Salman Rushdie was in Minneapolis last night—I wish I could have been there, but that 3 hour drive can’t be taken lightly—and it sounds like he was in excellent form:
When asked the question, “Who gets to tell our stories, and who decides who gets to tell them?” Rushdie replied, “Well, you’re talking about religion, aren’t you? Religion is some people deciding to tell stories for the rest of us, to us.”
When asked what spiritual practice he used in his writing, if any: “I have no spiritual practice. The word spirituality should be banned from the English language for at least 50 years… Talk about a word that has lost its meaning! You can’t walk your dog without doing it in a ‘spiritual ‘manner, you can’t cook without talking about spirituality!”
Bravo!
I agree that spirituality is a much abused word. That doesn’t mean, that the concept is irrelevant.
Lots of other words are used so widely as to risk losing all meaning, including words like democracy and freedom. That doesn’t mean we should abolish these words or that the concepts behind them are worthless.
That doesn’t mean, that the concept is irrelevant.
.
could you then explain to us, what does that word actualy mean ?
Still, I couldn’t find the enthusiasm to read his two most recent novels. Sigh.
How refreshing! I wish I had gone to hear him now.
I should mention that the quotes are from my memory–though he certainly made them stick!
How about, “I’m not religious; I’m spiritual.” Argh! What does that even mean?!
Perhaps it means: “My faith is not like Pat Robertson’s.” Which is fine, but why not just say that?
Spiritual is one of those “humpty Dumpty” words that mean exatly what the speaker means it to mean.
“Spiritual is one of those “humpty Dumpty” words that mean exatly what the speaker means it to mean.”
And yet it’s your fault if you don’t know exactly what the speaker means.
> What does that even mean?!
That the speaker is neither a fullbore materialist nor a member of an organized religion. They’ll believe in God but not any particular doctrine, or in reincarnation, or that “everything is connected”, or in “something beyond what we can see”.
The problem with words like spiritual is that they are such a cultural rich point: difficult to describe and difficult to agree on a standard meaning. To me, spirituality is completly separate from religion and dogma. It is a very personal thing, dealing with emotions, asthetics, morals, and other intangibles that are not easily grasped. And, unlike dogma, it is constantly changing.
Of course, your definition will be different from mine.
can a word that can’t be defined have any meaning?
“can a word that can’t be defined have any meaning?”
well, define means:
define (v.) To state the precise meaning of (a word or sense of a word, for example).
So no, not really.
Some people who say “I’m not religious; I’m spiritual.” are new-agers who believe in crystal power and junk, but I’ve met some who are honestly looking for answers to the big questions: reading the philosophers and religious texts, seeing for themselves if there’s something in prayer or meditation, just trying to connect with things on a non-verbal level. The same impulse drives a lot of people into science, especially in physics.
Spirituality? I think it’s a feeling of connectedness.
I tend to go barefoot a lot (hiking, for instance). One of my reasons is “spirituality” (nonetheless, I am a weak deist tending towards atheism). But walking barefoot gives me a feeling of connectedness with the world. I suspect that it is lighting up some specific section of my brain, and it gives me that feeling, which I tend to enjoy.
But I realize that I am just tampering with the chemical composition of sections of my brain, and that there is nothing deeper in it. But that’s OK; lots of people do similar things (think alcohol, runner’s high, etc.).
The answer to the “big” questions:
42
I wonder why folks feel entitled to answers to the “big questions” when most of them don’t want to do some hard learning that’s required to understand what we’ve discovered so far.
In Utah, the word’s prounounced “spear-chull”.
Having put quite a bit of work into it myself (several years of grad school in physics), I totally agree, as far as ‘the origin of the universe’ and such goes. But questions like, ‘what should I do with my life’ are big questions with less concrete answers.
On the other hand, maybe we’re proving quite effectively that ‘spirituality’ means so many different things to different people it becomes meaningless.
yeh BJN
why people think they can answer the big question without doing some big work is hard to understand.
and why are they even entitled to an answer?
“‘I’m not religious; I’m spiritual.’ Argh! What does that even mean?!”
Quite. What I also hate is the phrase, “Just physical,” as in, “I don’t think the universe is just physical.” Just?
We need a major redefinition of terms in this society, because “spiritual” has become a grab-bag of things that matter actually accomplishes. Don’t thank God for what man has done, and don’t ascribe to spirituality what the “physical” cosmos does, I say.
