One Letter Makes A World Of Difference

Does God Exist? The theist says
He does, but what is meant by “God”?
Belief has different forms and ways
And “theist” is a false façade—

The problem with the answer is—
Which god? The question won’t define.
It serves as a projective quiz
We each fill in the blank with “mine”.

While theists think a god exists
Which god that is, they can’t agree.
These gods can fill up endless lists
Still none of them’s the god for me.

“Agreement” seems a specious word
When treating many gods as one
Agreement? No. The thought’s absurd…
And as for me, I’ll stick with “none”.

Today’s verse is inspired by a (presumably) well-intentioned but (demonstrably) poorly executed opinion piece at the Iowa State Daily. I’d have commented there (and thus never have had reason to write the verse), but they won’t accept contributions unless a real-world name is attached. I’ve spent 5 years cultivating a pseudonym; my real name would be meaningless to them (yeah, my pseud is probably meaningless to them, but they can at least follow a trail of breadcrumbs and read here). Anyway, the piece jumps off the rails in the first three sentences:

Does God exist?

Theists believe yes. Atheists believe no.

And moves from there to equate the two sides as equally making a claim of belief.

What a difference one letter can make. What if the author had asked “Does a god exist?” With that indefinite article, the false consensus of “theists” is punctured. “Theists” is an artificial group, a strange bedfellows assortment of traditional others, competitors, and enemies, but united by not being atheists. Not by “believing in God”, as polytheists are theists too, as are a good many people who would not identify their particular god as the capitalized “God”. My goodness, the first commandment would not be necessary if all gods were one God.

And atheists are not those who don’t believe in God; they are those who don’t believe in a god. They are the privative, none-of-the-above belief category. It is not a belief, it is the “none for me, thanks” drink preference. It’s the “I don’t run” answer to “what’s your distance?”

The problems (and there are many) in the rest of the piece all fall from this initial improper stance. When you take your first compass reading, get it right; the rest of your journey depends on it.

Shocking!!!

The billboard, up just down the block
Has left us in a state of shock:
Its “shocking” message? Here’s the gist:
Atheists… exist.

Not much of a story here–the fun part is behind the scenes. An Austin TV station’s website has their story of one of the local atheist billboards. It’s a nice enough story–the representative atheist is well-spoken, the representative Christian is concerned…

But, for those of you who clicked through, did you notice the URL? The article title, now, is “Atheist Community Building Support with Billboards”… the URL, though, includes the phrase “atheist-community-building-support-shocking-billboards”. That’s right, “shocking”.

Yup, they bear the radical message “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

Shocking.

Hey Rachel, Let’s Make A Deal

See, it’s not the proper mainstream
It’s the loonies at the fringe;
I can listen to the former
But the latter make me cringe
As it’s painful to the both of us,
A wound we ought to heal,
I’m proposing a solution—
Yes, I want to make a deal.

Professors of biology
Who go to such extremes
That they see religious practice
As evolving social memes
We will gladly just ignore them
When they say a bit too much
If you’ll just ignore Pat Robertson
When he goes off a touch

And Ph. D. philosophers,
And physicists, and more;
Psychologists, neurologists,
And others by the score
We’ll listen to their ranting
And we’ll try to stifle moans
If you’ll ignore their counterparts—
For instance, Terry Jones.

Extremists do not speak for all—
You understand, I hope—
It’s such a silly strawman
When you criticize the pope!
Let’s peel apart the radicals;
Dismiss them, one by one,
And look for truth in what remains
When all the culling’s done

Rachel Held Evans wants to make a deal. She noticed Dawkins’s comments about “mild pedophilia”, and feels our pain.

As tempting as it is to classify Dawkins’ views as representative of all atheists, I can’t bring myself to do it.

I can’t bring myself to do it because I know just how frustrating and unfair it is when atheists point to the most extreme, vitriolic voices within Christianity and proclaim that they are representative of the whole.

So, atheists, I say we make a deal: How about we Christians agree not to throw this latest Richard Dawkins thing in your face and you atheists agree not to throw the next Pat Robertson thing in ours?

Now, while you may have noticed multiple posts here at FTB and elsewhere calling out Dawkins for his words, he is still seen as one of our leaders (especially by those trying to equate atheism with religion). And don’t think that Christians don’t criticize Pat Robertson on occasion, like when he blames natural disasters on sin, or when he’s too liberal in his political endorsements. So, yeah, the two are roughly equivalents–you see politicians courting Dawkins’s king-making endorsement all the time, and retirees sending him all their money in return for his good word greasing their way into the afterlife, and there’s Dawkins’s television network, too. (I can’t find a comparison of book sales numbers–if anyone has that information, I’d love to see it.)

