Parabasis

Our Language, Ourselves

By Isaac Butler

The other day, a friend of mine told me that she had started shopping around her novel this week. She and I met through the coffee shop we both write from, so I've watched her working on this thing for a couple of hours every day for about four years, trying to sandwich it between raising her son and editing a well-trafficked website.  It is, in other words, a major labor of love, something she's worked very hard on.  I wanted to wish her well and let her know I was in her corner.

When you're an atheist, when, in particular, you don't think of yourself as spiritual, a lot of colloquial phrases seem strange.  What, exactly, is the value of praying for someone when you don't think prayer works?  What does it really mean to keep someone in your thoughts when you think that thought has no power in the world on its own?

What we mean when we say these things, of course, is simply I care about you. I want you to know that. I doubt everyone on facebook who says they're praying for someone is actually sitting there with their hands all here-is-the-churched actively beseeching the almight for some quickee results. Heck, many of the people I know who would say they're praying for a particular thing would not, when they had a moment to think about it, say they actually believe in an interventionist deity.  It's simply that saying you're praying for someone is what you do, what one does.

But language, of course, has meanin;  these phrases contain a worldview. We're told the problem with clichés is that they don't meaning anything. They're Orwell's Dead Language, an image or phrase devoid of meaning. The eye scans it, the ear hears it, and it moves on, unaffected.  That's true, up to a point.  For the cliché at some point meant something. It meant something so well, did such a good job of conveying an idea that everyone used it, and via using it, drained it of its signifiance.  So much so, that we can use these phrases now and not really think about what they mean, even when it means that we're essentially showing an inauthentic version of ourselves to the world.

Of course, in the moment when a friend just wants some good vibes sent their way, only a pedant or a jackass would post an exegesis about why they are not, in fact, going to keep the person in their thoughts on their facebook wall or whateveer. My point is simply that one of the things belonging to an out-group allows you to do is see more clearly the assumptions embeddded in the everyday clichés we use to communicate with one another. 

My atheism was born in the midst of an excoriating tragedy, a friend's death and my own cowardice in the face of it. Since then, I have experienced, as one does in life, other trials, other sadnesses.  A terrorist attack on the city I lived in and the city I was born in on the same day. The death of a mentor. The collapse of a first marriage into contempt and silence. The suicide of my childhood babysittyer. The near-death of one of my parents. These are the moments when those who believe in the divine reach for it. In each of these moments, and the others I've been through, I've had to find something else. 

I'd love to say-- it'd be so great, so comforting, so right-- to say that something was Art. But this is not true, and the nonfictioneer in my won't let me grasp for this easy, comforting answer. For while I believe in the power of art, in none of the above circumstances was there some moment, redemptive and cathartic both, as I listened to a piece of music or gazed on a painting. That, like Jesus saying Arise, and Walk, I pressed play on, say, Music for 18 Musicians and was healed.

Someone, I am sure, has actually had this experience, but I am not that person.  For me, comfort has come from being with other people and, perhaps as a negative side effect of all of this, the healing that other people speak so highly of has never fully come. I don't walk around grieving all the time, but some there's some grit of those experiences that refuses to pass fully through the sieve.

I don't think you can choose whether you believe in God or not.  You do or you don't. Your experience has lead you towards the divine or away. But, given the choice, I think I'd take my way, gritty sieve and constant tingling in the spine when I think about death an all. I like the urgency it gives me and the demand that I make my meaning every day with the people I am with. I don't believe in God. But I do believe in other people. And that's why, dear friend, of course I'll keep you in my thoughts. Of course I'll tell you that I am. Not because I think it will change the actual outcome of your day, but instead, because you asked me to, because it means something to you, and you are what matters, after all, after all. 

Rick Santorum, Master of Inclusion

By Isaac Butler

Probably not a good idea to send out an anti-Semetic Hannukah card if you're looking to court the Jewish vote. Just sayin'. 

Common Ground Is Overrated

By Isaac Butler

There's something going on in our culture where we want to find common ground with people. Particularly people with whom we disagree.  The greater the disagreement, the greater the search for common ground.  