Part of the problem is that we actually experience moments of ‘transcendence’ or ecstacy at significant moments in our lives. For example, when I saw each of my children be born, there was a feeling unlike any other I have experienced, a combination of joy and elation and other more subtle things, and those moments are seared into my psyche. I don’t doubt that they are electrochemical storms in my brain, and I don’t think god or buddha or allah put them there. They are brain things.
They serve to bond me to my kids, I guess, and likely evolved just for that. But I wouldn’t minimize them by saying that they are ‘just’ chemicals in my brain. While that is what they are, they are as profound as anything I experience. They constitute some of the best, most meaningful experiences of my life.
“Spirituality” can be a shorthand for stuff we experience, stuff that is moving and profound, but that we have stripped all the dogmatic claptrap from. It sounds weak and otherworldly to science types. But how do you characterize a beautiful sunset, or rather the experience of it. Reductionism, as much as I love it, works poorly here, the same way explaining the internet in terms of electrons fails (by being true, but unhelpful). Using the word ‘spirit’ to mean breath rather than ghost, and realizing that by ‘spirit’ we mean something about the experience of life itself that people have traditionally identified with breath, is a powerful way of expressing something that would not translate well into biochemistry.
Not that I think that there is anything at all wrong with dissecting joy or love or ecstacy or rage into biochemistry; to the contrary, this is a particularly fascinating area of science in my opinion. But then, you are describing the mechanism and not the experience, and unless you wish to supress the description of the experience (like behaviorists seemed to), or deny its existence, subjective though it is, you need some way to talk about it.
I know most of the time when people say that they are spiritual rather than religious, they are apologizing for not going to church or synagogue or mosque or something, or just vapidly parroting what they think they should say. Nevertheless, I think that there has to be some way to talk about parts of human life that resist reduction, or at least, lose some of their character as experience when dissected. It is a shame that it has lost meaning, or maybe, it is a shame to not have a way to talk about it that is stripped of nonsense.
Yeah, and when people say “Do you really believe you are JUST a physical body?”…
To me that’s like saying “Do you really believe the Mona Lisa is JUST egg yolk and coloured dirt?”
“can a word that can’t be defined have any meaning?”
Well, what it describes certainly has meaning to me. But since the meaning is different to you, I guess then, no, there is no definition, there is no “universal” meaning. In other words, talking about stuff like this is very near bunk, because communicating the ineffable is impossible. Which is why I would rather keep it to myself.
Nicely said, Dave.
It also strikes me that people sometimes talk about being spiritual to scientists or atheists because there’s some kind of weird assumption that we deny these kinds of feelings or significance.
dave eaton
i characterize a beautiful sunset, well, as a beautiful sunset.
I was discussing integrity with someone, defining what integrity is to me, and he said “you mean your soul.” Similarly, I think for some people spirituality means that part of themselves that listens to love, appreciation of beauty, altruistic wishes and dreams, and things seperate from self-interest. But then the old mysticism comes in… Some include superstitions of various kinds, from full-blown cases of religion down to “feeling positive energy.”
There needs to be a better word. Yes, atheists can have the first set of feelings I mentioned, but damned if I want to call that spirituality, because they word has been tainted with that other icky stuff. Similarly, why would anyone who is truly a conservative want to call themselves a Republican?
That’s the one thing I don’t get about the UU church. Plenty of people that go there in religious in some way, and so fine, whatever floats your boat… but yet many UUers describe themselves as atheists. What is that?
What is that? Do they just feel a strong need to have some place to go hang out on Sunday mornings? Habit from childhood, they need a routine or something?
Wouldn’t the local independent combination coffee-shop/book store/record store or whatever where all the college student, artists and aging hippies hang about all morning be just as good? They let you sprawl out and practically move in…
Hell, I would have hung out at Spot Coffee on Elmwood if it weren’t for the fact that I can drink the stuff.
er… CANT drink the stuff.
Let me just chime in and say I agree with Dave, broadly speaking. I would like to add a little something, though.
After a couple hours surfing from blog to blog or hacking away at Wikipedia articles, I find it’s very easy to get fed up with the Internet. “Stupid trolls,” I say in the first case, “stupid vandals” in the second. But then I step back, rub my eyes and realize, “Hey, we do all that with electrons and silicon. We’re really good with electrons!”
