, here or there.

I am an atheist, after spending the vast majority of my life trying to reconcile my Faith with reason and reality. I understand very clearly, many different Christian premises about the nature of love. Now you may just decide that because I am now an atheist, I must never have been a real Christian, in which case this is probably a pointless exercise. But I am not going to assume that you are rather bigger than that.

When I was a Christian, I was very caught onto this notion of love and godly love. I have written very extensively over the years, on 1 Cor. 13 and that has been an absolute my entire life. I have believed absolutely in loving everyone, unconditionally. When I was a Christian, I absolutely believed that this was the least I could do – the least I could be, as a living testament to my god. The thing is, now that I am not a Christian, I not only continue to love like I did – I have found a much deeper and meaningful love than I have ever experienced.

Emotions are chemical based, because we are chemical based – everything we think, is based in chemical processes. The difference between you and who I am now, is that you somehow see this as making you less of a person – less miraculous than you actually are. Rather than arguing that this is somehow mundane and degrading, I would ask; Why do you think that this degrades us? We are truly marvelous and beautiful creatures – what makes us who and what we are, is awe inspiring. It is much like the notion of creation, versus evolution – I am far more inspired and awestruck, by the understanding of how we – these significantly flawed, yet wholly remarkable creatures came to be, than by the notion that we and the universe around us, were just magically “poofed” into existence. I am awestruck by the notion of the billions of years and virtually infinite space that spans out universe.

But the thing that I actually really have to disagree with Jason about – rather strenuously even, is this idea that our emotions are fleeting things – they assuredly are not. While some of our emotions are fleeting things, that which is most important to us does not evaporate, it usually just gets buried. We humans have a remarkable capacity for compartmentalizing and do so on an ongoing basis. Were we to stop, we would quickly be completely overwhelmed by the inability to process absolutely everything. So the vast majority of what we see, what is happening around us, goes into tidy little compartments – some of them much like the RECYCLE function of our computers. Certain types of information are harder to reach while they are still there and only stay until we have put so much more in, that it disappears.

But there are a great many things that never leave us – though we may get past the worst of the impact of those events, people and the feelings they inspire. And when we dwell on them, it is easy enough to recall and experience those emotions again – unless we’ve repressed it, which is something that men are especially good at.

I don’t believe in gods anymore, don’t believe in the supernatural at all. That doesn’t mean I have any less capacity for love and emotions than you do. Indeed, believing as I now do, that such beliefs are dangerous and overall bad for us, I not only love you, but much as I am sure you love me and wish that I would come back to God’s grace, I wish you would come to reason and out of the dangers of magical thinking.

And I too, love my children. Ever so very deeply and in a way that to you, a fellow parent, can totally relate to.

You can see how terribly offensive my comment was - no question why he wouldn't fucking let it post out of moderation. I will note here however, that I misunderstood Jason and he did clarify it here. Sorry Jason, your comment makes a whole lot of sense now. And for anyone going over to read that, please ignore my comment below - that was meant for Jason only and frankly, I'm concerned that if you read it, you may decide to kill me. But I digress, because while Denny the Cowardly fucking Christian chose not to let my comment post, he did respond. And out of respect for his notation on the bottom of his email, admonishing that it is indeed intended only for me, I will have to request that you not actually read the following quotes and just read my responses to them - I post them for Denny's reference, so he knows what exact points I am responding to...And if you like, you could take a break and go read Jason's response to Denny the Cowardly fucking Christian's blog-post, which he was blissfully unaware of, until I pointed it out to him....

A person can claim to love their children; however, it is impossible for chemicals to love chemicals. I don't doubt that chemicals can affect emotions; however, love is not an emotion. Your statement, "I love my children" while denying the existence of God informs me that your definition of love is based on chemicals and not truth.

Denny, we are not talking about neat little bottles of chemicals in your child's chemistry set. Nor are we talking about stuff that got mixed up in a laboratory. Please take a moment to learn a little bit about the human brain and how all this thinking and feeling stuff works...We'll wait for you...

If you gave up Christ for your emotions, then that explains why you are an atheist. Jason at least was honest about atheism.

I gave up nothing for my emotions - my emotions had nothing to do with my becoming an atheist, except in so far as they actively prevented me from becoming an atheist a great deal sooner. I am an atheist because I finally lost the battle of attrition, wherein my religious brainwashing was fighting to reconcile my Faith, with reason and reality. But I love the implication that I am somehow lying about who and what I am, and why...

In order for atheism to be true, it has to admit to the existence of truth. As soon as an atheist makes a claim on truth, they just established the existence of God. In other words, it is logically impossible for atheism to be true. When you make a claim on truth, you are admitting to an unchanging reality that exists beyond our own. Truth is unchanging; however, everything in our experience is changing. The only basis for truth or for reason is the existence of God.

You know, I love me some elementary, circular logic and this example is truly circular and very elementary. But worse, it's also predicated on the notion that atheism is based on any claim of truth.

First of all Denny, I reject the god paradigm that your abysmally fucking stupid statement was based on. Your premise fails on it's face right then and there. Secondly, I would like to point out that this is a logical fallacy. Even if we were to give that atheism is predicated on some claim of truth, it would not stand to reason that said truth implies anything unchanging, beyond our reality. The only way that this would stand, is if we accept as an absolute, the existence of a supernatural that there simply isn't any evidence for. And finally, I am not an atheist because I believe there isn't a god or any sort of supernatural. I am an atheist, because I have not seen evidence to indicate the existence of either. I don't <i>believe</i> anyfuckingthing...I accept that there may be a supernatural, I just don't see evidence to suggest it. I even accept that there may be a godlike higher power - again, I just don't see evidence for it. Still further, I accept that there may be a interventionist, godlike higher power - just not the evidence. Finally, I even accept the possibility, no matter how slim, that <i>your</i> version of god is real. The thing is, without evidence to suggest that any of these are true, I reject the premises. And in the order I listed them, I go from finding these premises exceedingly unlikely, to being about as likely as the premise that The FSM is coming to save us and guide us into a beautiful reality of peace and piracy.