The latest example of this I've found was this article in the Guardian  about Julian Baginni's quest to find common ground between atheists and religious people (mainly Christians) by, well, neutering religion. He's written out what he thinks some articles of a "reasonable faith" which include, amongst other things, agreeing that perhaps nothing supernatural has ever occured, that God is a metaphor for something else and that the Bible was entirely written by people.

Not suprisingly, no one has signed on to these articles, leading Baginni to write, " since the main purpose of posting my articles of 21st-century faith was to find out just how many could support them, the project is not worthless if we find out the answer is hardly anyone at all."

Now, it appears that perhaps the purpose behind Baginni's articles wasn't really common ground but instead to show that religious people are arguing in bad faith when they assert their problem with New Atheists is that they focus too much on "the supernatural aspects of religion" and thus "miss the point.":

...the rejection of the articles suggests that either most liberal religious commentators and leaders are inconsistent or incoherent; or that they ultimately do believe that when it comes to religion, creeds and factual assertions matter; belief that supernatural events have occurred here on Earth is required; religion can make quasi-scientific claims; and that human intellect and imagination are not enough to explain the existence of religious texts. If that is indeed the case then DiscoveredJoys is right that when it comes to belief: the middle ground is virtual deserted.

Which is all fine and good, I suppose, but I wonder why we need to find common ground between people who believe in God and people who don't.  Or rather, why we'd search for common ground within the nation of things people believe.  The common ground between Atheists and Religious people is not things they believe, it's secularism in government and the protection of religious freedom.  

When you have two diametrically opposed groups, the common ground you are going to find is not going to be about the thing they're diametrically opposed to.  It's going to be something else that's in their mutual self-interest. The problem (to loop around to politics for a moment here) with Obama and the Democrats negotiating strategy is that the Republicans have defined their self-interest as Democrats not getting reelected.  There's no common ground to be had there, and thus tactics need to shift to extreme negotiating postures, hardball and hostage taking. And it just so happens the Democrats have two pretty damn good hostages at their disposal. 

The Response?

by 99 Seats

I find this deeply, deepy troubling and unsettling and quite upsetting for a number of reasons.

I'm a secular humanist agnostic. When I was a kid, I was a member of an ecumenical youth group, sponsored by the Presbyterian church near my house (where, incidentally, my dad and stepmom, both passionate, evangelical atheists were married, since it was the only church in town that wouldn't make them join to have the ceremony there). My mother has gone through various Christian denominations in her life. I'm fairly okay with religion, with religious expression, with faith and belief, even in public settings. I do get a bit tired of the constant thanking of God for winning awards and trophies, but mostly because it feels so insincere. And I do have my concerns about the power and strength of the religious right in this country.

This ad, this entire concept, though, just turns my stomach. Yes, things are bad in this country. Yes, we have some serious struggles to deal with. But we're not talking the 10 plagues of Egypt. It's not raining fire or frogs, we don't have cattle blight. We have a broken political system that's being used to enrich the already wealthy on the backs of the already poor.

Not to mention the entirely scary idea that the GOVERNOR of a state is leading this effort just cries out for a separation of church and state discussion. How far is this from declaring a state religion? I'm not uncomfortable with the need for politician to say "God bless you" and/or "God bless America" at the end of every speech, but this isn't that. This is the GOVERNOR of a state saying, "Pray to Jesus to take care of us."

Rick Perry will very likely enter the GOP Primary shortly and I believe he has a pretty good chance of winning the nomination. If he does, expect a re-run of Bush v. Gore. Not the recount case (well, maybe not) but the entire campaign. We will get another go-round of the Good Ol' Southern Boy with the charm and the "authenticity" against the Egghead-Professor-Elitist-Commander-in-Geek who puts funny sauces on sandwiches. Stunts like this prayer day will only further convince the press corps that Perry is a salt-of-the-earth, God-fearing fella and not a right-wing religious whack0.

It's going to be a long campaign.

Words Cannot Describe...

By Isaac Butler

I made the mistake of looking at the news during the gap between Black Joe Louis and the Honeybears and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings last night.  And the story I read made me so angry I had trouble focusing on the first few songs of the show.  And I woke up this morning still angry.