Pat Robertson does not represent all Christians. But the one-time Most Dangerous Man In America is not, in any way, the opposite number to Dawkins. I can see why agreeing to dismiss both of them would be a tempting offer… for Christians.

But what if we resist the urge to use the latest celebrity gaffe as an excuse to paint one another with broad brushes?

What if, instead of engaging the ideas of the most extreme and irrational Christians and atheists, we engaged the ideas of the most reasonable, the most charitable, the most respectful and respected?

My goodness, if you want extreme and irrational atheists, don’t use Dawkins as your example. He says stupid things on occasion, but believe me, we have some who seemed to have carved out a comfortable niche wholly immersed in stupidity. But again, I can see why you would wish to call this an even trade.

So, yes, Richard Dawkins is an atheist. But so is ethicist and humanitarian Peter Singer. So are authors Greg Epstein and Susan Jacoby. So is my friend and fellow blogger Hemant Mehta. So is Sir Ian McKellen.

Yes, Pat Robertson is a Christian. But so is Nelson Mandela. So is acclaimed geneticist Francis Collins. So is Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee. So is Barack Obama. So is Stephen Colbert.

Let’s take Collins. Yes, he’s a nice guy. But he’s still wrong. And nice atheists also have dumb ideas.

I think it was the eminent philosopher Batman who said (stole) “it’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me”. When someone does or says something that is worth criticizing, then it doesn’t matter if it is Robertson, Dawkins, or Cuttlefish (yes, I put them in order of number of things worth criticizing); criticize.

As for getting rid of “extremists” on both ends, and looking in the middle… “When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.”

But then, that was said by an extremist.

Narendra Dabholkar

His name’s not familiar—not here in the states—
And we don’t know the things he’s said
But his work made him someone a fraud really hates
He was good; he was right; now he’s dead.

Although the interwebs make it possible for us to peer in on the entire world (or nearly), we generally don’t. It’s strange; we are in an information age, where we could stream the news from virtually anywhere, we so often do not take advantage of that. We are still creatures of our local communities (sometimes literal and geographically defined, sometimes virtual and defined by shared interests), and when something seismically huge happens just outside of our (real or virtual) field of vision, a world that waits at our fingertips might just as well be on the other side of the world. Which, in a pre-internet world… it is.

Narendra Dabholkar has been assassinated. In a technological age where I could know who he is… I mostly don’t. I remember hearing about his death, thinking it tragic… and, yeah, moving on. But the thing is, Dabholkar was a giant. He was known by millions… just not in the US. His assassination, for saying things I take for granted I can write any day, would be on par with the killing of any of the top tier names in atheism here… but he’s not here.

Anyway. Go read Greta’s piece on his life and his death. Please. Because you live in a world where it is possible to be moved by great people anywhere. And because all the good we can glean from a world of information at our fingertips is tempered by the knowledge that someone who thinks as we do… was killed for what he thought, and was bold enough to act on.

I just wish I had heard of him long before… and I have to wonder, who am I missing out on right now, that our technology gives me access to, and that bigotry, hatred and ignorance will steal from me before I have the opportunity to read?

*sigh*

Go read Greta’s piece.

Unknown Unknowns And Atheism

You atheist types are an obstinate sort
You could choose to believe, but you won’t
You say there’s no god in the world we can see…
Ah, but what of the world that we don’t?

What percent of reality really is known;
What percent have we left to divine?
With an unknown infinity left to explore
Who says your view is better than mine?

I choose to believe in the things we can’t see
In the not-yet-discovered reality
With no data at all, I still choose to believe
That there’s something transcending mortality

I won’t limit myself to observable facts
I won’t bow to the mere scientific
While the views I’ll admit are remarkably vague
My religion is very specific.

My God thinks as I do; what’s right and what’s wrong
His will is as clear as can be
You atheists want to know why I believe?
It’s all there… in the things we can’t see.

So at my previous post, I got a comment:

There is an important question which needs to be asked here.

How many percent of reality do you know?

How many percent of all the parallel universes?

How can you consider it unlikely that there might exist entities somewhere else who are so wonderful and powerful that they cannot be comprehended by a human mind?