Mass and Energy that has been informed by information establishes the fact that a mind does exist which is the source of that information. In other words, God does exist and it is undeniable if you hold to truth.

A fucking moron says what? Seriously Denny, you need some help - please do me a favor and spend a little time on elementary logic... You are doing a hell of a job of showing just how fucking bereft our educational system is...

And for the record, logic and this silly notion of <i>evidence</i> based reason are not tools of Satan, created to drive man from god. Least ways, I give that notion less credence, than I give the notion that your version of god is real. We'll skip over the next couple of paragraphs, because once you ground yourself in elementary logic, you will see that it is just more of the same fucking bullshit.

The fact you were trying to be a Christian and now an atheist tells me that you never found the Love of God that can be yours through Jesus Christ. If you would have found it, you would never have left.

Fuck you. Seriously you fucking shit eating little bastard - Fuck You!

Now I am almost inclined to just leave it at that and be done with your sorry fucking ass, but I want to clarify something you asked to clarify, because one, I am honest and two, it will provide you with a short lesson in logic. In your second email you asked...

You stated that your love is now deeper and more meaningful.

If your love is chemically based, everyone's experience should be the same since you are hitting the love chemical; however, it would seem to me that admitting that love is now deeper would imply that you activated a new chemical that is forcing you to believe that it is now deeper....

Do you think that love can really go deeper for an atheist?

For the question you asked, no. I don't think that faith or lack thereof has anyfuckingthing to do with one's capacity for love. I do not think that becoming an atheist made it possible for me to suddenly love that much more deeply. I would suspect that Faith was running some interference before, but the truth is, after becoming an atheist, I also got help for my neurological issues. I also became more focused on metacognition and better understanding myself. It also makes a huge difference, that I have now met a women whom I love quite passionately and with a depth I previously assumed was simply not possible for me to feel.

People, especially men, are perfectly capable of not recognizing. ignoring and even suppressing emotions. Humans have that capacity to compartmentalize that I talked about in my comment that you are afraid to post to your blog. Because of that capacity, we are perfectly capable of never even realizing how we really feel about things, people and ideas. We can repress memories and desires, without ever realizing what we've done. It is mostly just coincidence, that I have broken through some seriously damaging compartmentalization since becoming an atheist.

But I really want to hit on this fucking ridiculous notion you have about neurochemistry and love. It is not some singular chemical that we can just take "hits" of, to feel something more or less. It is a complex interaction of neurotransmitters and the "hardware" of our brains. We're all different, because our brains are all different. Our specific, individual brain chemistry is easily as unique and far more complicated than our fingerprints. This is what prevents us from being singular, automaton like creatures - one indistinguishable from another.

This is all relatively simple to understand, even if the mechanisms are complicated. No gods needed and unlike godbased, lazy fucking assumptions, there is a great deal of evidence to back up every assertion I have made here.

It is your place to say it, Greg, but you're wrong.

I started writing this post as a comment and soon realized that it was far more appropriate as a post in itself. Greg is rather fucking angry about all this blog violence and infighting. Indeed, he is prepared to stick his angry boot up someones ass so far that they'll need a shoe-shine rag to brush their teeth, if they tell him that it's not his place to say what he said...

Of course it's your place to point this out - it's your fucking blog. For that matter, this is your place to comment on it too. However, I don't agree with you...Or more to the point I do, but not everyone who agrees with us on one or more of those issues, agrees with us on all of them. And therein lies the problem and the point I was trying to make to Volcanoman on that other post.

As an atheist, I am willing to accept that atheists who have what I see as reprehensible moral frames, also happen to have a common enemy with me. Honestly, common enemy or not, there are those in that group who I just flat refuse to ally myself with - which is rare for me. As an environmentalist, I accept that there are even some pretty hardcore fundamentalist theists who also happen to be ardent environmentalists - and again, there are those among them who I just can't in good conscience ally myself with.

I could go on and on - for every issue you raise, there are people who agree with us on that issue, while fervently disagreeing on others. Excepting extremists, I am happy to ally myself to those people on those specific issues, while accepting that on other issues, they are my enemies. But given that there are those in each of those groups who are my enemies, it stands to reason there will be some infighting - or outfighting within the group might be more accurate.

And then there are those with whom I have fundamental differences with, when it comes to tactics. Like Chris - you know, that dude who just came out with a book coauthored with a awesome marine biologist. He doesn't see a lot of utility in trying to convince theists to abandon theism, believing it far more important to convince them that there isn't an inherent between accepting science while being a theist. While I have no problem with making the latter point clear, I will not - absolutely will not allow that point to interfere with my fundamental belief that theism is poison - no matter what type or extreme that theism takes.

Nor am I going to play nice about it - something that many atheists believe is counterintuitive. I believe that it is a good thing for people who aren't comfortable with the sort of rhetoric I occasionally am prone to not to engage in it, but I also think it's a good thing for people who are to do so and I think it's a good idea for people who have some other way of going about it to do things their way.

But most importantly and why I categorically reject your premise, is that this very discussion is a good, incredibly positive thing. This "infighting" you are objecting to - this is exactly what drove me to where I am now. I've been engaging in this argument for about six years now and my position on it, as well as my personal religious beliefs are almost in perfect polar opposition to what they were when I first engaged in it.

I am not alone, or in any way unique.

There are a lot more people reading this stuff, including these discussions, than there are people commenting on it. Hell, with my tiny traffic blog, I get emails from people who just aren't comfortable commenting. The other post garnered me four emails from people who just wanted to tell me they appreciated my comments to Volcanoman (one also mentioned the other person I was arguing with). You get a lot of traffic and I imagine that it's only a tiny fraction of that traffic that ever responds.

