It's Easy If You Try

-by 'tamerlane'

Define "Normal"
In his essay 'Imagine No Religion', Edgar Dahl confirms John Lennon's observation that imagining a world without religion "isn't hard to do." It's especially easy for Dahl, who was born & raised in communist East Germany, where religious belief was virtually non-existent.

Dahl begins his essay, which is one of several in 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, by having his fellow ex-DDR citizens responding to a German census question, "Do you believe in God" with "No, I’m normal." And, while Dahl's pejorative use of the word "normal" may raise hackles, it does expose the hubris of believers who assume their way of thinking is inherently "normal".

How to Kill God in One Easy Step
For half a century, the Warsaw Bloc served as one, giant social experiment. Generations of eastern Europeans were raised and lived in a society devoid of religion. Those ancient pagan traditions, once reworked into the Christian Nativity, were reworked yet again into the secular "Winterfest". Most importantly, children were not indoctrinated in religious belief or ritual. In Dahl's world, only a very tiny, fringe minority claimed "to be in contact with gods, demons, and other beings no one has ever seen." Dahl and the other 98.7% of the population lived perfectly normal, fulfilling lives that did not include a god.

Although church activities were constrained, and atheism proclaimed, religious practice was never forbidden in the East. Even if you faced a certain amount of derision and ostracism, you were free to openly worship. Yet conversion was virtually nil in the East. In a society where the existence of God was not a given, and worship not an integral part of culture, practically nobody experienced Road to Damascus moments.

Nor has twenty years under the completely free, officially "Christian state" of the German Federal Republic changed anything. As the census numbers show, former East Germans are still perfectly content to remain god-free. Herein lies a dirty little secret the communist leaders understood well. To get religion to fade away, you don't need to ban it, you only need to stop propping it up.

Conversion of the majority is vital for a religion to survive. Christianity would still be a minor Jewish sect had it not been for Paul’s "infectious" zeal for proselytizing the entire world. No religion can perpetuate without coopting the workings of society and assimilating everyone into its status quo.

Expand or Die
This fact is borne out by cults, which must isolate themselves to survive. Had the Mormons remained in upstate New York, or made it out to San Francisco as planned, instead of getting stuck in the desert, they'd be an historical footnote today. The LDS, whose beliefs and practices strike standard Christians as decidedly "abnormal", can only thrive where three-quarters of the population are adherents.

The grand social experiment of the Warsaw Bloc proved that, unless a society pro-actively imposes religious belief on its members, most crucially on its children, and establishes religious practice as the norm, people do not, on the whole, spontaneously find belief in deities.

For any social behavior, there's a tipping point beyond which it cannot long exist. In Europe, religion is well past the point of no return. The levels there of "irreligion", defined as including atheism, deism, nontheism and agnosticism, are striking:

Country Irreligious

Sweden 83%
Denmark 80
Norway 78
Czech 74
France 73
UK 71
Finland 69
Netherlands 66
Albania 63
Belgium 61
Hungary 59
Slovenia 59
Spain 59
Germany 57
Switzerland 56
Slovakia 51

Serbia 45
Austria 42
Ireland 42
Croatia 30
Greece 30
Portugal 27
Italy 26
Poland 23
Romania 18

The real story may be more pronounced, as in many countries, people give only lip service to God. Spain, where four decades of fascist/catholic oppression was lifted in 1975, has exhibited the most dramatic apostasy. Today, barely 19% of Spaniards are practicing Christians, with an average age of 50 for supplicants. Ireland, not surprisingly, lags behind the rest of Western Europe. But even there, the loosening of religious orthodoxy portends that nation's inevitable loss of religious sentiment.

God on the Run
These trends conflict with a central tenet of belief. If God, through an assortment of tangible or metaphysical channels, makes His presence known to each individual, why does He do so exclusively in cultures where His existence has already been declared by mortal authorities? If belief in God was somehow the "norm" for a human being, then believers would have popped up like mushrooms in Eastern Europe once anti-church regimes had been overthrown. Similarly, the removal of the oppressive Franco regime in Spain, with its enforced state Catholicism, should not have precipitated a drastic drop-off in worship.