I’ve never read or heard convincing answers from self-proclaimed Skeptics.

Kind regards from Europe.

It linked, by the way, to a post which approvingly linked to a very poor argument attempting to shift the burden of proof onto atheists by narrowly defining atheism (in a manner which few atheists actually agree with–I, for one, much prefer a privative definition) and by conflating knowledge and belief (thus arguing for agnosticism as an alternative to atheism, rather than as orthogonal concepts).

But, yeah, it always seemed odd to me to play the “there’s so much we don’t know” card against atheists. There’s a quote, attributed to Will Rogers, Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and Josh Billings (with a variant attributed to Ronald Reagan), “it’s not what we don’t know that gets us in trouble, it’s what we do know that just ain’t so.” To claim that the vast amount of the universe we do not know may hide something akin to a god, flies in the face of the claims of religions, who are awfully specific about the attributes and adventures of their gods. It’s not that some god might exist in a parallel universe, it’s that they lived atop Mt. Olympus. It’s not that some hidden corner of a far-off galaxy might have time-traveling magicians, it’s that one was born to a virgin in Bethlehem. It’s not that maybe on some distant star there are levitating humanoids, it’s that one ascended to heaven from a rock in Jerusalem.

Atheists are not discounting the possibility of unknown things occurring in unknown places. We don’t have to. These events and places are unknown. No one is making a positive claim that needs to be evaluated. There is nothing to deny, nothing even to comment on. But that has little or nothing to do with the actual and specific claims of religion. If, tomorrow, a time/space traveling alien materialized at, say, MIT, and provided evidence (the alien equivalent of DNA, and demonstrations of technology) of something “wonderful and powerful”, then A) skeptics would evaluate the evidence and (assuming it is sound) conclude that their world had just been expanded beyond their previously wildest beliefs, and B) it would not provide the slightest bit of evidence for any of the world’s religions.

And if, by some extraordinary chance, it turns out that this alien provided hard evidence that its alien race was behind the miracles of the bible, that they had actually occurred just as written, and that some version of Christianity (not all of them; they disagree with one another) was absolutely true… then skeptics and atheists would largely say “well, damn, I was wrong.” But that extraordinary evidence would not change the fact that, up until that evidence was provided, there was no reason at all to suspect it ever would be.

And right now, that alien has not visited, and right now, the existence of unknown mysteries in unknown corners of the universe is not, in the slightest, an argument in favor of any religion.

Atheism’s “Impoverished Narrative”

The universe’s marvels, which our Holy Books revealed,
Simply cannot hold a candle to the things that stayed concealed
But Holy Men weren’t worried—no, they knew just what to do;
When science showed new wonders, they just said “God did that, too.”

My aggregator threw me a strange one today–“Atheism and girl guides“, a post mostly grousing about the changes in the Girl Guides’ oath, removing the religious language to make it more inclusive. And an early paragraph sums it up nicely:

At one level, the atheist reworking of the Girl Guide oath to drop mention of God makes absolute sense: if you have disparate groups, you try to find a common level on which they can all agree. In the past, Catholics, Muslims, Jews etc managed to meet on a non-denominational theism. Now, theists and atheists meet on a programme of shared morals. It’s about compromise and agreeing on what we share rather than what divides us.

Although it is not an atheist reworking, but a secular reworking. As the author says, this is common ground, not exclusion of believers.

And then…

For a Christian, however, what you have is a serious impoverishment of a culture. Particularly in an organization which is devoted to the character formation of the young, that formation essentially consists in getting young people to see the difference between what they think or feel, and what is actually the case; what they want to do, and what they should do. There are (at least) two elements to this: a cognitive element based on understanding the world in a certain way; and a narrative element which provides us with a network of stories and heroes that provide analogies for our own behaviour. So, eg, a Christian formation will regard the world as meaningful and directed by the will of God, and will refer to (eg) the Bible as a stock of narrative on which we can draw.

From a Christian perspective, the more attenuated the stock from which the formation is drawn, the worse that formation. At best, the formation of character is weakened. At worst, it is actually poisoned by a pernicious alternative: to replace, “love my God” with “to be true to myself and develop my beliefs” is to replace an objective source of values with feeling.

*sigh* Yes, god’s values are objective. That’s why there are so many different versions of them, and why god always seems to agree with the person quoting him.