It is important for people to see and understand that atheists aren't some homogeneous group of people. It is important for people to understand that the thing that makes us atheists, is a lack of religious belief - and nothing else - absolutely nothing else. Sure, there are a lot of things that many, maybe even most atheists would agree on. But that has nothing to do with us being atheists - it just means that we happen to have other shared values.

And this discussion does more than show people what atheists are and aren't. It also exposes them to arguments about the nature of religion and magical thinking - arguments that they may never hear anywhere else. It shows them that a) not all atheists are angry and/or b) that some atheists are - both of which are valid and valuable points to theists or those who simply don't identify as atheists, though their actual beliefs may qualify.

Fuck Homogenized Atheism

Over at Greg Laden's blog (he often has some of the best conversations), I have gotten into a rather heated exchange with a Nathan Myers (my response starting after this comment) and intended on posting about the baseline question/assertion I made - and I still do. But then another commenter, Volcanoman, made a rather impassioned plea that I can appreciate, while thinking it's a really bad (not to mention impossible) fucking idea. I rather spent more time than I probably should have on my response and realized that it is a rather important point, so I am posting it here. And because I have three tests in the next two days (the two hardest tomorrow) and really need to study some more, I am not going to muck about with it...

The world is an increasingly nasty place and its rational people, although naturally fractious and irritable it seems, need to come to common understanding and present a unified message of intelligent discourse, robust information, and moral superiority.

LOLWTF?

What you don't seem to understand, Volcanoman, is that there isn't some common understanding and never will be. The fact that we happen to agree that religion is a bad idea, does not imply any sort of common understanding - many of us think religion is a bad thing for very different reasons in the first place.

Take the rather heated interaction between Nathan and myself - whichever one of us might be right, we absolutely do not have a common understanding and given the general tenor that our exchange took, it is unlikely that we ever will. If we do come to a common understanding of the issue we're discussing here, it won't be because of each other - I don't generally find myself deciding to agree with assholes who talk smack and I doubt he tends to decide suddenly he agrees with people who call him a complete and utter fucking moron. So if we ever do find ourselves on common ground in this, it will be because others convinced one or both of us that another position is the correct one.

And a lack of religious belief is not a reasonable foundation on which to build any unified message, nor is it inherently a precursor to intelligent discourse. Like I said, people decide that religion is bad, or that they simply don't believe, for a vast array of reasons - not all of them intelligent and by definition not unified.

Chris Mooney, for example, is not religious because he grew up without religion. He was never inundated with Faith and therefor it is perfectly natural for him to be an atheist. Me on the other hand - I struggled and fought for the vast majority of my life to desperately cling to the remnants of the very profound, very deep seated, absolute Faith of my childhood. It was only after a nearly thirty year odyssey through Faith and conflicting reason, that I finally lost the war of attrition and became an atheist. It took even longer and was only after my interactions with people who were damaged even more than I was by Faith and then with people who's experience was far less intense but just as nefarious, that I came to believe that religious indoctrination of children is inherently abusive and moreover, that it was intensely abusive to me personally.

Chris Mooney, OTOH, hates it when people say the sorts of things I said in my last sentence. Comfortable enough position to take, when one has never experienced the abusive nature of religious indoctrination. And you think that I am even capable of joining a unified message with Chris, or anyone else who believes it would be better if people with opinions such as mine, kept them to ourselves?

And quite frankly (and honestly no offense intended), you can take your moral superiority and shove it up your ass. Atheism does not make anyone morally superior to anyone else, nor does theism make anyone morally inferior to anyone else. I know a whole hell of a lot of people I would judge morally superior to others - and religion has absolutely nothing to do with that judgment. There are a lot of people, theists and otherwise, who follow a moral framework that is similar to my own and many of them manage better than I do. There are also a lot of people who behave and even fundamentally conduct their lives in a way that goes hard against the most important aspects of my moral framework - many of them theists and many of them atheists.

Never mind that those folks feel quite the same about me and my moral framework. Though that does shoot us back to the last point. Because if I can't show a unified front with Chris Mooney, who in spite of our significant difference of opinion is probably living a lifestyle that is closely aligned to my moral framework, can I be expected to be unified with someone who's moral framework is fundamentally different than my own? I disagree with Chris and cannot come to a consensus with him on some fundamental issues, but I rather like Chris and would probably enjoy hanging out with him and having dinner.

I cannot say the same about an atheist who believes that social safetynets are an infringement of their rights, that torture is ok, if it is making us safer, that the rule of law can be thrown under the bus, when push comes to shove - I could go on and on. People like this I wouldn't want to have dinner with, even if they happen to have virtually identical views to my own on religion.

But the bottom line, absolutely fundamentally fatal flaw to your line of reasoning here, is in the functional fulfillment of this goal. Because while I am sure that there are people who have made positive changes in their lives, due to the way Chris Mooney deals with religion, it wasn't a Chris Mooney who helped push me past the final blocks. Likewise, there are people who appreciate my condor and general attitude about Faith - people who are, or recently were theists, who find themselves rather intrigued by my attitude and where it comes from - they, like me, are unlikely to make the choices we would like them to, because of what a Chris Mooney - or for that matter, a PZ Myers has to say about it.

There are a lot of assholes in the world, who are assholes in much the same way that I am an asshole. And guess what? They appreciate assholes like themselves and the way we put things.

I like you and appreciate your position - I really do. But I have no interest in your homogenized, "Kumbaya," campfire fucking bullshit. We need all of us, being who we are, to affect positive change. Because when the positive change in question is an end to religion and lack of religion is the only common thread, homogenization isn't going to get us very far.