If I am just listening to music, I typically do not think of it as a modulated sequence of sound waves, air vibrations with a time-varying power spectrum, etc. I would certainly not try to capture Dark Side of the Moon with a Fourier analysis. . . And yet, if I do have an understanding of frequencies, amplitudes and phases — if I develop a little mathematics and apply it towards a “reductionist” understanding of physical phenomena including sounds — then I can build a laser light show. I have actually done this. Mostly, I’ve done the software work while more solder-savvy friends designed and built the hardware, but with “our powers combined”, we made some damn cool glowing things. Put any song you liked on the computer, and its mind adjusts for the song’s character, making the room pulse with color.
Laser Floyd, dude, or Laser Ode To Joy.
I can certainly appreciate the beauty in a flower or a sunset, say, without going deep into the biology or the physics of it. However, since I do know a little about how the sunset happens, I can appreciate the combination of phenomena which go into the spectacle. I can connect the reddening of the sunset on a dusty, hazy evening to the reddening of distant stars seen behind dust clouds in astronomical photographs. My sunset relates to many other things: scientific knowledge allows all sights to become metaphors.
Sometimes, I stumble across something I knew at a much younger age but lost contact with during the intervening years. It could be a book, a piece of music, a place or many other things. When I meet such an old acquaintance again, I can feel a pattern to my life, a sense of Time’s complexity. When what I meet has gained new aspects in the interim, the complexity I feel becomes more deep and vast.
“Reductionism” is a decent enough concept, I suppose, yet it doesn’t capture what I have experienced as a fairly common occurence among people who have a scientific worldview. Knowledge keeps adding to beauty, I find. It enhances the multiplicity of meaning. Some days I think that all the words we use to describe the “scientific method”, words like reductionism and materialism, were invented by people who had never even tried the “method” out. Now we’re stuck with them, and at the very least they make the job of communication harder. More’s the pity.
ts-
I would characterize it thus, too. Is beautiful somehow less fuzzy than spiritual, though? I know what I mean when I say it, all the same.
Blake-
Indeed. The reason to submit to the discipline of learning programming or electronics, outside pecuniary concerns, is that you can do really cool stuff with it. I remember when I first grasped what a fourier transform would do- the feeling was visceral. It was neat. That’s why I became a chemist. It’s just really, really cool and fun. It’s useful, and so I can get someone to pay me to do it, but that’s not why I do it. Ssomething that Feynman said in the interview that PZ linked to recently really resonated- knowing the way a flower ‘works’ adds to the experience of the flower as beautiful. Knowledge always adds to the aesthetic experience. Aesthetic experience is a clumsy term, though, yet saying something is beautiful is hardly descriptive, either. Why is a sunset beautiful? Is the experience important to survival, I wonder?
Hi Dave Eaton
Thanks for the discussion but I really don’t want to play “dueling definitions” so no response required.
have fun
I wouldn’t accept any definition of spiritual that wasn’t an operational definition, and most people to whom that word is important, I suspect, would reject any operational definition as unspiritual.
They also claim they don’t possess a creed… which is one of the critical points in their creed.
Unitarian Universalists showcase what happens when you keep such an open mind that your brains fall out. They end up recreating the kind of nonsense that they supposedly oppose in theism.
I imagine having a Fatwa placed upon one’s head for the writing and publishing of a work of fiction provides a different and sharper perspective than most of us likely have access to with regard to the pronouncements of religious leaders and the stories they tell to shore up their power over others. And being a recognized authority on story telling doesn’t hurt his case either.
Read the Humanitarian Manifesto from 1933 then the updates of 1973 and 2003. The first one was written by a group of which half were Unitarian Universalist ministers (or whatever they are called). It’s a description of naturalism, explicitly denies the supernatural, and generally advocates things that most here would find meaningful and useful.
Hmm, ‘spiritual’ may just be an irredeemable term. It carries too much baggage, and is too diffuse. While some terms, like ‘spiritual’ , are not useful, there are experiences often cast in these terms that are interesting, real (though subjective) and important to people. What to call them doesn’t matter, maybe. But nontheistic people might want to have some shorthand available, so when people bring such experiences into conversation, they can be engaged in a way that affirms the experience without allowing any supernatural twist to creep in.
“It’s a description of naturalism, explicitly denies the supernatural, and generally advocates things that most here would find meaningful and useful.”
Ok cool. So then why do you need a church? If it’s not for worship, then why not just meet at the park or something if you want to get together with like-minded individuals?