In the end, this is not just about atheism vs theism, but an impoverished narrative vs a rich one, and relativism vs objectivity. A lot of modern atheism is simply dumb: it’s the sort of thing 18 year old computer geeks would come up with. Christianity is being dumped, but instead of being replaced by a rich humanism soaked in the classicism and literature of the past, it is being replaced by a void. The better sort of atheist realize that but most don’t and even fewer have any sort of viable proposals to fill that void.

Impoverished vs rich is all? The Greek and Norse mythologies are incredibly rich–I loved reading those as a child, and studying them up through college (and one of my favorite books is the Mythological Atlas of Greece, which locates the physical areas that gave rise to various myths. It’s not just that the gods existed, but here, specifically, is where they did this or that. Frankly, the rich narrative was lost when the girl guides decided on “god” rather than “the gods”. And as for the void that god fills and atheism can’t? Please, take a look at how much of “creation” is in the bible. When the bible was written, our understanding of the universe was tiny. The notion of a galaxy, let alone of a universe full of countless galaxies, was unimaginable. Mind you, a god giving revealed truth to his chosen representatives could have mentioned something about it (along with suggesting that people wash their hands regularly), but it wasn’t until humans discovered it that suddenly it was part of God’s Great Universe, and evidence of How Much He Loves Us. (This bit was the inspiration for the opening verse, btw.)

From a Catholic point of view, there is simply nothing that will work in the long run beyond a true religious formation. I don’t expect atheists to agree, but I do expect them to start provide suggestions which go beyond simply using the delete key or suggesting that four year olds study Darwin.

Nice. As wonderful as Darwin’s view of life is (and it is far richer than the tapestry you claim the bible and religion in general present), it is a tiny fragment of the astonishing world we know now that we did not know when the universal and objective truths of religion were revealed. We can and do apply science to all of the questions that religion pretends to give answers for. We know more about human nature, we know more about our environment, we know more about our universe… Go to any modern college or university library, or major public library, and separate out the information therein into to piles–what religion has taught us, and what we learned apart from religion.

Then tell me which world view is impoverished.

“Investigating Atheism”

So, my aggregator is weird; I’ll completely miss stuff from here at FtB, but find something from halfway across the world on a user-generated news forum… this is one of those latter times. The News24 people in Cape Town, South Africa have such a user-generated section, and in it, a regular commenter is trying to understand atheism.

After posting similar questions on the comment section, I decided to take it a bit further. I just need to understand the atheist stand point more. I am looking for honest answers on the below questions. Also take time to really think of the answers before you start answering.
1. Where do you come from?
2. What is your purpose on earth?
3. Does life have a meaning?
4. What is just and fair for you?
5. God forbids, if your child is murdered and the person is never caught and brought to justice, how would you handle it, seeing that life has no meaning and we are just here on earht to live and die. Where would you get justice from?
6. An intelligent, thinking child brought up by atheist parents becomes a Christian how do you respond? Oh and becomes preacher and starts a new church, would you say your child has a problem?
7. What about all the injustice in the world that goes by unreported, where must everyone else get justice from?
8. How do you answer your own child that is searching for meaning and purpose in life?
9. Why does research, discovery, diplomacy, art, music, sacrifice, compassion, feelings of love, or affectionate and caring relationships mean anything if it all ultimately comes to naught anyway?
10. Is death the end of life?

Yes, some of the questions are insulting, but it’s possible this person is really actually trying to understand. Assuming that, then, honest answers might be the best way to replace insulting stereotypes with actual understanding. My own answers, after the jump: [Read more…]

Sorry, California, But You Have To Pay The Atheist *Something*.

A godless drug offender who was serving his parole
Was remanded to a program where they tried to save his soul
He denies a god exists—a “higher power” is their phrase—
So they threw him back in prison for another hundred days
Now, this differential treatment was unlawful (also, rude)
So the godless drug offender (and his lawyer, likely) sued.

The state had caused him injury, the judge could not deny
100 days in prison cos he wouldn’t tell a lie
The atheist could not deny, the bible isn’t buyable,
And since California locked him up, the state was clearly liable
A convicted drug offender, he was clearly no one’s hero,
When the judge awarded damages—the jury added, “zero”.

Now the Circuit Court has spoken, with the facts beyond dispute;
Sent the case back to a jury, with the warning “don’t get cute”

So, yeah, jury, you may not like the fact that an atheist convicted drug offender sued the state (of California) because they did not have a drug treatment program that did not require him to believe in a god… but seriously, the man was thrown back in prison for 100 days because he wouldn’t say he believed in a higher power, and this is worth nothing?