And btw, Motherfucking Canadians are going Down Eh!!!!!!!!!11!!11111!!!!!

Happy Stephanie Z Day!!! (or Why Creationism and Faith are often Arational)

Greg has declared yesterday Stephanie Zyvan day and since I don't have something of hers to repost (Lucky Greg), I will have to write a smart blogpost. I haven't been terribly motivated lately, choosing instead to get some posts I am going to write outlined, while also trying to frantically get some paying jobs done before classes start Monday.

Actually, that for some reason reminded me of something Scicurious (it was also Sciday!!!) inspired me to mention...Not that I'm trying to hint or anything, but man do I love getting books in the mail. I mean I really love getting books - and if they happen to come from the author of the book - maybe with the authors signature, why I would have to write up the book and tell everyone how much it rocks...

And apparently today is Jason Thibeault day...I think that that calls for some cake - some inappropriate, even naughty cakes...(as in, don't click that link at work, or in front of your grandma (unless you have a really cool grandma))

And because I can, I love her and she did actually contribute to this post, by discussing the topic with me for quite a while, I will declare this Juniper month. She really deserves more than a day. I mean hell, she puts up with me, loves me and as an atheist, I can't put her up for sainthood.


So onward to the heart of it...

John Wilkins is possibly the very smartest ape the world has ever seen. Either that, or he's just better at expressing himself than most members of his species. In any case, he recently had a very interesting paper published about creationism and rationality. I think that it is quite reasonable to extend the logic of his position to Faith in general, rather than limiting it to a single facet of that faith.

But for my purposes, creationism is actually a very good example, because arational creationism has a counterpart amongst those who accept evolution...Yes, yes it does and I am actually going to start with that counterpart...

There are a lot of people who have very interesting ideas about evolution and they're not all creationists. There are, for example, a lot of folks who pretty much assume that On the Origin of the Species is basically the best explanation of how evolution occurs. Survival of the fittest is basically how many, if not most people would characterize the theory of evolution. While we can give such people kudos for not buying into the idea that some god zapped everything into being, they are in fact wrong and difference in their ignorance of origins is only a matter of degrees of difference from the ignorance of creationists.

Does this ignorance make such people irrational? I would argue that it does not, it merely makes them ignorant. And I would also argue that the same is true of many creationists. The fact is that most people really don't spend much, if any time thinking about human origins or science in general. I would daresay that more people think about politics than science and in the U.S. at least, most people don't seem to think much about politics either. Most people struggle to focus enough on work and their interpersonal relationships - politics is barely on their radar if it is at all and science is nothing more than a peripheral concern I.e. "how does current science affect me?"

Even today, in the twenty first century, science education is abysmal in the U.S., especially when it comes to talking about evolution. There are many locations where the teaching about evolution is minimal or ignored altogether - whether because the teacher is afraid of dealing with pissed off parents or school boards, or because the teacher doesn't believe evolution explains where we come from. And your average fundamentalist is having their Faith and dogma constantly reinforced, while any discussion about evolution is dismissed as liberal, atheistic propaganda, or even the work of Satan.

So it works out as really easy for people to grow up believing what their Faith and the dogma of their faith has to say about origins and dismissing the little they may have heard about evolution as evil lies. About the only creationists who are really likely to change, are those who have a casual interest in understanding how the world works and who aren't ready to believe that Satan makes it appear that evolution happened.

But is it really reasonable to expect them too? Like I said, most non-creationists have little, if any understanding of how evolution happens because it simply doesn't really matter to them. Why would creationists be a whole lot different. They know how the world came into being - they learned it when they were young, had it reinforced throughout their lives and had people they trust explaining why evolution is really evilution. About their only hope is to have a science class with a teacher who actually understands evolution, isn't afraid to teach it, has a smart-ass in their class who wants to throw creationism out there and a teacher who isn't afraid to address the smart-ass's comments - oh, and said student would also need to be paying attention...

Most people are simply not going to go looking into this on their own. They aren't going to really look into anything that might contradict what they have believed their whole life. They aren't doing it maliciously either - nor are they attempting to wallow in ignorance. They are mostly just living their lives like anyone else - not really giving a shit about anything outside their cosy little world.

They are no more irrational than people who believe that evolution is survival of the fittest, that evolution means we descended from apes or monkeys that are just like the ones we can see at the zoo. It is not particularly rational, rather it is neither rational nor irrational - ignorant is a considerably more accurate label. And there are even cases where not believing in creationism would be highly irrational - especially when we are talking about children, who truly know nothing else. When you know nothing else, is it remotely rational to decide what you know to be true isn't? There was a time in my own life when it would have been pretty irrational for me to deny the Genesis story of creation.

Given the prevalence of religion in the U.S., unless you are young or non-American, odds are that there was such a time for you as well...

Indeed.

I am rather up and down about reading Pharyngula. I really enjoy many of the posts, but one of the pleasures of blogs is discussing what's been said and that is kind of strange over there. Which is, in turn, kind of strange coming from me - because I'm kind of an asshole a lot of the time. But I really enjoy a lot of Paul's posts and wander on over once in a while. This post rather struck me, especially the following:

This is what religion is: they angle for fresh prey, and once they snag you, they swallow you up. You are embraced in the rugae and crypts of the gut of the church, all warm and pink and soft and wet and intimate, and each of the members is like a little villus — a multitude of villi brush adoringly against you, each telling you how wonderful and delicious you are, and each leeching away a little of yourself, your individuality, your independence. It feels good as you are slowly absorbed. Then at last, when your will is gone and your dependence is complete, you are digested by the body of Christ, and there you will be for all of your productive years. Eventually, when you are old and no longer active, you'll take residence in the colon of the church, serviced by occasional visits from a priest or a volunteer, in hopes of one final ka-ching from your will…and then your empty husk will be shat out into the church graveyard, with the leavings of other past meals. The churches of your community all ought to be viewed as predatory animals, some lazy and sated, others restless and hungry, but all eyeing you as potential fodder to keep the beast alive.