The standard rejoinder is that conventional theist practice is metamorphosing into a nuanced, and ultimately more profound, deism. Which to a certain extent is undeniably true, and, all in all, is an improvement for individuals and societies alike. Whether this trend will stabilize at deism, or will continue to plummet into general non-belief, is a question that won't be fully answered for decades.

One factor that reflects unfavorably on the prospects for a sustainable & robust deism is the tendency for deists to raise agnostic children, who in turn tend to raise atheists. This slippery slope is recognized by the traditional churches, who fight mightily to stop the slightest drift from orthodoxy.

Yet deism truly is the last resort for belief in a god. Ever since we first created them, we've had to continually relocate our gods, as our expanding understanding of our world exposed their former abodes to scrutiny. From Mount Olympus or a strange box inside a temple, then to (the) heaven(s), our deities were repeatedly uprooted, driven to increasingly ethereal homes. God has now arrived at His last stop, a non-physical dimension which, because it is unobservable, immeasurable and completely undetectable, offers Him eternal sanctuary from the prying eyes of Science and Reason.

Common Ground - For Now
For much of this ongoing divine exodus, the Deist, the Agnostic and the Atheist can travel in reasonably harmonious company-if we resist the urge either to convert or to marginalize the other. "Official" religion, whatever its irrefutable value to early civilization, is of no further use to any of us. In ever greater numbers-in modern societies-former practitioners of the public religion are turning to a private, personal deity for meaning and sustenance. In ever greater numbers-in modern societies-people are discovering they can lead perfectly happy and meaningful lives without resort to any deity at all. These trends can only be reversed through stifling Science and Reason, and by reimposing an official religion. Such desperate counterattacks, which are but the death spasms of orthodoxy, can be observed today.

I'm Normal...err...Okay, You're Okay
Whether, in the aftermath of the demise of traditional religion, the majority of people will embrace deism or atheism, remains to be seen. If the former, then it will continue to be normal (sic) for a person to believe in a god. Indeed, the believer usually claims that belief truly is the "natural" state for a person-that belief in a god is a prerequisite to a purposeful and ethical existence. That claim is belied, however, by the steadily growing ranks of nonbelievers, like Dahl and yours truly, who find it very easy to lead purposeful, ethical lives without a god. And we feel perfectly normal doing so.


(c) 2009 by 'tamerlane.' All rights reserved.

Go, God, Go.

This post is from my "other" blog. that I don't quite know what to do with. I want it here too.

Atheism fascinates me. I both admire and pity atheists. Admire, because I think it takes a huge reservoir of faith to nullify a first cause. Pity because among atheists there often seems an overriding desire - an obsession really - for all things to be rational and sensible. Though, rationality is - thank God - the primary impulse of our age - it has not won out entirely. An entirely rational- and almost certainly meaningless - world sounds like hell to me. Mystery has its place.

Among the most vocal atheists, the determination to disprove God is elevated to...well...a holy war. This war never seems to escape its real subtext - which is a distaste for, resentment of, and condescension toward religion. Christopher Hitchens book God is Not Great openly states this bias in the subtitle: How Religion Poisons Everything. It is an astute and compelling book. The attacks on religion are mostly deserved. Religion is full of barbarity. But a thoughtful theist comes away with no good reason to stop being a thoughtful theist. A deeper reading of the book, with just a smattering of knowledge about Hitchens, renders the entire thing an obvious exercise in alcoholic defensiveness.

Edgar Dahl's piece - Imagine No Religion - falls squarely into the Fight Religion or Fight God conundrum in the "Atheist community". Dahl condescends to religion - of course- then makes the usual arguments against the existence of God. The arguments are good. But he just doesn't get it. His reasons for arguing against religion and God; morality is not contingent on religion and belief in an "old man in the sky" is an absurdity, don't matter to religious and non religious believers. Why don't atheists see this? Smart people can easily see that morality is not contingent on religion. One can also ignore the Bible and still believe in God.