SAN FRANCISCO — California should compensate an atheist parolee for returning him to prison after he resisted participating in a religious-based drug treatment program, a federal appeals court decided unanimously Friday.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said a jury should award Barry A. Hazle Jr., a drug offender, compensatory damages for his loss of freedom and could consider possible punitive and emotional distress damages as well.

What was the case about?

After Hazle served a prison term, California ordered him to spend 90 days in a residential 12-step program. Hazle said he was atheist and asked for a secular program instead. But state officials told him they had none to offer.

Staff at the state-required treatment center reported that Hazle was disruptive “in a congenial way.” The state revoked his parole and put him back in prison for 100 days. He sued.

A Sacramento federal judge determined that Hazle had clearly suffered a violation of his constitutional rights and ordered a jury to assess monetary damages. The jury awarded zero damages.

100 days in prison, that any religious believer (or non-believer willing to lie) would not have had to suffer. But hey, he was on parole. A drug offender. An atheist. The judge asked for a reasonable damage amount, and the jury stepped up and said “nothing.” That was back in 2010 (the initial sentence was in 2007)

“Given the indisputable fact of actual injury resulting from Hazle’s unconstitutional imprisonment, and the district judge’s finding that the state defendants were liable for that injury, an award of compensatory damages was mandatory,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a Jimmy Carter appointee, wrote for the panel.

The court said another jury must be convened to determine Hazle’s compensation.

The comments at the story are actually not terrible, too, if you go for that sort of thing.

Edit–there is also the actual court decision here (thanks, screechymonkey), which is well worth reading.

“Atheists Believe In Nothing, Including You.”

It would be more amusing if it weren’t so common. This time, the source of the bad article of the day is the website for the Western Center For Journalism (“Informing And Equipping Americans Who Love Freedom”); the article, a commentary piece “Atheists Believe In Nothing, Including You“.

Atheism is the absence of a belief system.

There is no religion called Atheism. If atheists resided in the Middle East, they would be beheaded as non-believers, which they are. They have no belief in anything good in this world. All they can do is criticize people of faith and use the generous nature of the American people and the unabashed support of socialist groups like the ACLU to exploit the American culture.

They did get one sentence right, but other than that… and do I detect a bit of approval for the Middle East treatment of atheists?

I don’t understand why more people don’t just tell them to shut up. Where is the country’s backbone? Where have all the God-fearing men and women gone? Why do we have a government that is more interested in protecting the rights of people who try to murder our military than standing up for the religious beliefs of soldiers that are protected under the First Amendment?

You can tell it’s a journalism center. (Ok, you can tell because it says so on the label, but if you missed that, nothing about the writing would give you a clue.)

Anyway, I was going to deconstruct the whole thing, but it’s just so depressingly bad. Random talking points (e.g., the Judeo-Christian tradition our country was founded on) are hammered into a paragraph along with a Webster’s dictionary definition, an unsupported slur against atheists and “the people on the extreme left”. Traditional marriage, abortion, religious charities, and word salad in many different varieties. Christians can’t read bibles in public, radical Muslims want to kill our babies, and it’s all Obama’s fault. It’s just too much. A journalism center? Really?

But yeah, Atheists believe in nothing. Apparently. And it turns out I already have my response written. Maybe the author will actually find an opportunity to meet with a real flesh-and blood atheist, and reconsider his opinions on atheists’ beliefs.

Or, more probably, not.

Anyway…

I believe in love and kindness
I believe in helping hands
I believe in strong opinions
I believe in taking stands
I believe cooperation
Overcomes the steepest odds
I believe we have a fighting chance

I don’t believe in gods.

I believe in education
I believe in learning science
I believe we see much further
When we climb atop of giants
I believe in writing poetry
And verses praising love
I believe that there are mysteries

But not a god above.

I believe in art and music
And the power of a voice
I believe in nature’s beauty
I believe we have a choice
I believe we have a future—
We’re in charge of how it looks—
I believe in sharing knowledge, too

But not in holy books

I believe we came from nothing
And to nothing we’ll return
I believe we don’t know everything
But much of it, we’ll learn
I believe we’re all connected
I believe all sorts of stuff
I believe we are humanity

And isn’t that enough?