Parabasis

Terminology!

What is an Atheist?

Right now I have finished reading Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation and am almost finished with a book titled The Delusion of Disbelief: How The New Atheism is a Threat to your Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. One thing that Harris raises is the idea of what an atheist is. I find this idea powerful because it demands that we be more precise with our language.

What is an Atheist?

An atheist is someone who does not believe in the Divine (whether that be a God, multiple Gods or some kind of spiritual force) and also does not belong to an organized religion. Or as Dictionary.com would have it: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

It is not a belief system. I want to be very very clear about this: It is not a belief system. It is not a philosophy, it is a lack of belief in something. It is only because of the prominence of religious thought in our cultural heritage (and present day life) that a word like "Atheist" is necessary.

There are many groups that, were we to draw a venn diagram, many atheists would fall into. One would be secularists: people who advocate for the building of secular institutions and who try to separate political institutions from religious ones. There are many religious people who are also secularists (including the guy who runs Citizens United for a Separation of Church and State, members of many minority religions and several founding fathers). Another group would be what I call anti-religionists which is to say atheists who actively seek the destruction of organized religion and have a vested interest in convincing religious people to become atheists. I am not one of these people. I will full vocally articulate my skepticism about faith and my opinions on the actions of various organized religions and why I am an atheist if it is relevant to a conversation, but I have many friends and family members who are deeply religious and members of various faiths. I have really serious problems with organized religion, but I also recognize that being part of a religious faith has done considerable good for many people I know. So I guess I would say I'm too deeply conflicted about organized religion to actively seek to destroy it. I would say that, for the most part, the men called "The Four Horsemen" (Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett and Harris) are anti-religionists.

This being said, it aids extremists on both sides of the religion/atheism debate to try to elide these categories as much as possible. For the Four Horsemen, it is useful to conflate secularism, atheism and anti-religionism into one category, because that way it is easier to convince members of one group that they are in fact members of all of the others. For outspoken anti-atheist religious people. it is necessary because it helps indict one group with the other. So you can say to your fellow religious people "all atheists seek to destroy organized religion" or even "secularism is a mask for destroying organized religion".

Once this is done, pro-religion writers can then claim that atheism is a philosophy or belief system, which allows them to blame atheism for Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler and Stalin. I'll address that issue in a later post.

(cross posted to Atheist Viagra)

Things I Agree With

G Spot Edition

Podcast Experiencing Technical Difficulties!

In the meantime, as a bonus for Parabasis readers...

Before every RRT show, we do a little unscripted warm up that isn't normally recorded. Frequently they involve the misadventures of friends of ours. This particular one this time, featured only me, talking about Chris Matthews. And we happened to record it. So here, for your listening pleasure, is the unscripted pre-show RRT opening bit from this week:

Download chris_matthews_opener.mp3

Save the Provincetown Playhouse!

Sorry to be late to the teaparty here, but we should really do what we can to stop NYU from demolishing the Provincetown Playhouse. I could go on at great lengths about the history of the Provincetown Playhouse, urban planning, what reportedly bad neighbors NYU has been to people who live nearby them (I have one friend who moved out of Manhattan to avoid living near NYU housing!) etc. etc. and so forth. I think I might be preaching to the converted on this one... NYU wants to destroy a theater that is very very important to the history of American Theatre. Do you really need more convincing than that?

So instead let me recommend that rather than reading this piece from the NYTimes on the debate you instead read this piece from Playgoer about how terrible the NYTimes coverage of it is in this case, and that you also scroll down and read (Again at Playgoer) a note from the Susan Glaspell society (who is Susan Glaspell? She is, amongst other things, the first woman to win the Pullitzer for Drama for her play Allison's House which was revived by The Mint Theater and subsequently published in a volume I helped type up!).

If you are looking for things to do about it, I would suggest that you head on over the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. A letter to send around is here.

The Jewish Porno Dragon... On Video!

Just kidding. Remember when I talked about the Republican Congressional Candidate in Indiana who spoke in front of a group of neo-Nazis on Hitler's Birthday? Well, here's the video of the speech:

This guy is Really obsessed with pornography. Even more so on his website.

Let Me Just Say

That Andrew Sullivan quoting Henry IV Part 2 to explain Obama and Wright deeply misunderstands how ambiguous Shakespeare is about Hal's relationship to Falstaff in terms of tone or authorial judgement of either man. But what do you expect from a commentator only capable of glowing hero worship or thundering condemnation!

Bway Grosses

They're in.

By capacity: Lowest is Glory Days, currently in its first week of previews. Highest is Jersey Boys (at 100.8%) followed closely by Wicked (at 100%). Wicked, however, made $300,000 more at the box office.

Phew.. Finally!