Even a year ago, it is likely that I would have actually argued about this. But the argument would not really have been an argument that this is inaccurate, it would have been an argument of motivations. And the thing is, the motivations are still there - the point is still valid, but it doesn't actually refute a damned thing written in that paragraph.

The fact of the matter is, as is the case with most other woo - the victimizers are also the victims. Yes, there are a great many scam artists and pretenders - in the clergy and congregations. But there are also a whole lot of Christians out there who are honestly and earnestly seeking to save you from what they believe will be your eternal damnation and suffering. They truly believe that if you don't go to church, follow the dogma and believe/worship who and how they do - you're going to suffer horribly.

I know how they feel, I've felt it - I've been in those shoes. I was ok with being mocked, because I knew that what I had to say could go somewhere someday. If my small part to play eventually led to their salvation from eternal suffering, well, who cares about a little mockery at my expense? I know how they feel, because I spent years with an underlying terror that my own dad and eventually my brother were going to hell.

This makes it very difficult for some people to withstand the deluge. If you haven't read the whole of PZ's piece, do so. He describes a couple of situations, one written about by one of his readers and one that happened to him. I have been that proselytizing jackass, astounded that someone could be so blind to the obvious. I mean it really did seem so obvious to me and it was very confusing when people just didn't see it after I explained it all.

I was very good at helping bring people into my Faith, because I was so very genuine. Because no matter the sorts of mischief I got into - and I got into a lot - I genuinely cared about other people and really wanted them to avoid eternal suffering. I was obviously imperfect, yet entirely confident that my god loved me anyways and it was all ok in the end. I was trying and that was what mattered. That and I genuinely cared about the people I was proselytizing to - and it showed. That showering love fest that PZ describes is entirely accurate, but it's also far more nefarious for being genuine.

I feel genuinely sad for many of the people I went to church with who know that I am not a Christian. They genuinely love me and also believe absolutely that I am going to suffer eternal damnation if I don't accept their Faith. Even worse is my mom, who obviously loves me and wants me to avoid the eternal suffering that she believes is what people who do not Believe will suffer.

But it just is what it is - and isn't what so many Believe it is.

I am still working on my first post about things that kept me holding desperately onto my faith. But I think this actually can qualify as a prelude of sorts, because it was the loving community that made it very hard to leave - not to mention the disappointment of a great many loved ones.

I am going to continue with the post I was actually writing, but honestly can't say how quickly it will come. I have actually been doing things that aren't school or writing and have to get school stuff done too. And focusing is still a huge pain in the ass - exhausting even.

Speaking of, it is way past my damned bedtime - goodnight...

Framing Morality: In Support of Moral Relativism

There is a very interesting conversation about morality and faith, happening at my brothers blog, Dispatches From the Culture Wars. It is attached to a post about Brian Tamanaha's response to Emory University legal scholar, Micheal Perry. I am still working on what's becoming a very long piece on morality, faith, evolution and cognition. It was my original intent that this article be focused on the neurology of violence, especially torture, but I am finding it very hard to stay within those parameters, anyone familiar with ADHD, will understand why. I will address the topic of torture in the near future, but in a slightly different context. When I got into the discussion at Ed's blog, I wandered rather off and on the beaten track, so I felt it would be a good idea to bring it over here.

Micheal Perry, makes the assertion that the foundation for morality and indeed, human rights, is found in religion. He questions whether those without faith can have any real basis for morality or support of human rights. Brian does a decent job of responding to this notion, but I think, still misses the mark. When I get finished with and start posting (in multiple sections) a long article on morality that I am working on, it will become rapidly apparent that many folks subscribe to the notion of universal moral axioms. Such folks are almost universal in their support of socially constructed moral frames. In a distinct minority, not only do I think this is a bad idea, I think it's a dangerous idea. In large part, I think this is a semantic discussion.

It should be noted now, that this should not marginalize the discussion. While pedantry annoys the hell out of me sometimes, it's important to remember that language largely defines the reality we live. It is easy to decide that people are parsing things rather fine, indeed I am about to do just that, but often times, that is when language becomes most important. There are times when absolute precision is very important, in my mind, this is one of those times. I am going to take this opportunity to define the terms that I will be using in this post and future posts about moral philosophy. I should note that these will be my definitions, not necessarily that which other's who post here might be using.

What this discussion boils down to, is the difference between external and internal moral frames. While much of society puts a lot of focus on externally constructed moral frames, I am a believer in focusing on internally constructed moral frames. I should add, that I will, in future post go into much greater detail in these definitions.

External moral frames, are socially or religiously constructed moral frames. In religion, the obvious example is the dogma of the church, or other body of worship, as well as the dogma of holy texts. These are what outwardly defines or codifies right and wrong. In secular society it is more complicated. The short hand, would be defining the external moral frame, in terms of secular law. To an extent this can be accurate, but it is less than complete and sometimes counterintuitive. So added to this, are too often presumed universal axioms, such as “don't harm others,” or “don't infringe on the rights of others to be.” Finally, we have simple social pressure. This would be a secular amalgam to church dogma, in that it is more relative than any other aspect of moral framing. What it really boils down to is conformity. We want to fit in, so this aspect of morality often becomes assumed.

Internal moral frames, on the other hand, are that which are inherent to the individual. There is ample evidence that some aspects of morality, may well be genetic, or evolutionary in nature. This does not mean that that they are universal. Indeed, I accept that they may well be genetic, but would tend to reject the idea that they are evolutionary, simply because evolution implies that they are species wide. Being a Christian, I must also point out the biblical support for this aspect of internal moral framing. Rather than accepting dogma as the end all of moral framework, many Christians believe that the conviction of the Holy Spirit is the progenitor of our conscience, I take this a step further and claim it as the progenitor of our internal moral framework. Some, though certainly not all Christians would probably agree with me.

