This is the last post here. Skin Hunger lives on, though, under a new name: Expanding the Proscenium. Please come by and give me your patronage! Please link to the new blog, tell all your friends, etc, etc, etc. It’s going to be fun!
Blogging has been light lately because, well, thinking has been in overdrive. So I may start trying to get out some of the many, many thoughts running through my noggin, in short little bursts, and see how they grow.
Here’s one, flowing out of the last post: “God” isn’t a superstitious proposition. I mean, it can be, but belief in God isn’t, a priori, indicative of a superstitious mindset.
This is one of those cases of two different conversations going on, easily mistaken for each other, in part because there is real overlap. First, there is the the God Hypothesis, which is a philosophical/scientific one — namely, an attempt to explain the origin of the universe/Cosmos as being caused by some intelligence that exists beyond it. As an atheist, of course, I have concluded that I think the idea has significant problems, and thus tentatively reject it. But in and of itself, it isn’t completely preposterous. I just think the other option has more support in what we know about reality at this point.
Superstition is the other conversation. It’s the conversation about religion, and silly beliefs like prayer and miracles and magic and revelation. It goes beyond merely postulating that an intelligence is, or at least might be, responsible for the existence of everything we see — it makes very, very specific claims about the nature of that intelligence and its motivations. It is the preposterous notion that Faith is a means of knowledge, and that miracles and prayer and heaven and hell (and ghosts and goblins and demons and devils and angels and…) are all real things.
Two different levels. I’m firmly against the second one — the superstitious belief, the idea that Faith has any legitimacy. I reject the childish notions of prayer and revelation and miracles and all that nonsense. The first conversation, though, is just deeply interesting — the question of why the Cosmos is here, or even if that’s an intelligible question to ask. If someone happens to side with the God Hypothesis, in the philosophical/scientific sense, well — I think they’re wrong. But I could be the one who is wrong. Mostly, it’s just a fun question to ponder and argue about over coffee or beer.
I think it’s important that, at all times, we realize which conversation we’re actually having. For me, it’s important to remember to, yes, be absolutely firm in my stand against religion, but remember that it is separate from the other discussion about whether some intelligence created the Cosmos.
(Okay, that turned into a bit of a blog break. But I’m back. I think I got overwhelmed with all the things I want to write)
What does it mean when I say “I am an atheist”?
Words are funny ol’ things. We throw them around in conversation with the assumption, usually, that we know what we mean, and that others will know what we mean. But it can be tricky, because words vary in their meanings by context. When I say “I am an atheist,” the meaning depends on what, exactly, we’re talking about.
There’s the philosophical position, of course. For me, that position is best summarized by a chapter title from Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion: there almost certainly is no god. It’s a scientific, agnostic sense of atheism — we can shade the probabilities (much like scientists can decide the chances that there’s an ocean on Europa, say), but knowledge is never completely certain. Nonetheless, I think the facts of the universe, as we understand them at this point, almost certainly point to a universe with no creator or intelligent controller.
Then, of course, there’s your God. Yahweh Allah Jehovah God Vishnu Whoever. They don’t exist. At all. Even if there is some kind of creator being out there, for whatever value that “out there” can have, it ain’t them. The religions of humanity are just that — humanity’s. Our creations. My atheism is pretty damn strong here. I don’t see any reason to think those gods are anything but human constructs. There’s a personal experience issue here, too — I’ve never had Jesus whispering to me, or anything that I’ve been able to interpret as something like that. I don’t see the Plan of some deity at work in my life.
I could still be wrong, but I feel pretty comfortable that it’s a bit like the fact that we could be wrong about the Earth going around the Sun — it’s technically possible, but at this point so unlikely that NASA doesn’t lose much sleep over it. (If you’re religious and can’t fathom how I could be so certain that your God doesn’t exist, that your whole religion is nothing more than human-created myth, I will simply say, “Zeus.”)
