The Elevator Conversation

Hold that 'vator! Hey, I heard you are an atheist. What's up with that? What are you so angry about?

It just means that I live my life on the premise that there are natural laws that are consistent throughout the universe. I could be wrong, but it gives me a lot of peace to view the world that way.

Could you push 6? What makes you so sure? What if there is a hell? A lot of people have believed that for a long time. There is a ton of evidence for God.

Right, I could be wrong, but Christians could be wrong and they should believe in Allah. Or we all could be wrong and we should be sacrificing to Zeus. How do you know? It seems we have a different idea about "evidence". I like to see experiments repeated and verified by more than one person.

That sounds boring.

There are many mysteries in the universe. Science begins with one person having an idea, an inspiration or an insight. They talk about it and find that others have had similar experiences. They keep looking into it, often opening up bigger questions and greater mysteries. If we had all of the answers, we would stop, but we keep exploring. Belief interrupts that process and claims to have an answer, a supernatural cause, "God did it".

Some people say, "God is everything, it is the great mystery", and I'm fine with that as long as you understand you are using "god" as a placeholder for things we don't understand. Just don't get stuck there. When some of that mystery is cleared up, don't argue that it should remain a mystery.

[Elevator stops at third floor. Look at shoes while people get on.]

What about morality? Science tells us nothing about that. Science doesn't create community.

[Sideways glances from the people who just got on]

Maybe. We do know that people need food, shelter and regular rest. We know when things are really bad. Deciding how we feed everyone, how we take care of the sick or what we do with people who want to take more than they give are decisions we need to work on together. I've never seen a concise set of rules that solves all those problems. I have seen technological innovations that could solve them if we wanted to and I've seen belief systems that promote torture, slavery and the death penalty for minor crimes. Show me a system that has consistently held together a moral community and I'll be interested.

Okay, well, my floor is next, I'll have to get back to you on that. But doesn't science say that there was nothing before the Big Bang? Everything has to have a cause doesn't it? Isn't it just an arbitrary choice to say God created everything or that it came from a quantum singularity?

I'll send you a YouTube link about that. That is a great mystery, and I don't understand all the physics behind it, but it still fits with the premise that there are consistent natural laws. The Big Bang started the 13.7 billion years that we experience, that we can see with telescopes. There were natural laws that caused the Big Bang, ones that we are only beginning to understand. It is not arbitrary at all. My search has always been for the real world.

Politicized

Time and Newsweek both had Jesus on the cover for Easter. Newsweek's Jesus was a hipster in New York. The article started with something that I hear a lot and is said as if it is non-controversial. It was something to the affect of "Christianity has become more politicized lately". What I can't figure out is when was it not politicized?

Moses was the lawmaker. He negotiated with a King for the release of his people. Then there were a lot of wars, supported by God until they united into a Kingdom and crowned their own King. The prophets continued to comment on policies of those Kings. In Jesus' time, there were various factions that had opinions about how to either ally with or fight against the Romans. Christianity really began to flourish when it got the support of Constantine and for centuries to be the legitimate King, you had to be crowned by the Pope.

This all finally started to break down in the 16th century, causing a lot of wars. In 1868, the 14th amendment to the United States constitution put the end to the debate about the separation of church and state. So for a few decades, at least in America, Christianity was not all that political.

Atheism Rising

This article came to me via Frank Schaeffer. He is an author and the son of a prominent evangelical from the 60's. He saw, from the inside, how the conservative form of religion we know today was built. He has since renounced that form of religion, but he still hangs on to his belief. He has 1430 Facebook friends and 5 of them liked my comment. They are a tough crowd, so I feel pretty good about that. See what you think.

First the article.

My comment is: Of course it looks different now. Religion constantly changes. Religions that don't change, die. Traditions are a way of passing on the arguments, the unanswered questions that take longer than one lifetime to resolve. The problems arise when the traditions get mistaken for answers.