The thing is, that our inherent moral frame is also influenced by environmental conditioning. This makes for a messy, complicated situation. Indeed, this alone is a good argument against attempts to instill universal mores and external frames. Individuals are just that, individuals. We all react differently to the same stimuli, because we are different. While the internal moral frame certainly takes social pressures and religious dogma (for those who are religious), it is in no way dependent on them. In effect, the difference is that one should reject the idea that social pressures or religious dogma define morality. Instead, we should define morality as what we know inherently, to be right and wrong. This is not parsing it as fine as it seems and I did mention that to me, this is largely a semantic discussion.

To use the example of sexuality. Even in today's largely secular society, there is a strong tendency to equate "loose" sex, with immorality and not just in religious circles. This would be an example of what I consider an amoral ideal. Very few people in todays society, actually manage to live up to that ideal, even if they believe that not doing so is immoral. So you have people committing an act that they believe is immoral. What this in turn does, is weaken their adherence to the rest of their moral frame. In effect, it become easier to commit immoral actions, thus making morality essentially meaningless.

Ideally, morality should be the ultimate governor of our actions. Above the law, above social pressures, above dogmatic framing, morality should be the overwhelming control on our actions and behavior. For it to be effective in this regard, it by needs, must come from within. Anything that weakens it, makes it easier to commit acts that we consider immoral, essentially weakening our discernment of what is truly right and wrong. Morality must come from within. Whether through the conviction of the Holy Spirit, through genetic inputs, through environmental conditioning, or, as I believe, through all of the above, the moral framework, constructed from within, is a far more powerful governing force than any external construct can ever be. Yes, this is indeed moral relativism, but to date, no one has really come up with a coherent argument for why moral relativism is actually a bad thing. For that matter, no one has really come up with a coherent argument that morality is anything but relative or in any way universal.

Biology, Morality and Religion

I would like to thank Oran Kelley, of Adverse City, for sending in this essay. There has been a lot of exhaustive discussions on this topic at a number of Seed magazine's science blogs. I have noticed Oran's very thoughtful comments on many of those comment threads and was quite pleased, when he agreed to put up a post here.

From Oran's site;
In the way far north, one man attempts to stay connected with his intellect, his culture and his sanity.

I have been invited to write on this topic by our kind host here. The invitation stemmed from some discussion surrounding the "New Atheist" writings of people like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.

These are different writers who have written different books, but I feel that there is fairly good reason to speak of them as a sort of movement. But we should remember (I should remember) as we move along that these writers have written distinct books and what is attributable to one is not necessarily attributable to them all.

The focus here, as it has been in most discussions I've seen on the web, will be on Dawkins. Dawkins' book The God Delusion was published in 2006 and has sold more than a million copies to date, which is remarkably successful for a book advocating atheism or for a book written by a scientist. If the goal of such a book as this is to nudge public discussion in a particular direction, then Dawkins has succeeded. It has been a long time since atheism has gotten as much sustained and serious attention in the popular media as it has over the past year or so.

Before I venture forth, I'd like also to point out that this is an essay--there are lots and lots of assertions here without real evidentiary support. But this is in keeping with the tradition of the essay. So how does one evaluate these assertions? Not by rejecting them because there is insufficient evidence provided here. In fairness, take a minute to think about a) what might have prompted me to write what I have and b) what specific arguments you may have against my assertion, and if you think you've got a valid criticism or something that could be interestingly hashed out: post away!

*********

The rise of the "new" atheism has a lot to do with the political changes wrought by the election of an evangelical christian as President of the United States, the attack on the US by Islamic fundamentalists on 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the general divisiveness that has arisen in US politics through all this and two very closely contested presidential elections.

And Dawkins's book is not at all immune to this air of contention. In fact, Dawkins wrote a much-publicized (metaphorical) call to arms against religion in the immediate aftermath to 9/11. And while The God Delusion has been a great success in many regards, some have pointed out a certain contemptuous disregard--by which I mean not just a lack of respect, but also a lack of attention--for his subject in the book, religion.

And that is more or less where I come in: complaining about the fact that The God Delusion reads more like wartime propaganda than the work of a prestigious scientist helping the public delve into a difficult subject. Not to say that Dawkins ought not have an agenda, but to say he ought to pursue that agenda while upholding a certain level of scholarship.

Here is Dawkins in a atheist FAQ:

Q: There are billions of people across the world following their faiths and living their life. How do you describe them?

A: Of course, there are billions of people living their religious life and most of them are harmless people. But, they are carrying a virus of faith with them, that they transmit from generations to another, and could create a 'epidemic' of faith any time. As I said, I am a kind of person who cares about the truth and also want to see people following the truth. The truth is not a revelation, but truth that has been established though evidences and repeated experiments.

And what repeated experiments have established the existence of this "virus?" Metaphor has been a powerful force in Dawkins' career, for both good and ill^*1. And here I think we see it used decidedly for the ill. Religion is to be thought of as a force of nature, as a thought contagion colonizing human minds because otherwise we'd be forced to ask, "What good does religion do that so many people adhere to it?" And that, for very unscientific reasons, is a question Dawkins just doesn't want asked.

One of the "goods" that religion has traditionally been thought to deliver is "morality." Dawkins also specifically addresses this issue in the same FAQ:

Q: Religious people claim they derive their morality from religion. Where from an atheist derive his morality?