So there’s the philosophical/scientific question of a creator being, and there’s the specific stance on human myths. How much I care depends, in part, on which we’re talking about. I really don’t have a horse in the race on the philosophical/scientific front — that is, I’m not particularly wedded to the notion that there is no creator being. It’s mostly just an interesting question, including pondering, without the bias of religion, what such a being might be like, if they exist. But if we’re talking your religion, Christianity or whatever, I care very deeply indeed. The existence of the Christian God, for instance, would be such an affront to any decent set of ethics, that I find the idea deeply repugnant. I not only don’t believe he exists — I really don’t want him to! (If you’re religious and don’t understand why, I will simply say, “Huitzilopochtli.”)
A lot of confusion results when we don’t appreciate those different atheisms. Many religious folk, in particular, often confuse what they see as the “arrogant” dismissal of their God/religion (without ever noticing, of course, that they are just as “arrogant” about other gods/religions) as an arrogant, absolutest stance on the issue of creator in general. I also suspect that there are some atheists like that — so caught up in the “reject a specific mythological construction” stage that they haven’t gone on to the messier, more interesting philosophical/scientific level. It’s good for all of us to remember that those are different questions, though.
There are no Angry Atheists.
Really. I realized this while composing a reply to a comment on the last post.
The idea of the Angry Atheist is founded on a bit of mental shorthand. To help understand it, let’s turn to Fiction. When we talk characters, one thing that gets discussed is how rounded the character is — the usual term is literally “three-dimensional.” There are also, of course, two-dimensional characters. Simplistically, two-dimensional characters are seen as Bad Writing, but that is nonsense. Every story has them — do we really need the full story of the guy who sells the hero his newspaper? — and some really amazing stories have nothing but them (Shakespeare’s comedies, for example).
That’s fiction. In the real world, of course, everyone is a three-dimensional character. The guy selling you your newspaper really is a full human being with his own story, as are you (I mean, heck, you’re the one buying a newspaper. What’s up with that?). But, as Shakespeare noted, all the world’s a stage, and in our daily lives we treat many folk as two-dimensional characters. An excusable action, to an extent — just like a writer doesn’t have the time, nor readers the patience, to get the full life drama of every single schmo who wanders onto the stage, we don’t have time to deal with the full humanity of everyone we meet. In the normal course of events, no harm, no foul.
Not all two-dimensional characters are treated the same. Sometimes a particular character is just there once, to sell the newspaper or whatever, and gets barely a mention. At most you know, say, a man sold the paper. Other times, the character is a little more important, maybe pops up a few times, and we want something more. The newspaper is bought from an elderly Italian gentleman, or a Rastafarian with a lisp, or whatever. One or two characteristics, which could be physical or mental, and we have a marker, a bit of identification. Our newspaper hawker could be angry: “Here’s your damn paper!” Flirty: “Here ya go! And hey, you can be on my front page any time, dollface.” Morbid: “Check out the dead body photo on page six! It’s sweet!”
We do this all of the time in real life, too. People we know, but don’t really know (oh, how the German language would help here!), become this kind of character. We assign a label. The lady at the coffee shop who smiles at all the customers is Nice. The grumpy woman at the DMV is, well, Grumpy. The dude you always see on the bus is Crazy. That atheist questioning your religion? Angry. A characteristic — heck, a momentary expression of a single emotion — stands in for the whole, complex person.
Only, of course, they’re all people. Even if you see them frequently, you only intersect their lives for brief moments, and often at a great distance. You see one moment, one emotion, from a complex human being who has many. Emotions, really, aren’t things — they’re actions. Take PZ Myers, who probably has the strongest reputation as being an Angry Atheist. Only, if you read his blog, you see a lot of other things — geek passions, love, compassion, a strong sense of wonder, a good sense of humor. There’s a lot there. And that’s just his public face, what he cares to share with the world at large. His family and friends no doubt see much more — a whole spectrum of emotions and moods. And they don’t even see the whole picture that is PZ.
It’s like a stereotype, only in a microcosm, one aspect or action being used to describe the whole person. It is, in fact, the basis of stereotyping — you do that the number on a few atheists, say, and suddenly we go from Dawkins and Myers and Hitchens are Angry Atheists to Atheists are Angry.