I’m not criticizing, I just don’t GET it. Why a church? Why not a coffee house, or a fraternal lodge, or a community soft-ball league, or a “discussion group” or whatever?
I realize I am coming at this from ignorance, but it just seems like “The Church of Not Having Churches.”
Caledonian,
What is this statement supposed to mean:
“They also claim they don’t possess a creed… which is one of the critical points in their creed.”
This statement makes no sense. UUs have no creed. No set of beliefs is forced upon anyone. Everyone gets to explore their own personalized definition of what “spiritual” means to them, since there doesn’t seem to be a common definition. You have your own personal creed, if you want one. UUs do have seven principles to live by, if you want to consider that as something similar to a creed.
As far as I can tell, people go for a sense of community and service. Atheists go because there aren’t any atheists churches to go to. And the coffee is cheaper by far than a coffeehouse :-)
…darth
“Atheists go because there aren’t any atheists churches to go to.”
This makes no sense to me. It’s as if I have no interest in NASCAR, and so I get together with other people who have no interest in NASCAR and we pool our money to build a speedway where no races take place, so we can sit in the stands and “watch” the absence of racing, and perhaps discuss with each other how glad we are that there’s no race going on, since we don’t like races.
craig,
Well they must like something about it, because they keep on coming back. Maybe the sense of community, maybe they just like to sing. Maybe its the undefinable “spirituality”.
I guess I won’t see you there! :-)
…darth
Well, sure they enjoy it. They just don’t seem like atheists to me. Atheists would go to a “Community Hall” or social club, they wouldn’t call their place to gather a church. Just like I said “The Church of Not Having Churches.”
I can’t help but get the impression that so-called atheists who feel the need to go to a church are people that have come along far enough to see that religion is silly, but since they were raised going to church somehow subconsciously would feel their parents’ disapproval if they don’t go to SOME impressively big building with trappings of authority and ritual on Sundays.
A good friend and a person I greatly respect is a member of a UU church, and I just get the impression he goes because going to some sort of church was how he was raised, so even as he rejected superstition he was too insecure to reject the ritual.
I never had any indoctrination in my life – never once went to church, and I suspect most atheist UU’ers are people who were taken to religious churches as children.
All of this has me thinking there may be a market for a daily newspaper column – Horoscopes for the Skeptic.
Libra – Today would be a good day to do that thing you’ve been putting off… because, well, ANY day would be. You may come into some extra money today, but then again, you may not. As always, watch out for dangerous situations. If a certain attractive someone should make a romantic advance toward you today, respond in the way that seems best.
Not being snarky, just bewildered.
craig,
You may be right about that. I myself grew up Catholic, so maybe this is part of my de-conversion process. Many UUs seem to be ex-Catholic or other denomination. Maybe having ritual drilled into your psyche means you are just used to having it around, even if the religion is gone from it.
You never had to go to church? Wow, I envy you for that.
…darth
craig,
It’s confusing, but I think you’re basically getting the gist. I used to date a girl who was atheist and went to a UU church. For her, at least, it was all about the ritual, the familiarity and the sense of fellowship. It struck me as pretty much the same thing as AA: going to the meetings becomes almost more important than the reasons you started going to the meetings in the first place.
If I may engage in some slightly fuzzy sociology, human beings, for the most part, like to gather. We join fan clubs and churches and political parties and go to meetings to have other people who think pretty much the way we do that the way we think is the right way to think on whatever the topic may be. I’m of the opinion that the religious side of spirituality (whether the two words are synonyms or not) is a cultural dead-end soon to be (hopefully) abandonned voluntarily by humanity as “not needed”. As an agnostic who’d rather have his teeth pulled than attend regular meetings of anything, the only thing I can think of is UU offers public atheists – still a fairly recent concept – a way to fill that all-too-human need to be surrounded by people saying “Yeah, you’re right”.
It’s not neccessarily logical, of course, but then so little in human history is.
:) I’ve never been envied before! ;)
I guess I can’t understand how powerful the indoctrination is… for me growing up, religion was something I almost never thought about, was only exposed to the existence of it overhearing classmates or catching Davy and Goliath when flipping channels, etc… going to church was some strange thing that other people inexplicably did.
I wasn’t raised an atheist either. My parents had simply agreed to never mention the subject of religion in any way whatsoever, and let us figure things out for ourselves.
It wasn’t until I was about 17 that I found out that my dad is an atheist, and in my 20s when I found out that my mom isn’t.