I followed up a few hours later with this one:

I should add, I'm actually okay with fundamentalism not going away. Religion has been progressively tamed over the centuries and fundamentalism can find a place that is not harmful like it is now. We are doing fine living with all sorts of cultures with some pretty far out ideas all over the world. We just wouldn't consider having people from those cultures run for President if they said their beliefs should be central to the philosophy of the country. We wouldn't consider teaching their creation story as if it is scientifically probable.

 

but no one seemed to care much about it. 

 

 

 

Spring Break

Spring has come early to the North, so I may be spending less time sitting inside at a computer. Not to worry. I have a lengthy piece coming up comparing Saint Thomas Aquinas to Doctor Deepak Chopra that I think you’ll like. I’m also reading Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan and might have a couple things to say about that. Additionally, I’m listening to 16 hours of testimony about teaching Intelligent Design in Kansas schools. That may put me over the edge and I will never blog again, or some good jokes might come out of it. Hard saying.

Foundations of the West

I’m listening to the audio version of Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy for the third time, and I think I’m starting to get it. Will Durant had a great ability to bring history to life. He starts, as many histories of the Western civilization do, with the great Greek Philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. These philosophies managed to survive the fall of the Roman Empire, although sometimes in corrupted or partial forms. They led to the beginnings of the scientific method in Baghdad and the long discussion of science versus faith in Christian Europe. They were taught in every University when the Universities were still run by the Roman Catholic Church.

But I’m not going to defend their impact. That is well documented elsewhere. Instead I want to focus on a few pages from Plato’s Republic that don’t get much air time, but I think have had a huge impact on Western religious organization. In Book III of his Republic, he discusses how society could go about training its next generation. The training would start with the physical, then music and poetry, then arithmetic and geometry and eventually philosophy and logic. Those who excelled in all of these would become the guardians of the State.

Obviously, whoever gets to decide who advances in this system holds a lot of power. He doesn’t say how the first guardians would be picked, but he suggests that they be a class that does not directly own anything. They would lead a simple yet comfortable life, one that could not be corrupted. To get the students to accept the system, he suggests creating a founding myth. This is a rare case where we have a document of the creator of a myth who was planning on using it to justify a political system saying that he is creating a myth to justify a system. His system was never instituted, and his myth did not flourish, but when comparing it to those that did, and knowing that the leaders of those systems read Plato, you gotta wonder. Durant makes that comparison to the Roman Catholic Church in Medieval Europe.

The founding myth, that only the guardians would know was a myth, consists of “metals”. We now have the word “mettle”. A few hundred years ago “mettle” and “metal” were two spellings for the same thing and then “mettle” started being used to mean the strength and fiber of a person, their ability to handle problems. In Plato’s myth, he would tell the students they were born with a specific metal essence; iron, bronze, silver or gold. The metal that you were born with would determine if you would be a farmer, craftsman, warrior or part of the ruling class. The rigorous education, guided by the guardians would determine what metal you had.

Before getting to this brief discussion, Plato presents the system as a merit based system. He is claiming that it is quite logical to proceed through these stages and only bother to continue on to the advanced stages with students that are showing aptitude in the remedial ones. He makes a good point that politicians are skilled at selling themselves and garnering votes. Once elected, they may not be the best at actually administering a nation. If we could all agree on an educational system that could create the type of leaders we all want, that would be wonderful.

But, creating an educational system that we all want would require about the same amount of politics that creating leaders currently involves. Plato no doubt recognized that. He doesn’t say it, but he recognizes that his idea for a school to create philosopher kings won’t be easily accepted and he will need to make up a belief system to get people to accept it. I sometimes wonder if politicians today are thinking along these same lines. When I hear a politician today that I strongly disagree with, I assume they are stupid, crazy and/or lying. When I was younger, I assumed they were part of the Illuminati, Knights Templar or some other conspiratorial organization. With Plato, I can see his intentions were good, so I forgive him for considering the lie. For today’s politicians, I don’t know what to think.