A: Religious people do not derive their morality from religion. I disagree (with the interviewer) on this point. Almost all of us do agree on moral grounds where religion had no effect. For example we all hate slavery, we want emancipation of women - they are all our moral grounds. These moral grounds started building only a few centuries ago and long after all major religions were established. We derive our morality from the environment we live in, Talk shows, Novels, Newspaper editorials and of course by the guidance of parents. Religion might only have a minor role to play in it. An atheist derives his morality from the same source as a religious people do.

This actually makes for a pretty good starting point for a discussion of biology, morality and religion.

First off, I'd agree to some extent that people do not derive their morality from religion. Religion is the invention of man, and whatever is in it, whatever it inculcates or demands of us, man put in there. And so we'd have to look elsewhere for the ultimate origins of our morality.

But this does not mean that most people have not derived their morality through religion; that religion may be an important delivery system for things like morality.

Secondly, I'd point out that this passage represents an interesting departure from some of Dawkins' earlier assertions on this subject: there is no mention of innate empathy, which figured prominently in the last chapter of The God Delusion.

I don't have a copy on hand so this summary from John Hick will have to serve will have to serve :

Richard Dawkins, in his widely read book The God Delusion speaks of 'our feelings of morality, decency, empathy and pity . . the wrenching compassion we feel when we see an orphaned child weeping, an old widow in despair from loneliness, or an animal whimpering in pain' and 'the powerful urge to send an anonymous gift of money or clothes to tsunami victims on the other side of the world whom we shall never meet' (215); and he has his own biological explanation of this. He lists four Darwinian sources of morality. One depends on what he calls 'the selfish gene'. He says that 'a gene that programs individual organisms to favour their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit copies of itself. Such a gene frequency can increase in the gene pool to the point where kin altruism becomes the norm' (216). Hence, he thinks, parents' care for their children, both in humans and other animals. This care is undoubtedly the case. But whether an individual 'selfish gene' wants to benefit itself by making unconscious statistical calculations about how best to do this, seems to me to be suspiciously like an anthropomorphic fairy tale. And indeed how does it benefit an individual gene that there exist many copies or near copies of itself? The second Darwinian source of morality, according to Dawkins, is reciprocal altruism: 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours'. This occurs not only within but between species. 'The bee needs nectar and the flower needs pollinating. Flowers can't fly so they pay bees, in the currency of nectar, for the hire of their wings' (216-7). This is the basis of all barter, and ultimately of the invention of money.

So, why doesn't innate empathy figure prominently in the 2007 FAQ? Dawkins certainly still believes in it, I'm sure, as do I. But I think Dawkins may have come around to my point of view as to how important it is since he wrote the last chapter of his book. What would now be considered abhorrent practices--like slavery, the mass execution of war prisoners, the suppression of women, the exposure of children, the wholesale rape and slaughter of non-combatant populations--all of these things thrived for quite a long time before the emergence of a sensibility which could effectively suppress them.

In other words, morality is historical to some extent: what we consider abhorrent was once considered acceptable or even praiseworthy. So, apparently, a fairly broad variety of human practice can be accommodated to our innate altruism. The line that Dawkins has previously taken up, that religion is the "root of all evil" so to speak in that it allows us to rationalize our behavior when it defies our altruistic instincts is only half true.

Human beings have a great many other innate drives aside from empathy. Some of them lead to behavior that we would regard as selfish, acquisitive, violent, and paranoid. So when I ask myself whether or not I should seduce my neighbor's attractive wife, my empathy for the plights of the cuckold and the guilty wife are only part (and perhaps a small part) of what goes into the moral calculus behind the decision.

So, moral decisions often involve a conflict amongst our instincts and between our instincts and our reasoning abilities. As Dawkins would readily point out, one role that religion has undoubtedly played over the millennia is as a mechanism by which one set of instincts may be assuaged when we choose to follow another, conflicting set of instincts.

But, this critique of religion has its limits. First, religion is but one mechanism that can accomplish this task of adjudicating between our good and bad angels. When the Mongols swept over the Eurasian landmass, destroying entire cities and spreading terror over two continents, they were not driven by religion, and they did not justify themselves through religion. Religion is just one way for a people to justify the rape, murder, dispossession and even elimination of other peoples.

Also, the mechanism works both ways: I can tell myself that though burning people alive for what they believe seems brutal, when it is done for the greater glory of god it is alright. But I can also tell myself that though my selfish instincts cry out when I give my wealth to the poor, that I am paving my way to heavenly rewards by doing so. The idea, which Dawkins endorses, that "you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion," is just plain wrong, and oversimplified wrong at that.

People commit evil acts, even atrocities, out of all kinds of motives, some evil, some mistaken. And religion, as I point out above, doesn't just cut in one direction: toward justifying evil. It justifies all kinds of acts, kindly and self-sacrificing ones as well as vicious. The balance between the two is dictated not by religion itself, but by our nature and the nature of our social behavior.

What Dawkins and his adherents should acknowledge on the point of human morality is that all the elements at play here--empathy, altruism, reason, greed, glory-seeking, selfishness, xenophobia, brutality and rationalization--all of these things logically precede religion.

While morality can indeed be said to derive ultimately from some of our kinder social impulses, what we recognize today as our "moral consensus" does not just arise naturally from innate empathy. That moral consensus has a pretty specific and well-known history.

Religion in some sense of the word--animism, ancestor worship (?)--no doubt precedes civilization. And the impulses that drove these earlier forms of religion are doubtlessly still important in people's personal adherence and belief, but as Dawkins has pointed out elsewhere, his real beef is with more developed forms of religion. The kind that arose with civilization.^*2

The rise of the city took us out of the simple contexts (small bands of related individuals with more or less constant mutual surveillance and strong hierarchal relationships) in which our instincts--selfish, empathetic, greedy, fearful--were a reliable guide to social behavior. As cities grew, with large numbers of unrelated people performing differentiated tasks grew, something that would shape and guide those instincts had to arise with them.