John Jay College was paid by the Catholic Church to do a study on the roots of the Priest Child-Rape Scandal.  They used data supplied by the Church, and used the Church's definition for several key terms (including "child") rather than the standard definitions for them. Lo and behold, the conclusion that the study comes to is exactly what the Church has been saying in its defense all along. It turns out, the Child-Rape Scandal was caused by.... wait for it... 1960s Counter Culture.  I'm not joking:

A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.

Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.

But this study is likely to be regarded as the most authoritative analysis of the scandal in the Catholic Church in America. The study, initiated in 2006, was conducted by a team of researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City at a cost of $1.8 million. About half was provided by the bishops, with additional money contributed by Catholic organizations and foundations. The National Institute of Justice, the research agency of the United States Department of Justice, supplied about $280,000.

I think what's actually most upsetting about this is how John Jay essentially sold out their integrity in order to help a worldwide organize cover up their massive decades-long cover up of child rape.  Shame on them.  

I think the more logical explanation for why there was a huge child rape problem has little to do with Woodstock or celibacy. It's that the Church allowed it to happen, covered it up, and no one who did anything faced any kind of punishment. Add in to that the kind of authority the Church and its priests have over their parishoners and it's a pretty obvious recipe for this kind of disaster. 

Quote of the Day

by 99 Seats

Bad Astronomy edition:

We understand them because we’re curious, we humans, and we developed a method of understanding the Universe. It’s called science. And it went a long way to showing us why thunder happens, why people get sick, and why the Moon and Sun formed, and how their mass and gravity warp space-time around us. There are gaps in our understanding, but one of the big points of science is to narrow those gaps.

On Viola Davis' Acceptance Speech

Let's just imagine for a moment that someone wins a bit award, you know, one of the EGOTs, and they get up there and say the following:

"You know, I don't believe in a god, or a higher power or anything like that.  And to me, that makes what we create here on Earth that much more beautiful and valuable. Because this is all we have, and we have to create things of meaning and value here and now, because there's nothing that will do it for us.  I'm honored that you have honored this particular act of creation.  Thank you."

Do you think they'd get a ten second ovation?  I doubt it. 

I don't begrudge Viola Davis her faith. I really don't.  If that's what she believes and she wants to get up in front of everyone and say it, more power to her.  What i find weird though is people simply applauding the idea that there is a God in the midst of an awards ceremony. I find it even weirder that they're applauding the benevolence of this deity for getting Viola Davis a Tony while we're fighting two wars and destroying the Gulf of Mexico, but that's a post for a different day. 

While in Madrid, I had dinner with a fellow American tourist I had met in a Flamenco Club in a cave under a bar in Grenada (long story).  He was someone who had come from Judaism through Atheism to a kind of Spiritualism.  We were perfectly capable of having a respectful conversation about each other's beliefs. His experience as an atheist and a non-christian lead him to a certain understand that what most people who fall outside of the Standard Organized Religion Mold really want is not to abolish faith but to be left alone and to have the space to be allowed to believe or not believe whatever they want. Furthermore, that a lot of the hostility aimed at believers by the nons comes from a reactive place of being fed up with having to express a level of respect that is not reciprocated.

I have way too much privilege to consider myself oppressed. If I entered the oppression olympics I'd be like those guys who enter the swimming competition even though there are no training pools in their home countries.  I'm just trying to highlight a frustration.

I Am At A Loss For Words... Almost

The Catholic Church in my native Washington, D.C. issued a threat this week. 

Wanna know what the threat is?

Approve gay marriage, and we'll cut off Catholic Church provided charity social services in the District.

I'm not joking.  Here's the article in the LA Times about it. 

Regardless of your feelings about gay marriage, I think most people can agree that there are few things less Christian than deliberately not-helping the poor because of a legislative power struggle, regardless of what the issue is.

Also... Gay Marriage is so important to pull out a nuclear option, but (say) the death penalty isn't?