That they are simply lying to benefit themselves does not quite live up to complete plausibility. That they have bought into the reification of the lies they were told is more likely, but still difficult to grasp. With only a little work, I have traced the lies of the threat of communism, that America is a Christian nation and the denial of global climate change. The evidence is not exactly common knowledge but isn’t exactly hidden either. My work was made easier because I began with wanting to agree with the people who I now understand, based on evidence, are right. I also agree with those people that the rich should pay more taxes, that children should be taught to think for themselves, that we are destroying our environment. So, what seemed easy for me might be very difficult for someone who distrusts people with those same values and does not want to end up agreeing with them. But I still find it difficult to grasp that the facts would add up differently for them.  

That the facts are adding up in the same way would mean that they are lying. But that would mean that they are able to speak consistently and vehemently from a point of view that they are always aware is a fabrication. That also seems unlikely. Plato saw the difficulty of holding the myth as a secret that only he and a few others could know. When he is done describing it, he says to his companion in the dialog, “and let us never speak of this again.” 

Olive Branch

Well, I haven’t been giving too much love to the Christians lately, so this week I’ll take a break from history and berating dead people and send you around the web to some of the big players in atheism who have some things to say that might surprise you. Agnosticism is a scientifically valid stance. The Bible is a worthwhile and even important piece of literature. Name calling is not a good strategy.

Let’s start with Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologists and famous atheist. There is a project to get every verse of the Bible on YouTube. Richard Dawkins was invited to participate. They were surprised at his response.

http://www.kingjamesbibletrust.org/news/2010/02/19/richard-dawkins-lends-his-support-to-the-king-james-bible-trust

Bart Erhmann was an early entry into people who write about non-belief in God. In 2011 he received an award for his work. This one is lengthy, you might want to fast forward to the 29 minute mark. He sees himself as a historian who helps to uncover the oppressive uses of the Bible. He says humanism needs to express itself in positive terms.

http://vimeo.com/24228966

Back to Dawkins. This is a two part discussion on agnosticism, but you can get the idea in part 1. There have been some recent articles expressing surprise to hear him call himself an agnostic, although he clearly laid out this same argument in The God Delusion, years ago. He says we should apply a temporary form of agnosticism to the god question, until more data is available to make a conclusion. He does not leave the question wide open, most of the evidence is that god does not exist, but to be intellectually honest, you can’t say that with certainty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQOxvTKKpOg

Matt Dillahunty can be a lot to handle. He comes across as arrogant to some, strongly convicted to others. He was raised Christian and went to seminary, so he knows what he is talking about. He has done this call in show in Austin, TX for many years. Usually, he gets into arguments that don’t get resolved. In this case, a young caller who has called a few times before is convinced that thinking for himself might be a good idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkYAl_8kVBc&feature=related

In this 5 minute piece by Matt, he is calling in to other people in the Atheist Community of Austin and relating an email discussion. He responds to a woman who said she didn’t want to live in a world without God. It is a nice little speech on justice and being good, without God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBezvtQ_3a8&feature=related

Michael Dowd is different. He sounds more like a preacher and is speaking at a church in this video. He loves to evangelize about the wonders of the universe. He uses some substitute language for explaining how he sees what religion is. It is rather lengthy, about an hour, so I’ll tell the part that he says he will get to later. For him, God is a conceptualization of reality, that is God is everything. We can’t really grasp the vastness of the universe, so we use God to help conceive it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqfvb4Mvaqk

I haven’t read this whole article, but it contains one of the most clever analogies to explain fundamentalism that I have ever heard. Nadia Bolz-Weber is a pastor in what is sometimes labeled the “emerging church”. As you can see from her picture, she’s not a typical pastor. In this article, she talks about how some Christians look through the Bible for a checklist of items that they should do or follow, and then try to conform to that list. No matter what they choose, they are not so much following Jesus or accepting him as they are leaving him idling in a van on the corner, waiting until he is needed at the end times, and saying, “Thanks Jesus, we’ll take it from here.”

http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/07/matthew-25-how-i-met-my-husband?page=show

This one is not for everybody. I would recommend it for any group leaders or anyone wanting to publicly debate difficult issues like religion. Dawkins makes some excellent points about how people’s minds are changed. He discusses using tools like sarcasm appropriately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOXiVNLqLwk&feature=related

Mere Christianity

I thought I would give C. S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” a try. I found a copy for free, and it is short, so, what the heck. I was unimpressed. His argument depends on regressing your thinking back to near prehistoric notions of “Laws of Nature”. Not the Newtonian kind, where math can explain and predict objects in motion, but the mystical kind, where notions of right and wrong are somehow placed into our minds. He does a better job of this than many modern theologians, even though he was not theologically trained. If you don’t stop to question his assumptions, or add some knowledge where he makes an argument from ignorance, you could be convinced.