Craig, why not go to Caffe Aroma on Elmwood and just eat the desserts? Nobody forces a creed –excuse me, a beverage– on you just ’cause you’re at a coffeehouse.
I’m in the same boat as craig in that I don’t understand the church appeal. I’m different in that I was raised Catholic and we went to church every week. I didn’t like it even when I did believe. Very high on my list of benefits to atheism is NOT HAVING TO GO TO CHURCH. So I don’t get it either.
“Atheists would go to a “Community Hall” or social club”
That’s the way I feel, it would be an active group thing, whereas church strikes me as necessarily passive. Folks get up on a raised platform and read stuff at you, you participate only in rigidly predefined ways. Of course, I’ve never been to a UU service. I’d still rather watch football.
You can’t tell your religious boss that you went to the coffee shop or the lodge for a sing-along. Plus, only churches get those tax breaks.
Screw spirituality. I need it as much as I need God.
The problem with Atheism, IMHO, is too limited; I also aspiritual!
“The problem with Atheism, IMHO, is too limited; I also aspiritual!”
If there is anything religious about me, it is the joy I feel at not doing or feeling anything religious. I used to half-seriously wonder if religious people had a brain implant installed at birth that provoked seizures and otherwise interfered with their normal functioning. But then other people have always struck me as very strange.
Hmm… interesting thoughts on UU. I do know my wife has recently been considering recommencing churchgoing – not out of religious feeling but because she remembers the inclusive group dynamic fondly. And, of course, being with child she can no longer rely on the true secular alternatrive: the pub.
Today’s random quote: much as I admire Russell, we have a lot to thank Churchill for. Without his stubborness, oratory and leadership in 1940 the world would be a very different and less free place than it is now.
“The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far away, but I shall walk carefully.”
Russian proverb, seen via Linux fortune-cookie program.
Yeah, I agree that it’s pointless, but believe or not there are such things as “atheist churches” — at least one of them at any rate — Freethought Hall in Madison, WI. I guess some people just have too much time on their hands and feel that they have to waste it somewhere.
I’ve always taken “‘I’m not religious; I’m spiritual” to mean “I’m not someone with whom you should bother trying to have a meaningful conversation”.
-jcr
BTW, don’t the “revolutionary guard” thugs in Iran still have a price on his head?
-jcr
Spirituality, is that like communing with spirits? I do that every Saturday night! The trouble is that too much sprituality usually leads to worshiping at the porcelain altar.
There are indeed “spiritual” ways to do everyday tasks.
Problem is nobody does ’em and too many unskilled people talk about ’em. Do. Don’t talk so much.
And that “spritual” – meaning to be animated by life, actually- being there, as it were- doesn’t need no stinkin’ deity.
Weird as it may be, there are some people that actually enjoy going to church- I knew a lot of people growing up for whom the church was as much social club as anything. So, for those ex-christian atheists who had that kind of positive experience, I guess UU offers a way to continue it.
Personally, even when I was religious I didn’t much care for church-going; I think in an earlier age I would have been a cloistered (and antisocial) monk. So when I de-converted, the lack of church attendance became a big positive. About all that is left from my churchgoing youth is a feeling that, somehow, sleeping in on a Sunday is much more satisfying than on other days.
Freethought Hall???
These people need to get with the 21st century. Why attend atheist services when you can hang around in atheist weblogs?
Hello? Ever heard of the internet?
That’s the point: there can be no such common definition because UU doctrine forbids it.
The principle that no UU shall be obligated to follow any creed is one of the main principles in the creed that UUs agree to follow.
So basically you are saying UUism is the poroverbial “Jeet Kune Do” of spirituality…
“The style of no style” works for me too, I guess I’m a UU and don’t know it…
Caledonian,
If that fits your definition of a ‘creed’ then I won’t argue the semantics. And its one of the characteristics that makes me feel comfortable setting foot in the place. I definitely couldn’t attend any church where a creed was forced upon me. yuck.
…darth
I’m not a UU, but there are a couple of UU jokes that are germane here:
Q: What do you call an atheist with kids?
A: A Unitarian.
Q: What happens when Jews and Catholics marry?
A: They join a UU church.
I’m actually a bit of a UU wannabe (the nearest UU church to my house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, after all!), but as an atheist Jew, I just can’t get over the “church” thing. And as an introvert, I can’t get over spending free time to socialize with people when I could be reading a book or gardening.