I am so angry about this I want to throw my laptop through the window.  I think it's time to ask my Catholic friends why they haven't converted to Episcopalianism yet. 

Oh and BTW: This is why the faith-based initiative program is a bad bad very bad idea.  Basically, the Catholic church wants to take government money and reserve the right to discriminate in hiring and benefits. And because they're religious, we're expected to respect that for some reason that escapes me right now.

A Surprising Act of Cinematic Subversion: "The Invention of Lying's" Sacrilegious Secret

by Guest Blogger Prince Gomolvilas of Bamboo Nation

The print ads, commercials, and trailer for the new Ricky Gervais comedy, The Invention of Lying, conveniently omit one of the film's major plot lines. It's a story thread that makes this wide-release movie—which is being marketed to middle America and beyond as a harmless romantic comedy with a fantastical twist—a true act of subversion. It's the kind of subversion that regular readers of Parabasis will recognize as something that Isaac Butler would really dig.

Gervais's character, a pudgy loser named Mark Bellison, lives in a world where people tell the truth to each other all the time—no one is able to even comprehend what lying is. Everyone's brutal honesty in the first act—calling Bellison "fat" to his face, etc.—is the film's primary source of humor.

But soon Bellison "invents" lying and discovers that he can manipulate the world around him for personal and financial gain. For example, when he tells a bank teller that he has more money in his account than he actually does, she believes him and hands him all the money he wants because she simply does not have the ability to understand that he's not telling the truth.

The Invention of Lying is moderately funny and sags in parts, but a remarkable thing happens about halfway through the movie.

[POSSIBLE

SPOILERS

AHEAD]

To comfort his dying mother, who like everyone else is afraid of death because they don't know what comes after, Bellison begins to describe an afterlife to her, one that sounds an awful lot like our concept of "heaven."

The world catches wind of Bellison's vision of life after death and demands more information, which leads to him creating religion (not a religion, but all religion). Aside from inventing "the man in the sky," he presents the rest of his religious rules on the back of two Pizza Hut boxes.

Yup, folks, Gervais, a known atheist, has created a picture about a world in which atheism is a matter of fact and about how God and religion is nothing more than a sham created by man.

How will the God-fearing public, duped into seeing what they think is a light comedy, react when those inflammatory messages smack them in the face? I really don't know.

But I do know that Isaac, who's made made his "lack of faith" known here time and again, is likely to rally around this movie despite its shortcomings. It's difficult to fault a film that's so delightfully daring.

(Admittedly, though, I do wonder how daring Gervais really is. After all, in the movie, lying makes the world a much more interesting place to live in.)

The Absurdity of Christian Theodicy

Andrew Sullivan is holding an informal symposium on the Problem of Pain aka why does a God defined as "good" and "loving" allow pain and suffering seemingly without order or morality?

One of his readers writes him an e-mail filled with the kind of hogwash that made me an atheist in the first place. And it's a very common one. Here's the first part argument:

Pain – the pain experienced by animals and the ineffable pain experienced by those, e.g., swept away in the Indonesian tsunami and those who loved them – is a product of the laws of the physical universe, specifically the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the principle of entropy, which observes that all physical being – our bodies, our cars, our homes, our forests, the entire physical world – is in a continuous process of breaking down and falling apart.

Once you get beyond all the nicey-nice words like "ineffable" and efforts to use scientific words to obfuscate what's going on, this is essentially saying: "Things fall apart, that falling apart hurts".  

What this leaves out entirely is that to Christians (and this e-mailer is a self-identified Catholic) God made the laws of physics and God made it "hurt". If God's all powerful, there's no reason why we need feel pain as a result of the laws of physics. nor is there any reason why the laws of physics have to be as they are.  God chose to make them that way. So this doesn't really get him off the hook for the problem of human suffering.

Next up we get to part two of the argument:

Suffering, the existential consciousness of alienation, on which you are so eloquent, is an extension of human freedom. Those of us, like you, who stand in the faith and view the world (both physical and existential) from the perspective of faith, do not have words to understand why God created the world in the way can has, but we do understand that both the principle of entropy and human free will are gifts of the Creator and that God respects the integrity of Creation.