His introduction however showed some insight. Written in the 1950’s, he predicted the degradation of the word “Christian”. At the time he was speaking, Christians were much more interested in their identity as Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic or Episcopalian. They could tell you why they stuck with their denomination and what they didn’t like about the others. What Lewis saw beginning to happen, and what is quite common now, is people saying they don’t care about the denomination of the church, they just like the community they find there. They prefer their children’s program to the church around the corner, or they like the music.

What Lewis predicted is that the word “Christian” would change from meaning someone who believes in specific things, including some rules about what is right or wrong, good or bad, to mean someone who is right and good. The problem he said, is that the word is then no longer descriptive. It no longer describes a person’s beliefs, it is a judgment made by the speaker, the one who applies the label. If we don’t know what the speaker means by right and good, we don’t know what they mean when they say someone is Christian.

They have to qualify the term that no longer has meaning. They have to say “good Christian” or “bad Christian”. “Good” and “bad” can be applied to anything. I could say someone was a “good mass murderer” and people would know I meant they were successful at murdering many people. We don’t have one universal notion of what “Christian” is, a standard by which we can judge someone to be Christian or not. The word “Christian” could just be dropped. If someone is asked to explain what they meant by “good Christian”, they would spend most of the effort explaining what they meant by “good”.

What I have described so far may seem to just be semantics, but we know that dropping the word “Christian” is not a popular idea. In the above scenario of someone explaining what is meant by “good Christian”, they may appeal to universal notions of “good”, but they are likely more attached to defending their version of Christianity as the right one. If they are Christian, they are likely working from the premise that first one should follow Christ, learn his ways then you will be good. The idea that one could first figure out what is good, then shop around for a church that expresses those notions is probably foreign to them. Even parents who are unsure of their Christianity send their children to Sunday School. Their argument may not be theological either. They may focus on “good” Christianity by explaining what the people at their church do that sets them apart as good and what other people at some other church do that is less good or even bad.

Do we consider Christianity when thinking about a moral dilemma, either a simple one like “is it right for a starving person with no available money to steal a banana?” or a complicated one “if you could go back in time to kill Hitler, would you do it?” We would need to consider basic human needs, consequences of actions and how an individual affects society. Interpretations of scripture would be of little help. Common elements of Christianity like fellowship and ritual won’t even come into consideration. Now that we have conflated “good” with “Christian”, it seems what is “Christian” gets in the way of what is good.

We need to be having these moral discussions without the interference of non-descriptive terms like “Christian”. We need to be discussing non-hypothetically about how much welfare is too much and which starving population deserves our attention. If we attempt to use scripture, it just turns into what Brian McLaren calls “theological football”. Two sides dig in their heals, and one says “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Matthew 19:21), the other says, but “The poor you will always have with you.” (Matthew 26:11). The referee calls foul because the original context says “give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart” (Deuteronomy 15). The challenge flag comes out, the referee goes under the hood. Time to change the channel.

It appears to me that C.S. Lewis was right. Christians tried to define themselves as one big group, they tried to unite against abortion, against government making rules about morality, against war. Oh, wait a minute, or was that for war. C.S. Lewis was right that there was a trend toward unity, but that unity has not worked out so well. As soon as you start to define what Christianity is in terms of actual events going on in the world and real policies that affect real people, you find divisions, not unity. You find people saying, “That person is not a real Christian, a real Christian would fight for freedom.” Lewis did not define what Christianity “merely” is then and no one has improved on it since.