Barack Obama today:

Let me just close by saying this, I -- we started this campaign with the idea that the problems that we face as a country are too great to continue to be divided; that, in fact, all across America people are hungry to get out of the old, divisive politics of the past. I have spoken and written about the need for us to all recognize each other as Americans, regardless of race or religion or region of the country; that the only way we can deal with critical issues like energy and health care and education and the war on terrorism is if we are joined together. And the reason our campaign has been so successful is because we had moved beyond these old arguments. What we saw yesterday out of Reverend Wright was a resurfacing and, I believe, an exploitation of those old divisions. Whatever his intentions, that was the result. It is antithetical to our campaign, it is antithetical to what I am about, it is not what I think America stands for, and I want to be very clear that moving forward Reverend Wright does not speak for me, he does not speak for our campaign. I cannot prevent him from continuing to make these outrageous remarks, but what I do want him to be very clear about, as well as all of you and the American people, is that when I say I find these comments appalling, I mean it. It contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am. And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign's about, I think will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country.

Last point, I'm particularly distressed that this has caused such a distraction from what this campaign should be about, which is the American people. Their situation is getting worse. And this campaign has never been about me. It's never been about Senator Clinton or John McCain. It's not about Reverend Wright. People want some help in stabilizing their lives and securing a better future for themselves and their children, and that's what we should be talking about. And the fact that Reverend Wright would think that somehow it was appropriate to command the stage for three or four consecutive days in the midst of this major debate is something that not only makes me angry, but also saddens me. So with that, let me take some questions.

RTWT (with questions) here.

Scottish Theater is Doin' Alright

Interesting article about Scottish Theatre in the New Statesmen it uses the global smash hit Black Watch (which I saw and had mixed by generally positive feelings about when it was at St. Ann's) as the hook to ask What has brought about this remarkable reneissance?

It answers the question in a couple of ways, but they all come back to the same place: The Government.  First, the Scottish Parliament created a Scottish National Theater and subsidized it to the tune of 4.3 Million Pounds a year.  That's roughly $8 Million dollars a year. That's ... well, simply remarkable. Second they talk about a  feeling of community because all of a sudden there's all these Scottish theater artists and third they list the arrival of the Scottish Parliament.

The arrival of the Scottish Parliament ten years ago was a big deal and formalized certain recognitions about Scottish state-hood (Even though it is not an independent State) and culture.  One of the chief ways that cultures express themselves is through the arts. So a sudden leap forward in the formalization of the State-ness and independence of a Culture is naturally going to be greeted by people wanting to express that culure. Or, as playwright David Greig says in the article, 

"In order to get a bunch of good playwrights, you need a bit of history. For the first time in the 1990s we started to have that, and revivable work from the likes of Liz Lochhead and Iain Heggie and Chris Hannan. That built up into a confident voice which then coincided, like a surfer catching a wave, with the actual moment of devolution."

This phenomenon has been positively encouraged by the Scottish Parliament, which has thrown a lot of money at artists beyond the National Theater. My brief experience with knowing Scottish theatre artists can attest to this. I remember one (who was travelling and interviewing for jobs in and taking directing courses in America partially on the Scottish gov'ts dime) joking to me that I needed to find a way, any way, to make myself elligiable for a grant form Scotland, because they were practically giving it away to artists. 

The major hurdle the article sites?  Actors still can't really make a living, so the "talent drain" is very high. 

In Denmark, the sudden expansion of Government support for the arts lead to the first ever emergence of a serious home-grown theatre scene in Denmark in the late 80s and 90s.  We're seeing the same thing happen in Scotland. Some variation on it happened in the 20th century with the FTP/WPA and NEA. We might not be able to count on greater state funding for the arts, but that doesn't mean having it wouldn't help.

A Quick Point about Atheist and Science

Atheist writers tend to say a lot of stuff about how science for the most part disproves or at least throws up some healthy skepticism towards religion.  Some of them go further and say that it disproves or at least throws up some healthy skepticism towards the idea of a Creator or otherwise supernatural divine force.  In so far as there are mysteries to the Universe, and it could be that some kind of divine intelligence is exerting willpower and that willpower is what explains these mysteries, I find this argument potentially less convincing.

However, Christian writers tend to write arguments that go like this:

(A) Atheist thinker X (Dawkins, usually) Says that science disproves God

(B) This is untrue. There are plenty of things that  aren't explained by science.

(C) These things are explained by the Christian God. (Usually here is inserted a quote from a religious person who is also a scientist talking about how both systems of understanding the universe are compatible)

But C doesn't follow B.  Let's say for one moment that you accept (which I do not) that there is some kind of Creator or Divine Being that created the Universe or even set in motion evolution.  And I'll for a moment set aside any arguments i might have about this and just concede that maybe perhaps Divinity could be the answer to some of the mysteries of the Universe.  We still don't get to point C. It does not follow that the creator is the Christian God.  Just because science has failed to explain Z does not mean that Z has a religious explanation and that the explanation is the Christian God.  It could have a religious explanation that has nothing to do with the Christian understanding of God.  This argument could only exist in a country that was overwhelmingly Christian because it assumes that the only God imaginable in a Christian one.