The God of the Bible is an interventionist God. He "hardens Pharos heart" and condemns the Israelites to additional suffering so that he can exact revenge on the Egyptians. He has Jonah swallowed by a Whale. He communicates directly to his creations and rewards and.or punishes them based on their fidelity to his orders.  He continues to perform miracles and interfere directly in human doings after Jesus' death by, for example, blinding St. Paul and speaking to him.  So we have to ask... why didn't god respect his creation until relatively recently? And again, even if it respecting creation to allow them to do as they want-- and I'm cool with that- there's still no reason why pain and suffering are necessary.

For millennia God has been placed in the dock before the tribunal of human misery. The person of faith lacks the wherewithal to make the case for God but knows that Godself does not need the benefit of human advocates. The Christian (or at least the Catholic Christian, I cannot speak for others) knows that God is not insensitive to human misery and that God, in becoming incarnate in the person Jesus Christ, walked with us in our misery and drank the cup of human misery down to the dregs, as the model and price of a life of utter integrity.

And now we get to the whole Jesus thing.  The Catholic theory behind this story is one I've never understood, because from a narrative perspective it makes no sense.  Adam and Eve disobeyed God, so as a result, he cursed all of humanity forever (how good and loving of him).  A few thousand years later, he decides to redeem the human race. But instead of just doing it-- because, remember, he's all powerful-- he decides to sort-of take human form, or maybe have a son, but it's unclear really but anyway he decides that that son/him is going to have to suffer horribly and die as a sacrificial lamb.  Again, this makes absolutely no sense.  There's no reason why an all powerful being would have to do this. He could just forgive us. And he doesn't put us through anything to get our forgiveness. Instead, he goes through it, or anyway makes his son go through it. Who might be him. I just... don't... get... it. I've tried. I know a lot of Catholics. I've studied this stuff. It just-- from a narrative perspective-- makes no sense.

Now here's the thing-- I don't think human misery disproves the existence of God. I don't.  I don't believe in God for other reasons.  What I think misery disproves is the idea that God is either Good or All-Loving, at least from the perspective of the standards that he himself supposedly gave us.  I'd buy the argument that God is Unknowable or Complex or Multifaceted or even Kinda Scary But Also Kinda Awesome Sometimes.  But this is the thing... the unknowability of God only comes up in these arguments when the other person is in a painted-in-a-corner-type situation. You can't assert simultaneously that God is Good and God is Unknowable. Unless you're also saying that God is only Good by God's Own Standards, not the ones he supposedly gave us. At which point, the conversation is meaningless.

Why We Do The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist

(beyond its awesomeness as a play, that is)

Today, Patrick Appel, filling in for Andrew Sullivan, highlights a reader e-mail about atheism that Appel claims makes "many good points". The problem is the entire thing is one giant straw man with a little fig leaf at the end. To whit, the first sentence:

There are so many intellectual and philosophical criticisms to level at the most irritating of atheists, it's hard to know where to start,

Readers (and would be argumentative writers) beware, this is how you know you are engaging with a Man Made of Straw.  When someone flat out says "I am only writing about the worst of the people who represent the opposing viewpoint" you know you're dealing with a fundamentally dishonest argument.  This would be akin to my writing about Catholicism and saying something like "The worst thing about the worst of Catholic Priests is that they rape children" and then extrapolating from that that God doesn't exist. Anyway, to carry on:

Atheists' main core argument, if they are pinned down to one, is about the lack of existence of God.  The problem is that discussions on this quickly devolve into analogies to Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, or whatever.  The far more interesting argument, which these angry only rants seem to spend the least time and effort on, would be whether or not the practice of religion is worthwhile.  This particular class of atheists state rather reflexively that it is not, and get annoyed when asked to back that up.

This is absolute, complete hogwash.  The reader may have run into a few atheists who espouse these viewpoints, but it's worth noting that the main writers on atheism-- all of whom I'm not even huge fans of-- spend considerable time and effort on the second argument he claims atheists avoid.  Christopher Hitchens' Atheist Tome is not called "God Doesn't Exist" but rather God Is Not Great and is largely about how religion is bad for society.  Much of Letter to a Christian Nation is about how religion is bad for individuals and for society.  Dawkins work is more about how searching for meaning and purpose in systems is futile, but he has also done quite a bit of argument about how religion is bad for society.   It's an argument the public face of New Atheism enters into constantly.