But if Myers is an Angry Atheist, then by the same accounting all Christians should be Angry Christians.
It’s a mental shortcut. It can be useful, but we see here the problem: it easily falls prey to our feelings about other people. Namely, if we like them, or agree with them, we’re probably more likely to label them something nice; if we don’t, well, they’re assholes. So you see your favorite preacher get angry, but you don’t think, oh, there’s an Angry Christian. But an atheist gets angry, well: Angry Atheist! It can easily, of course, go the other way. None of us get a Get Out of Jail Free Card on this one. It’s a trap all humans can, and do, fall into.
But there are no Angry Atheists. Or any [Insert Negative Emotional State][Insert Group You Want to Slag On]. There’s people, doing and feeling many, many things.
Why does the Angry, Bitter Atheist myth persist? I think it’s because it’s a specialized form of another persistent myth in our culture: the Road to Damascus.
Let’s consider that Angry, Bitter Atheist myth. Call it the House Effect: in popular fiction, an atheist will inevitably be portrayed as being bitter against God and Man and the Universe, most likely because a beloved spouse/grandparent/parent/child (especially child, they just eat that one up) died of cancer/was mangled in a thresher/was run over by a drunk. An atheist can’t merely be someone who intellectually has come to the conclusion that there is no god, and has subsequently gotten on with their life. They have to be actively in rebellion.
I suspect that few myths are more comforting to the believer. It lets them feel good as they sympathize with the person in pain. It reaffirms their provincial view that everyone must really believe in their special god. It also makes the believer feel comfortably superior — after all, they have seen tragedy, too, but they, in their Spiritual Maturity, know that God acts in Mysterious Ways, and always with Love and Wisdom. They accept the cup that the Lord has given them.
We are storytelling creatures, and the urge to fit the details of our lives into Story is irresistible. The story appeals to the Christian mind because the Christian path is largely seen in those terms — Road to Damascus, Amazing Grace, the moment of salvation in the Dark Wood. Atheists must be the same way, right? Only it must be bitter and hurtful, because only that could explain walking away from God’s Love. It’s the Road to Damascus, Fun House Mirror style, everything twisted and upside down. Tragedy fills the heart with bitterness, lets in the Devil, and bam! You have your atheist.
In both cases, note, the story not only simplifies things and makes them easy to convey — the stories serve to reinforce Christian belief.
Our journeys, of course, are never that simple. I doubt anyone ever became a nonbeliever merely because of tragedy. Sure, tragedies can have a way of focusing your attention on some of the contradictory aspects of faith, but the journey to publicly proclaimed atheism is usually a long one, made up of many small epiphanies, rather than one large one. It’s emotional and intellectual. It’s complex and messy and looking back it’s impossible to point to any one thing as “the thing that made me an atheist.” That’s true even in my case, growing up as I did with only the vaguest notion of “God.” How much more so for believers who lose their faith!
A case in point: Darwin and his agnosticism. There is a story that goes like this: Darwin left Christianity because of the death of his beloved daughter Annie in 1851. The Rough Guide to Evolution has put together an, er, rough outline of the idea in print and online, in preparation for a full-blown attempt to refute it. What’s interesting here is that it isn’t just some creationist attack at work — it’s an idea that’s been pushed by people like Carl Zimmer. The storytelling urge is hard at work, searching for the angle to make his agnosticism a rippin’ good yarn. I can’t help but wonder if the Angry, Bitter Atheist myth is so strong that, almost unconsciously, many of these writers, even if not Christian themselves, naturally gravitated towards the death of Annie. The long intellectual journey that Darwin underwent in his lifetime is simplified into an event — Annie’s death drove him away from his faith.
We are all storytelling creatures, and the urge can get the best of all of us. In the case of Darwin, the emphasis on Annie is a bit odd. It no doubt had an effect on him. It no doubt helped crystallize some of his thinking. But Darwin had been on a long and complex intellectual journey for years. His faith had never been particularly strong, and his scientific research had served to challenge it again and again. Annie’s death was, at best, one small piece in a very large puzzle. And so it is with all lives.