The issue atheists do not understand is that morality and stories are not the reason religion emerged and still exists. Religion acts as an funnel for a basic human desire - the desire to matter. The desire to feel that one's life has meaning which goes hand in hand with the consciousness of self. Religion is expert at infusing meaning. Everyone of us has an internal narrative about who we are. Until atheists come up with a narrative that does not add up to everything is accidental - religion will be just fine.

Additionally, until we evolve past our basic wiring to survive, religion will have a hold on people in that it contextualizes morality. Morality is always in spite of the survival instinct. Giving of what one has, saving a life, not stealing, whatever - all are about setting aside a survival impulse. (Selflessness with ones offspring is a survival imperative.) To be moral, a story helps. Jesus loves me more...karmic debt erased....Without that narrative back up many would, in fact, devolve into chaos at this point in our evolution. We are just not wired to do good for good's sake. Even rich 1st worlders are charitable for a payoff. Often just to feel good. But in the moment of feeling good, the fact of death is lessened. In Los Angeles, David Geffen "survives" by paying for and putting his name on buildings.

Every one of the arguments the Dahl makes is sound. If he expects to argue religion away, every one is irrelevant. In the rational age, many of those who believe do so in spite of the stories religion tells - not because of them.

In fact, the author finds meaning in a lack of God as surely as a theist finds meaning in the a belief in God. His life takes on meaning by being an atheist. The "I know better" sensibility is very satisfying. The "Do you believe in God?" question, followed by "No, I'm normal" in the piece is the perfect expression of this. It is also absurd. The greatest scientific minds of the last 400 years - Newton and Einstein were theists.

AMENDMENT/RE-WRITE here: Einstein could in no way be construed as a believer in a traditional God. He wasn't. The sentence above is incorrect in the broad sense. From Austin Cline of the Atheism Guide: Albert Einstein is often cited as a smart scientist who was also a religious theist, but both his religion and his theism are in doubt. He denied believing in any sort of traditional, personal god and he also rejected the traditional religions built around such gods. On the other hand, Albert Einstein expressed religious feelings. He always did so in the context of his feelings of awe in the face of the mystery of the cosmos. He saw the veneration of mystery as the heart of religion.

Again, mystery has its place.

Newton was a theist in the traditional sense.

As is often the case, South Park nails this in the episode Go, God Go, in which factions of atheists take over a future world. Needing some meaning, they, of course, fight and kill over the correct interpretation of godlessness.

Other than demanding equal treatment - which they have a right to - why do atheists even argue these points? It is not smart. They will never win. They only thing in potential retreat in Western society is the anthropomorphic God. A post-anthropomorphic God will, no doubt, take its place.

Go, God, Go.

I have a piece up about atheism here. Happy weekend to all.

A poll because I am genuinely curious

Which topic do you find most difficult to talk about? Vote here.

President Carter leaves Southern Baptist Convention over sexism.

President Carter has left the Southern Baptist Convention.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives.

Read it all here.

Bad Things, Good People

Bad Things, Good People


This post is an experiment. During last week's atheism discussion, Roberta (bert) recommended Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People. It's been many years since I read "Bad Things", so at my request, Roberta provided extensive excerpts.

Roberta stresses that Rabbi Kushner never attempts to prove God's existence. Yet his book is commonly recommended as a rebuttal to skeptical challenges to belief in a God. For Roberta, Kushner "explains religion and God in such a way that it does not insult my intelligence and my understanding and knowledge of science and presents me with a loving God not the wrathful God of the religion my parents chose for me." For me, Kushner raises more questions than he answers.

To the quandary that provides the book's title, 'how could a loving, all-powerful God allow bad things to happen to good people?', Kushner offers a novel solution: God is loving, but not all-powerful.

Space permits me to cite and respond to but a selection of the extensive quotes Roberta provided. I ask her and you, the reader, to join me in the comments for an extended exchange on Kushner's points.

-tamerlane

***

God's (Non-) Role in Human Misfortune

Our misfortunes are none of His doing ... there are some things God does not control.

There is no message in [natural disasters]. There is no reason for those particular people to be afflicted rather than others. These events do not reflect God's choices. They happen at random....