The state and its organized violence (executions, seizing & destruction of property, enslavement, forced exile) were one way of accomplishing this, but attempting to avenge every crime takes up a lot of resources. It is far more efficient to have the people police themselves. Hence the rise of "The Law" (e.g. the Torah) as a set of rules that not only lay out those practices that will (if discovered) result in immediate stoning, but a set of rules you ought to follow in order to be righteous and deserving in the eyes of the gods (or god).

Religion, therefore, could be quite useful in inculcating forward-thinking behavior among those who were less inclined to it; in regularizing people's expectations of one another; in encouraging solidarity and socially-beneficial self-sacrifice in time of war; in wealth redistribution.

Unfortunately, religion could also put at the service of all the bad motives of those in charge, as well. And it could become the vehicle through which the mania of an individual or a small group could be given the force of an entire society.

Marx famously called religion the opiate of the masses. But it is much, much more than that: it is the hallucinogen of the masses, its stimulant and sedative. Actually drugs are probably too limiting a metaphor: Religion is a mechanism through which the play of reason and instinctive impulses in a large and disparate population can be affected to create outcomes we would not otherwise expect.

Dawkins, no doubt, has plenty of reason to hate religion, but I think this is one that he hasn't openly acknowledged. Religion is to be hated because it throws into high relief the limitations of his own field of study: biology. The virus (or meme) explanation for religion is more or less his white flag. Religion makes it obvious that culture creates forms that are too complex and distinct to explain easily in terms of biology, much as biology creates forms that are too complex and distinct to easily explain in terms of chemistry. Since he is unwilling to admit the limitations of his explanatory tools, Dawkins' only recourse is to the mythological: memes.

But I digress.

One of the things that will no doubt be pointed out is that I have dealt with religion and morality in a very non-personal way--from the perspective of a putative social entity. I take this tack because I think that it is in its social role that I feel religion is primarily important in our world. Religion as a truly and deeply held belief system with all the attendant consolations is important, but, I would argue, for a relative few.

More important is religions role in structuring society and helping create a certain kind of social imaginary. For most people religion is important less on a personal basis but rather on a basis of the fact that it helps create predictable interactions with others. It is less important that I actually believe in a resurrected Christ than it is that I believe that others believe (or at least others will behave much as I do) and that the socially prevalent version of Christianity (which may have little to do with textual Christianity) will serve as a rough framework guiding most people's behavior.

It is only for a select few sensitive and discerning souls that the qualities of the religion itself--its poeticism, its ability to capture and express the human situation, its plausibility, whatever--is a great matter of import. Religion is not one's personal relationship with God. It is one's personal relationship with the mass. Of course, religious people will vehemently deny this. But remember, these are the same people who claim to believe people like Joe Smith.

*********

Our modern sense of morality developed just as the first great challenge to religious belief arose in our civilization. The Enlightenment was inspired largely by the challenge to custom--religious and other customs--that was presented when Europeans encountered civilizations--both ancient and contemporary--that were coherent, accomplished, even noble, but which had no notion of the western god.

The Good Life apparently was not dependent upon one particular religion. And philosophers began working on ways in which morality could be thought about without recourse to revealed truth. Kant's categorical imperative is probably the most famous of these efforts: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

The retort "Why should I?" has never been sufficiently answered.

Ultimately, as Kant intimated in his Critique of Judgment these things come down to an aesthetic judgment on the part of the agent, and that judgment probably comes down to certain inherent capacities we have as well as "talk shows, novels, newspaper editorials and of course by the guidance of parents." But the final outcome of our individual moral judgments ends up being highly contingent, not universal. And even if they were, there is no universal police force enforcing the secular universal law, and the temptation to be a free rider on this moral system is obvious--"let everyone else embody universal law, I will look to myself" would appear to be a highly profitable strategy in a Kantian society.

Thus we have the moral crisis depicted in so much literature created in the late 19^th and early twentieth centuries. Secularism brought Raskolnikov onto the readily imagined horizon of possibilities. It doesn't matter that there will never be many Raskolnikovs in any readily conceivable society, it is the fact that such a man is easily imagined is the key factor.

Now, instead of imagining a moral order shaped by a common, sometimes deeply sincere, sometimes hypocritical belief in religion and religious morality, I imagine a world of moral free agents all susceptible to the same temptation toward low-consequence free-riding as myself. In such a situation defection--acting selfishly rather than morally--seems a more reasonable course.

I should note here that the two social imaginaries I have depicted here--one of Christian regularity; one of moral free agents--always co-existed in Western societies. The key factor is the balance, the relative strength of the two visions. And religion, so far, has been an important factor in managing that balance.

We cannot just rely on our innate empathy to see us through this one, because there are (at least equally strong) innate impulses pulling in other directions. We can't relay on pure reason, either, because a) the moral reasoning vs. amore-propre is always a bad bet from a social perspective; and b) because reason will probably tell us to defect more often than any society can live with.

We have to create social structures and well-accepted guarantors of social reciprocity in order to encourage what we would call morally acceptable behavior and social stability. And it is only through stability that the billions of people who inhabit this earth will have any hope of the good life at all.

The question for activist atheists is what those social structures will look like in the absence of religion. Atheists have to stop thinking about religion as if it were a way of explaining the world the way science is, or as if it were a leach that must be pried from the skin of our culture. It is a social structure with functions. Functions that must operate within the moral universes of illiterate peasants as well as for clever college undergraduates.

Religion is here and has been here for reasons. Whatever its origin, religion has come to serve important functions within human societies. Otherwise it would not be as widely practiced as it is and we wouldn't currently be arguing about whether it is time to jettison it.

I am personally all for moving forward to a post-religious future. I just think we ought to have a cold honest look at what religion is and how it works before we do that. So far, none of the new atheists has gotten very far in doing that.