The Road to Damascus myth is, a I think, a dangerously seductive one, in any of its forms. It simplifies the complexities of life into a cartoonish form. We’d do well, I think, to cast it aside, and find a different way to tell rippin’ good yarns about ourselves.
Having the maintenance guy in my apartment is always an adventure. Tends to talk a lot, in rambling waves of disconnected verbiage. He’s also chronically unable to speak and work at the same time. The dude was in my apartment for four hours. To fix the door, and a burner on the stove. Four. Hellish. Hours.
But it gets better. Because amongst all that disconnected verbiage, I’m always guaranteed to get a good portion of Christian Talk, accented with a dollop of Smug Superiority. It always starts the same — me and maintenance man, see, are united in one thing, which is a certain amount of scorn for the landlady, who is [long series of possibly slanderous insults redacted].
See, thing is, she’s a Christian, too. Only he gets his smug on for that — he’s been Christian longer, and thus is Further on the Path. This is what he told me last time. She’s like, ya know, immature in Christ or something. This time he was telling me how she’s a backstabbing bitch, and him, well, he always remembers that someone else pays the price for his actions, ya know, that guy on Calvary and all, and he’s gotta think what would Christ do, and be that. So he’s like a fucking saint or something, ya know? Because Jesus died in agony for him, and he’s not going to let the dude down, unlike that stupid backstabbing bitch.
Four hours. The Christian thing just keeps coming up. It wanders in and out of the conversation, in between bouts of cussing and detailed descriptions of what large guns on Navy ships can do to another ship. Or a person. He seems to know a disturbing lot about that, but then he’s a Vietnam vet. I just wish he didn’t cackle so much when he’a describing it. Something about the partly toothless grin just makes it downright creepy.
I’m stunned into silence. I want to counter the casual Christian superiority. I want to counter the easy way he conflates “Christian” and “Good,” and keeps bringing up God in my apartment. But I’m a coward today. Maybe because it’s the maintenance guy. There’s no telling what damage he could do if he wanted. And I just want the damn door fixed already, before even more roaches move in. And so I hate myself more and more, letting this little man exercise his superiority complex in my home. I know I’m being a coward, but I just want this whole thing over. It’s my day off! After several long, exhausting shifts! And it’s being taken over by this, this troll, this twisted little man cackling like a demon! I have no food in my apartment that won’t involve the stove. I need him done and gone so I can go get some. So I nod my head, ignore parts of the conversation, bite my tongue, and try not to encourage him. Coward. This is my home, and I’m letting this bastard profane it with his ugly religious talk.
Next time, I swear, The God Delusion is going to be sitting out, right in the open, with maybe a neon sign flashing and pointing to it. Yeah, that’ll show him.
Vjack of Atheist Revolution tackles, with some help from George Carlin, the concept of national pride today in Atheist Revolution. It really is a silly thing. I’m an American because, lo these many years ago, one American fucked another American. There’s not much personal accomplishment in that.
Mostly, though, I’m reminded of what a poison that nationalism is — or any tendency towards pride based on mere accidental group membership (yes, I’m looking at you, religion, because the vast majority of religious folk are born into their religions). Certainly, there’s many things I like about being an American. Despite our problems, we have a lot of beauty in this country. Good things have been done here. I can’t, though, take responsibility for those good things, because I wasn’t there. I didn’t send men to the Moon. I didn’t help liberate France. I didn’t invent the light bulb.
This does actually suggest a corollary — I also didn’t enslave blacks, or slaughter native tribes. I didn’t exploit child labor in hellish factories. Hell, even my family didn’t do that stuff — we weren’t in this country until most of that stuff was a done deal. National Guilt is just as stupid as National Pride.
That doesn’t mean that it isn’t damn important to be aware of all those things — the good things, and the bad things. History properly understood can help us act better in the present. But they aren’t our accomplishments or our sins. They belong to other people. We have plenty of our own, current sins to work on, right here; and plenty of potential for amazing accomplishments, right here.