I’m atheist / UU, so I suppose I can comment on this briefly and with some insight.
First, I find it humorous that this topic has come up in a thread about the excellent speech Salman Rushdie gave. Why do people go to see Salman? Or Bill Clinton? Any talented speaker with insight? Answer that question, and you’re a little closer to why I go to church. The speakers at my church are inspired, intelligent and passionate. Simply aside from the thrill of feeling deep emotion when someone speaks, they also help me stay in an active dialogue about life and meaning. Ever Sunday after church my wife and I usually spend hours discussing the topic of the morning, and I love that.
It’s not just about UU being a community, though that matters. I like being surrounded by other liberals, just as I like working with them on social issues, protesting with them at the capitol, talking with them about the news of the day. I have never found a more committed and focused group of liberals outside of my UU church. And as a group we do so much more than I could do myself.
It’s not just a habit, either, though that matters too. I have in my life a lot of habits. I make my pot of tea when I get to my desk. I kiss my wife and daughter when I come home or leave. I workout before I eat. I check my email before I go to bed. These habits are good habits, and having a structure to support those good habits is… good. I don’t always have the time or energy or ability to think deeply about love, suffering, and community – but every Sunday morning, it is my habit to go somewhere to think those thoughts.
UU enforces no creed because they don’t have to. How you choose to live in this world is your business, and whatever ornate trappings (or lack thereof) you prefer, that’s up to you. But the UU church DOES have values – of integrity, love, inclusion, thoughtfulness. By being part of such a community you’re endorsing those values.
I haven’t set foot in a church for 15 years before finally joining our church last year. I understand why people would not want to go to church, especially those raised Christian. But one of the rewards of being an atheist is NOT the gift of not belonging. As an athiest I can belong to any organization that I believe promotes my personal values, without fear of being considered ‘wrong’ by some arcane tradition.
So it’s a ‘church’. Big deal. My little coop is a grocery store, but lumping it with the big box monstrosities I stopped going to years ago is hardly an apt comparison. I have chosen to look past the label, to see the people and the tradition and values – and I’m very, very happy that I’ve made that choice.
Going way, way back to Rushdie’s comments, he said: “Religion is some people deciding to tell stories for the rest of us, to us.”
I love that quote. It reminds me of another one I read that had great resonance for me, and I wish I could remember where I found it. (I think it was in some reading I did about caste in India, but I have long forgotten the book title or author, sorry.) It was a paraphrase of Santayana, and went something like this:
“Those who don’t know their history are condemned to repeat other people’s versions of it.”
As someone brought up in a strict sect (*see note) I can tell you that this is true.
But Rushdie’s quote is better. Religious followers (of the extreme type, at least) have their narratives written for them 100%. They are not allowed to develop our own stories. Their lives are bit parts in the great story of the religion, and have no significance outside of that story. Inside the story, though, they have tremendous significance, and this is one thing that makes it hard to leave. Losing that story is losing coherence. You have to start again from scratch, making sense of the world and a place for yourself in it. It is a BIG JOB.
Also (veering off at another tangent), could ‘spirituality’ be considered a sense of wonder with (semi-)religious overtones added?
(*NOTE: Strict sect = Church every evening of the week, most of Saturday morning, and four times on Sunday. We considered ‘so-called Christians’ who went to church only on Sundays to be VERY watered-down and misguided, not to mention hell-bound. You lucky sods – what did you do with all that TIME? Something sinful, I’ll bet.)
Why attend atheist services when you can hang around in atheist weblogs?
So you can meet hot atheist women?
There are no hot atheist women at Pharyngula?
PZ, I demand my money back!
*storms from the room*
To Craig et al:
I think you’re missing a big part of the point of church (any church, irrespective of theology) — there’s a lot more to it than Sunday morning. Among other things, a good church is likely to provide:
1) The ritualistic stuff, for those who go in for that sort of thing (and a good choir singing decent music is always nice).
2) A social community (we all need that — and I don’t believe on-line relationships are an adequate substitute).
3) A support network for those in need (unemployed, illness, elderly, play groups for families with young kids, contact with the official support agencies)
4) A group of like-minded people with whom to work on Worthy Causes. In the case of UU (and the more liberal Protestant churches) they’re likely to be into things like: environmental issues, gay rights, poverty, human rights, etc. (You and I may agree or disgree with some of the specific Causes chosen — but you’ll get that outside the churches as well.)