Here Kushner puts forth the proposition that God is not omnipotent. This is troubling. For, if "God" does not control random misfortunes, who does? A rival god? A bigger god? If so, shouldn't we worship that one instead?


(We are) sustained and comforted by the knowledge that the earthquake and the accident, like the murder and the robbery, are not the will of God, but represent that aspect of reality which stands independent of His will, and which angers and saddens God even as it angers and saddens us.

I derive no comfort from that. Clearly, Kushner does, as he doesn't want his God to be the same harsh, smiting God of the Old Testament. But what sort of deity is Kushner left with, who has no influence over many "independent aspects of reality"?


Nature vs. God

Laws of nature treat everyone alike...Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people.

I don't believe that an earthquake that kills thousands of innocent victims without reason is an act of God. It is an act of nature. Nature is morally blind, without values. It churns along, following its own laws, not caring who or what gets in the way.

Kushner's statement is inconsistent with the bible's depiction of God. Does Kushner ever clarify the relation between Nature and God? Does he view Nature as a sovereign entity, perhaps a rival deity, independent of God?

Kushner's Conception of God

But God is not morally blind. I could not worship Him if I thought He was. God stands for justice, for fairness, for compassion.

Read: "I wish to worship a moral God, therefore I cannot imagine Him as morally blind," and, "I want God to stand for justice, etc., so I will arbitrarily absolve Him of all culpability for injustices, etc."

I have to believe that that the Holocaust was at least as much of an offense to God's moral order as it is to mine, or how can I respect God as a source of guidance?

How exactly does Kushner ascertain "God's moral order?" From scripture? God"s voice in his head? Kushner's own aristotelian conjecture of God's desires?


I would like to think that He is the source of my...sympathy and outrage, and that He and I are on the same side when we stand with the victim and against those who would hurt him.

I'd like to think that I'm better-looking than Brad Pitt, and that I can snag Jennifer Aniston on the rebound. Both I and Kushner are engaging in wishful thinking, and neither he nor I have one scrap of evidence to buttress our hopes.

I wonder why Kushner so badly needs the God he envisions to be the source of his sentiments, or to stand with him on moral questions. Why can't Kushner be the source of his own sentiments; why can't he stand alone in the knowledge he is right?


For me the earthquake is not an 'act of God.' The act of God is the courage of people to rebuild their lives after the earthquake, and rush to others to help them in whatever way they can.

So, God put the good stuff (helping others rebuild after earthquakes) into us, but not the bad stuff (building Treblinkas)? He gets credit for Habitat For Humanity, but no blame for the Khmer Rouge? Similarly, does He merit kudos for butterflies, but no complaints about bot flies?

It seems Kushner is defining "God" not as some external entity, but rather an internal human 'spirit.' Or as Jethro Tull's "My God" puts it: "You are the God of everything / He's inside you and me."


The Purpose of Pain and Suffering

Pain does not represent God's punishing us. It represents nature's way of warning good and bad people alike that something is wrong.

Is suffering, then, a coded message from God? Will Dan Brown write a novel on it?

What specifically is "wrong"? And how can one decipher that message from suffering?

I"m confused: is Nature or God sending the message? Again, Kushner implies that Nature has a conscience will, independent of God's.

Why, then, do bad things happen to good people? One reason is that our being human leaves us free to hurt each other, and God can't stop us without taking away the freedom that makes us human.

Pain makes some people bitter and envious. It makes others sensitive and compassionate.

Or, God could have made us different from the start. Why did He choose to make us capable of hurting each other?

To try to explain the Holocaust, or any suffering, as God's will is to side with the executioner rather than with the victim, and to claim God does the same.

Kushner claims that the holocaust was just a byproduct of the free will God grants mankind, but not His will. Yet man's free will is God's will, so any result of our free will is God's will, too. God chose to make us capable of holocausts.

Purpose of Religion

The primary purpose of religion...was not to put people in touch with God, but to put them in touch with one another...There were rituals for planting and for harvesting, for the winter solstice and for the vernal equinox. In that way, the community would be able to share the most joyous and most frightening moments of life. No one would have to face them alone.