So today I won’t be proud. But in my heart I will honor the great accomplishments of Americans before me, including that crazy group of folk who decided to start this whole experiment in the first place, and I’ll reflect on the times that folks got it wrong and terrible things happened as a result. And I’ll find joy in being an American, because it really is a bit of all right, this country of mine.
Via Pharyngula, this wonderful video of Richard Feynman explaining his take on the “Big Questions”:
As Myers notes, it’s the only rational view of the universe. But I’d add something more to that — it’s the only view that can lead to real, honest joy and happiness. It’s letting go of the childish, simplistic need for certainty — and for someone to take care of your troubles for you — that can really lead to happiness. Not knowing, you are free to explore, and that exploration is the best reason for getting up in the morning.
I often think that the so-called “Big Questions” — Why are we here? What is the meaning of Life? etc, etc — are mostly chimeras, things that take us away from simply dealing with what is, and the joy of working to understand it. We have enough to learn without wasting time on such vague, self-serving questions.
S. and I are at this diner in downtown Tucson, a kitschy place popular with the hip college crowd. It’s one of those places with lots of linoleum, and worn red vinyl in the booths. Shiny metal counters and napkin dispensers glint in the fluorescent lights. This is no Johnny Rocket’s or 5 And Diner, corporate 50s chic to cater to the family nostalgia demographic. The fading is a bit too real, the small tears in the seats too genuine, for that. It’s genuine fake, the Real Faux Deal. It’s been faking since before your time, been faking so long it has become a real thing. The main attraction, aside from the delightful “dive” ambiance, is that it is open 24 hours, and offers the chance to eat huge bowls of cereal at 3 A.M.
It’s the mid-90s, S. and I are coworkers, and we have come here to have a Conversation. At this point in my life, I’m more than a little lost. I’ve face-planted on the whole life thing. I’m in the Dark Wood, a poor wretch, yada yada yada. I’m pretty sure I don’t believe in God — but I really, really want to at this moment, remembering how I almost had myself convinced, back in high school, that I had found an answer and some peace — though I had found no such thing. I’ve convinced myself that my doubts now are a sign of weakness. Recently, I had read a couple of books that made me very angry — an essay collection by Harlan Ellison (how his famous anti-Christmas article pissed me off!) and Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World. Both are reminding me of skepticism and asking questions, and damn all if I’m having any of that.
(Later, I will realize that reading The Demon-Haunted World was a turning point for me — from that point forward, I will always have Sagan in my head, whispering questions, and worse, suggesting that it’s okay. It will be years before I fully get that.)
So here is S., my coworker. She’s beautiful, she’s hip, she’s smart, she’s funny. A blond tomboy, careless in her appearance, a haunter of thrift stores. One of her favorite shirts is a UPS shirt she found at Value Village. She’s kind and sweet and listens with an almost scary intensity. You don’t talk with S. — you converse with her, long rambling conversations that cover all the bases, in depth, with lots of laughter throughout. She’s one of those people who seems to almost genetically have her shit together. It’s an illusion, of course. I’ll find, with time, that she has the same problems with that as any of us do. But right now, in this diner, she seems to be a Totally Together Person.
And this Gregory of the mid-90s is all about the gurus. My whole conscious life has been a search for a guru, a person with the answers. A person to save me, to fix the problems of my life, make it all better, iodine, band-aid and a kiss. My romantic life has been a shambles, since I’m always searching for the Magical Woman who will heal me (except for that one time, when I searched for, and found, a bit of poison in female form…). In high school it was B., and the brush with Evangelical Christianity. There was P., and the way I pushed her away with my desperate, needy clinging. There were others, too, the non-romantic relationships, almost always women, often ones I was attracted to. It’s part hormones, part the guru thing, and part my inability to have decent relationships with other men. Because there is always that — I get along better with women, and most of my closest friends have been women.