The reader e-mail continues with saying that he thinks this a fruitful avenue of discussion. I think it's worth talking about, sure, but I don't think it's going to go anywhere more constructive than the argument over God's Existence. For the record, my own opinion on the benefits of either religion or atheism to society goes a little something like this:  Neither path guarantees or even as far as I'm concerned increases the likelihood that someone is going to turn out a good or bad person.  And when you through into it the corrupting nature of power, things get worse. Both atheism and religion can be bent to horrible ends, and both can be redemptive, healing things that encourage people to do good.

Clearly there is something in human beings that searches for meaning in our existence. I happen to believe that we construct that meaning ourselves but that doesn't make that meaning any less profound.  It's important to make sure that our search for meaning does not make us too manipulatable, and it's important to loudly denounce those who use our searches for meaning to nefarious ends.  

To be a little real about this for a moment here, though... it's worth noting in the above that religion has access to power that atheism does not in our society.  It also claims to speak for a divine authority, whereas atheism does not.  Therefore there is greater capacity for religion to do evil than there is for atheism.  And lots of religious organizations and sects to great harm both to individuals and the world at large with regularity.  That needs to be talked about, just as the good deeds that religious organizations and individuals do needs to be talked about.  

The risk with atheism is that it will make of science and supposed rationality a New God. That's something to be guarded against for sure, and I'm willing to concede that as long as we can start having a more honest conversation about those who claim to speak for the divine and the ways they do concrete harm in this world.

The reader then goes on to complain about the philosophical thinness of the Straw Man Atheists:

one of the most galling things to me about the modern internet atheists is that in my experience, while they talk a big game about Science and Rationality and Learning, they can be remarkably intellectually unsophisticated.  John Gray hit the nail on the head so hard he blew it apart, I think, when he outlined how the framework behind most of the "New Atheists" is really just a crude mix of vulgar 19th century-quality positivism with some reflexive materialism and shallow humanism thrown in.  They ignore a century of rigorous, lively philosophical debate and criticism on ontology and epistemology, preferring instead the staid certainty of Victorian science.  I don't mind having my beliefs criticized, but if you can't at least discuss anything pertaining to the topic since before the Nietzschian turn, go away.

Again: Who the heck is he talking about?  Some random people he knows?  There are a lot of public atheists out there, and a lot of books published on the subject. It would be nice if he could point to one person engaged in the public debate over atheism and talk about them.  

But then again, I'm wondering where he's finding all of these atheists to have arguments with. We're not a huge part of the population.

Finally, there's this brilliant and hilarious fig leaf:

 let me just state for the record that I've interacted with a huge number of thoughtful, sophisticated atheists, both online and offline, which has been incredibly rewarding for me.  However, these conversations generally don't mention Santa Claus.

Perfect!  Right up there with "let me just state I do know some Catholics who don't rape little children"! Or Bill O'Reilly's amazing discovery that black people have table manners.

Or maybe I should just quote the show:

JEN: What is it about Atheists?

DARYL: IT's like, when you're at a party, you can always tell who's the atheist in the room.

ABE: The one who's the loud one.

JEN: The one who loves to talk about politics.

DARYL: They're not happy unless they're in someone's face...

JEN: And then they complain that they don't get any respect.

ABE: It's like, if you're gonna act like that dude, no, you won't. So stop bitching about how no one wants one of you for president.

(beat)

I mean, it's their right of course.

DARYL, JEN, ABE: (ad lib) Sure, no one's saying it isn't his right, everybody's got a right, in fairness, Hitler was an atheist.

Wow.

Just watch what Arizona State Senator Sylvia says in order to support uranium mining in her state...

i know posting has been a little light this week. The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist opens in exactly one week and a major deadline for my writing project is on Friday. I'm doing my best!