Looking around his world, Homo faber saw things that looked created, were too big for a man to create, and therefore posited the existence of bigger humanoid creators-gods.

Religion and deities are also extremely useful in making people follow the rules when no one is looking. (Well, maybe not for Bristol and Levi.)

As the listed social purposes of religion can be-and are-achieved by means other than religion, is Kushner proposing a secularized set of rituals with an amorphous deity as a mere figurehead? The Unitarian Univeralists are already there.


Tamerlane's Excursus
To reconcile the caring, moral God that Kushner desires with the capricious, vindictive God of the Old Testament (or the one making bad things happen today), Kushner must rely on convoluted logic, special pleading and baseless suppositions. Far too many of his arguments begin with "I'd like to believe..." or "I can't imagine..." Ultimately, Kushner can only achieve his goal by stripping God of His omnipotence, thereby making Him a less-than supreme being.

A much simpler explanation for all this is that no God exists either to create or to lament random suffering. When Kushner asks, "Can you accept the idea that some things happen for no reason, that there is randomness in the universe?" I reply: yes, I can. In fact, I can accept that the entire universe happened for no particular reason.

That Kushner or any other thoughtful, compassionate, and intelligent person even needs a god perplexes me. If Kushner can be at peace with the randomness and meaninglessness of suffering, what's the value-add of an higher power? In any case, Kushner's "God" - powerless over nature, helpless in the face of human suffering-is hardly worthy of the title "god". After purging Him of all involvement, Kushner is left with little more than an Harvey to keep him company.


To Roberta and other searchers of meaning, I recommend Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. From the dust jacket of my copy:

There is only one approach to suffering that is of lasting benefit, Pema teaches, and that approach involves moving toward painful situations with friendliness and curiosity, relaxing into the essential groundlessness of our entire situation. It is there, in the midst of chaos, that we can discover the truth and love that are indestructible.

If you are wary of Buddhism, try the stoics Epicticus or Marcus Aurelius, who have a similar outlook. Neither Buddhism nor Stoicism require a god to explain things. Neither needs to expend any energy explaining God.

The Atheist Delusion.

This post called: Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining is a very good read and gets to the heart of what has bothered me about atheists for a long while - the bigwigs in the "atheist community" are actually just pissed off at religion. This makes sense. Faith is compatible with science..but it doesn't need it. As a believer I know full well how wrong headed and destructive religion has been and often still is. This is not news to many intelligent believers.

I read Hitchens book "God Is Not Great" a while ago. It is, of course, well written. What struck me most about it though is this: It is a rant against religion and doesn't lay a glove on "God".

It is clear that many atheists think those who believe in a "higher power" are stupid. This doesn't bother me because I find the most committed atheists, while occasionally charming, are often belligerently, willfully small minded...so I am fine being called an ignoramus by a loud mouth atheist.

Hawkins, Hitchens and Sam Harris are intellectual beauty pageant contestants. Posing their intellect for the the brainy pageant judges...But they never getting to heart of matters of faith. "I am an atheist because I'm smarter than you...look how stupid religion is...blah blah blah"

Besides, anyone who has dealt with alcoholism can glean what Hitchens is actually railing against. Alcoholism is an amazing affliction. Some of those with it would rather spent endless energy railing against religion than give up drink...an action that would imply a lifetime of intellectual powerlessness in the face of the bottle. In Hitchens case I suspect he'd rather blame human religion than sober up.

Obama has again proven himself to be effete and entitled.

My My My the Obamites are losing it. I have reports from the field that the Obamite commenters are in full melt down mode on most blogs. I don't dip too deeply into the rampant pro obama media and blogs anymore. Life is too short to be bothered with childish fanatics. The most important political take away from Obama's idiotic remarks and weak explanation is this:
More than likely, HE JUST LOST PENNSYLVANIA TO MCCAIN IN THE FALL. The road to Obama actually being in the White House just got much narrower. Florida is out of reach and Ohio looks bad. West Virginia should be put squarely in the GOP column now. I would even say he'll have to do some explaining in Massachusetts. A lot of voters are not going to take kindly to him when reminded of Wright and his San Fran gaffe in tandem.