Anyway. S. I’m a little keen on her, and a lot lost, and searching for that guru. And here she is, in her favorite joint, ready and willing to talk. A Christian. Deeply so. Campus Crusade so. Mission to that heathen land, New Zealand, so. Fact is, that part is bugging me. I have a huge problem with that. I hate Campus Crusade and their ties to right wing extremists. I hate the whole missionary thing. Rational Gregory is already being birthed at this point, and he cringes at all that. And yet. She’s got it all together. She’s happy, she’s relaxed, she seems to know what she wants from life. She’s grounded. She must know Something. Teach me, Guru, teach me! Heck, I think, drowning out the skeptical questions in my head, maybe it’s even that Christianity thing. Maybe I’m missing something, my smarty-pants intellect getting in the way and keeping me from seeing the Truth.
So I’m telling S. about this book I found, an old, faded paperback of Asian religious literature — one of those very Eurocentric affairs, the ones that point to the whole continent of Asia like it’s one cultural group, so that you have Buddhist hymns along with Sufi poets and everything else in between. One of the poems is by Rumi, about Judgment Day, and it has me thinking. It’s long lost to my memory, but I remember it talking about being called to give an accounting of one’s life. I’m being just plain honest when I say that, at this point near the end of the millennium, the accounting on my life is a bit worrisome. I pour my heart out, in a breezy, vague sort of way, and admit that I find myself wondering if that whole Jesus thing might have something to it.
Funny thing is, I don’t remember what she said. I remember that she was sweet and kind, and that we laughed a lot. I remember that she didn’t really push the evangelism, just spoke simply about what she felt and believed. The specifics are lost to me. I mostly remember the scene, in that trashy dive that was real faux. I was really searching for truth, but also not really doing so. I was trying to get answers from someone else, trying to recapture something from my past that had never really been All That to begin with. Chasing a bit of nostalgia for what had never really been, and knowing it deep down. And yet, at the end of day, I was still really, honestly searching. I was being fake and real at the same time. It would be years before the real stuff became more earnest, before I could start to put aside the quest for Truth, the endless search for my magic guru, and begin to really look, myself, for truths. Looking back, though, I know that she never could have convinced me, no matter how hard she tried. Questioning was already part of me, something I couldn’t turn off, no matter how hard I tried.
The ever wonderful Greta Christina has an article up on Alternet, “Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism?“ It’s a good read. Almost as interesting, given its appearance on a non-atheist website, are the comments. It’s the range you’d expect — some atheists chiming in, and lots of theists of variest stripes, including many who apparently had difficulty with the simple English sentences of her article. At least, they missed the point entirely. It’s all there — atheists are fundamentalists, atheists are intolerant, atheism is just another religion. Yada yada yada.
But that’s not what primarily interests me.
A pattern emerges in many of the anti comments. It comes in a few related forms: the idea that to think you are right is intolerant. Sometimes it’s merely expressed as the infamous “Shut up!” argument (one that Greta has attacked on her blog). Sometimes it’s in the odious post-modern “all belief systems are equally valid” argument. You can undoubtedly find other variations on the page (one commenter, as I recall, actually explicitly attacked the idea her line about it being okay to think that you are right). Having an opinion — and, horrors, thinking that opinion reflects the truth — is bad, bad, bad!
But, of course, as a matter of practice we all think we’re right about the things we believe in. And yes, you post-moderns most of all (Seriously, you can’t out rigid the rigid beliefs of a post-modern academic). We all have our beliefs. We have reasons for our beliefs. Those reasons, and the beliefs themselves, are certainly all fodder for challenge. That’s as it should be. I think there’s damn good reasons to think that, as Dawkins put it, there is almost certainly no God. There’s some few folk who disagree. Good. Let them speak their mind, let me speak mine. Let us listen to each other. That’s the marketplace of ideas. That’s tolerance. Listening to other people. Not necessarily agreeing with them, but listening to them, supporting fully their right to speak, and really trying to understand them and consider their propositions. That’s all. I don’t have to think you’re right. You don’t have to think I’m right. It’s okay, really. As John Stuart Mill so eloquently argued, in the open marketplace of ideas all ideas get a strong hearing, and the best ideas have the best chance of rising to the top (and, conversely, the worst ideas have the best chance of being eliminated).
Why, really, is that so hard for so many people to understand?