Religious Exemptions

I grew up in a religion that would not survive in the United States were in not for religious exemptions. Christian Scientists don't believe in using medicine to cure disease (they also, not coincidentally, don't believe in disease).  Forcing Christian Scientists to go to doctors by, for example, requiring that their children be immunized before they can attend public school, would be a deep and gross violation of their beliefs. 

Of course, the Christian Scientist summer camp I attended was closed down one summer because of a measels outbreak. And I had mumps as a kid. Twice. And every once in awhile a child of a Christian Scientist couple dies because they didn't seek medical treatment.

Which to a lot of people begins to look like neglect at the very best and abuse at the worst.  Which begs the question in their mind... Should religious exemptions protect child neglect and.or abuse?

I'm going to punt on that question because I still haven't made up my mind about it, even though I'm an atheist. I certainly didn't feel neglected or abused as a child (even when I got the mumps) and I still don't. This gets to all sorts of thorny issues, some of which are a little too personal to hash out here, so I'll just say I'm undecided on whether or not Christian Scientists should be allowed to not seek medical care for their children, but if you asked me while I was a Christian Scientist and a teenager I would've told you to go fuck yourself and let us live our lives.

I was reminded of this w/r/t to the Gay Marriage question and religious exemptions.  Because the issue to some extent once you stop dressing it up Do you believe religious organizations should have the right to discriminate against gays because their religious beliefs dictate that they should?

And I think it's worth pausing with that question.  My first immediate answer is "of course not" but then I think "well why would it be okay for someone to potentially expose a child to deadly disease but not okay to turn away two gay people who want to get married in your gazebo?' And I can't answer that question.

I do not think religious discrimination against homosexuals is okay.  I'm certainly not saying that. But I can't answer the question in the above paragraph. I don't know where the limit is. My gut feeling is that Catholic Charities should not be able to discriminate against gay couples seeking to adopt (and given the Catholic Churches record with children lately I'd think the institution might want to approach the issue with some humility) and I don't think in my heart of hearts that the Methodist church should have a right to discriminate against a gay couple acting in good faith and seeking to rent out a venue. But my gut could be wrong from a constitutional perspective.

I Guess We Need to Define "Service"

This is Isaac here folks, breaking in real quick to discuss something... Barack Obama has called for Americans to participate in a day of service today, and to that end has set up a website where you can find service-related events in your area to participate, but it cleaning up trash, working at a soup kitchen or whatever tickles your service-related fancy.  Sounds good, right?  Right!

But here's my question... in what world is going to a church and praying to God for "devine [sic] intervention" to help "renew America" service? 

Religion and Politics

Those of us on the more secular humanist side of the spectrum have a habit of saying that we fervently support the separation of Church and State (or to take it even further, religion and politics) not only to protect the State from religion, but to protect religion from politics.

Often when we say this, I think most people think we're being insincere or maybe to put it a little more mildly self-serving. After all, many secularists aren't religious, what do we care what happens to religious communities etc.? Aren't we just saying that to get more people on our side?

Well, frankly... no, we're not.  The early history of secularism in the United States is generally the history of religious groups and people fearing persecution (many of whom were Catholic of Jewish).  The ACLU, which gets branded an "atheistic" organization for its firm belief in a separation of Church and State has argued many landmark religious freedom cases on behalf of religious people. 

I bring this up in the wake of the Prop-8 mess, and the resignations by prominent artistic leaders who were Mormons who supported Prop-8 because they were told it was their religious duty.  This is exactly the sort of thing secularists like myself worry about in terms of religious organizations involvement in politics.... I don't think in the long term the Mormon Church's experiment in intervention is going to be positive for either California or the Mormon Church or its members. People are losing their jobs because they obeyed a religious directive from an organization that abused its authority (and I would argue tax exempt status) and the trust that people put in it.  That's bad all around for everyone.