D.C. and Illinois are probably still safe for Barry.

The list of proofs that Obama is an arrogant, entitled brat is now longer than ever. There are many ways to look at Obama's latest offensive remarks. Let's look at a few:

1. The man is a political fool. The remarks to San Francisco are a violation of politics 101. In 1984 Gary Hart said on the eve of the California and New Jersey primaries to a group of California supporters that they where lucky whereas "he had to go back to New Jersey". Mondale promptly kicked his ass in New Jersey and that was that for Hart. Obama did him three better in Pennsylvania: he insulted gun owners, all religious people, and said in essence to white voters that they were bitter toward anyone "who was not like them". Nice. Especially coming from a man who has gotten quite a lot of white support. Gratitude is not the Obama family's long suit.

2. The statement is just wrong. Pennsylvania is above the national average in income and has made a small, but real come back since Billy Joel's Allentown defined it. This is largely because of the hard work of Pennsylvanians. Read this to get the low down.

3. The statement itself is a compendium of all the latte liberal nonsense that loses election after election for Democrats. One can easily imagine Dukakis opining in a similar way. One can hardly imagine LBJ, FDR, or Bill Clinton being so breathlessly condescending. both because they were politically smarter than Obama and, frankly, they weren't brats.

What he said:

Pennsylvanians were "bitter" and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations"

Wow. Really where to begin? It is an astounding list of insults. The most offensive being that religious people are, in fact, religious to the degree that economic hard times have befallen them. I suppose if one spent 20 years in the "Our Lady of Perpetual Resentment" congregation one might think of any religion not full of anti-American, anti-white clap trap was merely a bromide and sedative. The subtext here is: the faithful are being taken for a ride and are therefore stupid. Obama is saying that the religious "cling" to Catholicism, and the Quaker faith, and the rest out of empty headedness and fear. This statement is appalling and, as a religious person, very hard not to take personally.

He started the nonsense with:
"They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by - it's true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism."

I can only repeat this truism about the Obama Entitlement Express: when it works for him he says "race doesn't or shouldn't matter" When it looks like things won't break his way it's because he's black. The sentiment here is clear: If I lose it is because they were skeptical because I am a "46-year-old black man named Barack Obama". HE can't possibly imagine losing because the people wanted someone else. He still seems stunned that he can campaign in a state and then lose. As he said last summer "to know him is to love him."

The sentence assumes that Pennsylvanians inherently should trust him - why? - I guess because he showed up - and that skepticism is wrong in any case. The idea that voters might ask him to prove that he can deliver never enters the equation for him. I've noticed time and time again that the one question he and his supporters can never answer is "Why should we choose you?". One gets a response, but never an answer.

Let me add: His entire "pitch" is premised on the most basic level of cynicism: people will go with whoever makes them feel good regardless of who they actually are or have been. This is why the speeches are so good and the content of the campaign and its leader are so empty.

I have nothing much to add about "clinging to guns" except it is classic latte liberal foolishness. Gun owners are not particular clingy types in any case. Again: Obama just doesn't get it. In his world people "cling to guns". In the gun owners world it is their right to have them. The reason liberals like his San Francisco audience cannot ever win this argument is because their premise is always gun owners are hicks. Having a reasonable conversation about the 2nd Amendment is off the table immediately. I do not own a gun. I am for much stricter gun control laws. But knowing a few gun owners who are hardly hicks I chafe at lefty remarks like Obama's. Obama telegraphs his contempt for gun owners. I can only hope they respond in the voting booth.

I hold out no hope that the MSM will treat his remarks fairly. The ability to deny facts on the ground when you've invested so much pie in the sky is astonishing. Olbermann will probably make the blogger at the Huffpost the "worst person in the world". Matthews must be in a cold sweat about how to spin this to his fellow Quaker Staters.

The damage is done. Obama has again proven himself to be an effete, entitled, numbskull.