And by "abused its authority" what I mean here is that I think there's a real difference between the Church of LDS saying "we believe marriage is between a man and a woman and shouldn't be changed" and saying "it is your religious duty to work and contribute money to make sure Proposition 8 gets passed". Similarly, there's a difference between the Catholic Church saying "life begins at conception" and saying "we will not offer communion to people who voted for Obama because he's pro-choice". The former in both cases is an action that reflects a point of view that I strongly disagree with but is well within the bounds of what is appropriate, the latter is using one's religious authority to create a very real threat (of hell for example) to compel people to do something. Which is, you know, abusive.

No, Seriously, Let's Focus on the Family

As stories like this make clear, it really is gay marriage and not, say, organized religion, that rips families apart.

(...adding in case you don't get the point: I don't think that organized religion will always or even in most cases rips families apart, I'm merely making the point that there's a lot more substantive evidence out there of religious disputes fucking up families than there is of gay marriage fucking up families)

I almost don't know what to say

Other than that this is outrageous:

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama. The Democratic president-elect supports abortion rights, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil," the priest said.

This is really really really wrong, and an abuse of authority.  Obviously,this is not the first time this has happened. Catholic Priests have made this threat towards pro-choice politicians before.

I think it's worth it for those of us who aren't Catholic to pause for just a moment and understand the gravity of what's being threatened here from a Catholic perspective.  It's easy for us to just go "oh this is just bullshit, it's a cracker who gives a fuck!" but from a Catholic perspective, parishoners are risking social ostracism, and eternal damnation because of how they voted.

Think about that for a moment. Think about eternal damnation from the perspective of actually believe in Hell.  Now you are faced with two decisions: (a) either your Priest is full of shit and abusing his power- which calls into question all sorts of things about a major part of your identity that you whole dear- or (b) he's right and you're going to Hell.

The other thing- social ostracism- is important as well. A lot of the way the Catholic Church functions is socially. Excommunication for example is the ultimate punishment not only because the chance of repentance is lost but because you are banished from your community. It is disgusting that a Priest would manipulate these fears and use his power in this way.

Hopefully, his parishoners will have the decency to find another priest, even if it means going to a different church.

Why I Am Not A New Atheist.

I've said a few times that I believe that while it's a good thing that atheists are getting more outspoken, and maybe a little more combative about religion and its place in the public sphere and the hijacking of various faiths by extremists (since, let's be frank, religious moderates are not doing a good enough job of decrying this shit) I still think that secularists, agnostics, atheists and freethinkers would be wise to eschew the "new atheist movement".

Why?

Because for the most part, the "new atheists" or at least their spokesmen have a kind of whiff of fundamnetalism about them, a complete lack of respect for any viewpoint other than their own, a complete inability to see through others eyes.  

Or, to put it another way, just because Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins think there is no God doesn't stop them from being assholes who are dead on the inside.  In the former's case... do you really honestly, my atheist bretheren and sisteren and trangenderen really want to make common cause with America's Most Dishonest Opinion Writer?  Do you have any respect for any of his writings about the Iraq war?  For his constant lying about that conflict, about why we got into it, about Ahmed Chalabi?  Christopher Hitchens is a drunken propagandist who believes that the end of convincing you justifies any mean of tactics in his writing.

As for Richard Dawkins... the guy thinks that childhood fairytales are unhealthy. Only a cold, rational world for him.  I don't want that world. I like there being mysteries and creative responses to a world that frankly isn't always explainable and doesn't always make sense.  We can understand that those creative responses and those stories are just stories we made up. Making up a story doesn't make it fundamentally an evil story.

Might I Suggest...

That we allow pastors to say whatever they want from the pulpit and then tax religious organizations like they're the businesses they so clearly are?  If they want to set up a separate 501(c)3 organization to do charitable work that's fine, but let's just get rid of the tax exemption and then they can say whatever they want from the pulpit. Hell, they're already violating the no-politics-from-the-pulpit rule on both the left and the right. Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have both made campaign appearances in churches. Let's just get rid of the tax break and go from there.

A Moment When Being an Atheist Just Means Sucking It Up

Is the moment when you realize that someone thinking the Earth is roughly 6,000 years old and denies the validity of science can be a vice presidential nominee, but not believing in God pretty much disqualifies you from the aforementioned office. It's a weird time we life in, folks.