That’s a pretty good range of human needs and activities. Yes, you can probably find all those things for yourself elsewhere — but the church provides a sort of one-stop shopping. I don’t think that’s something to be dismissed lightly. After retirement my parents (agnostics all their adult lives) joined a UU fellowship. I’m damn glad they did — when their health began to fail, they got all kinds of support from a few people there who made it their business to keep an eye on the older members.
And note that church is not necessarily a completely “passive” experience — sevices might be (though even there: a good liturgy involves some audience participation, eg. the traditional Anglican mass), but being involved in a congregation is anything but passive.
To sum up: there’s all sorts of perfectly good reasons why a non-believer might join a UU church.
No! I will not be strident, and you can’t make me!
An outside view of UU, here. I had a UU g/f for half a year, and went to her church most Sundays during that time.
Given the refs to “capitol” and “co-op”, it may have been the same church as mafisto, with whom I basically agree. In the end it wasn’t enough to be worth my time, but it was actually enjoyable. Not so much for ritual’s sake, in my case, but for what mafisto says about a community of like-minded liberals.
The sermons were more like oratories, well-spoken and well-considered discussions about real issues. Plus some really good music, from the choir and pianist as well as various guest musicians. Plus the building itself is beautiful.
Personally, I’d rather spend Sunday mornings in the garden or workshop, but I can see the appeal even for folks like me what had no churchin’ growin’ up.
And I don’t see how one can argue with an organization that loudly proclaims a humanist agenda. It doesn’t make up for the tax-exempt status of science-denying hate-spewing organizations like Robertson’s or Falwell’s, but it is nice to see an alternative formulation of “church”.
For the best comment from a cartoon source on the “stories” they love to tell (from “Idiot Box” 04/20/06), go to:
http://www.mattbors.com/newstrip.html
“2,000 years of bullshit…slow roasted over a heretic.”
And, of course, UU churches are called such because UU came out of the merger of two extremely liberal (ex-?)Christian churches. Why not a Freethought Hall? No reason, but the UU churches are there and the Halls aren’t.
Additional benefits — for families — not mentioned yet are the religious education classes, which I’d assume are liberal comparative religion classes. There’s sex education worked in as well, possibly starting as young as six.
And for lots of people raised UU, being such seems to be a really wonderful and magical experience, not that I know why. Almost too much so, as they can’t replicate it in adulthood and get frustrated. But they may come back when they have kids of their own.
I have no doubt that there are hot atheist women here, but we’re not exactly meeting, are we? We only get to appreciate their intellectual hotness, and not their corporeal hotness.
BadAunt makes an good point:
From the descriptions of mafisto, lt.kizhe, and Johnny Vector it seems like the UU “church” doesn’t push a particular narrative other than a quite general one about naturalism and liberalism.
Until I moved away from the area, I attended a Buddhist group that offered twice-a-week gatherings in Palo Alto which could not have been simpler: sit together silently for a while, listen to a well-educated, articulate person talk about some interesting aspect of life which was followed by a little Q&A, then go home. Being in the midst of Silicon Valley a unique variety of people attended, from young newly minted millionaires to older widows trying to make ends meet and everyone in between. For me it was an oasis of calm and thoughtfulness in the middle of the rat race (of which I was very much a part), a refreshing and invigorating experience.
For people unfamiliar with Palo Alto it is part of the the San Francisco Bay Area which includes Oakland and San Jose, some 5 to 7 million people in a dense urban/suburban sprawl. Having something like the gatherings I described above is a tremendous resource. Open to anyone, no cost, donations not even resquested (although accepted), no dogma. It was fitting, I thought, that the group rented a Quaker meeting hall. After I moved away, they sought permanent quarters of their own. Guess what they bought? A church.
Like the word liberal and as discussed on a previous thread on Pharangula the word belief, I’d hate to see “spiritual” taken from intelligent discourse. We all get Rushdie’s point. Sure new-agers and others use it in appropriately. Every multisylabic word is used incorrectly by many people — even, and maybe most glaringly, the two-sylable word science. Spiritual is still a useful word in contrast to, say, words like mundane, consumerism, self-serving, prosaic, greed, parochial, …. As someone alluded to above, a spiritual attitude is one of wonder about life, the world and how to act in a life-enhancing way.
Just for the record, “Freethought Hall” in Madison, WI is NOT an “atheist church.” It is the headquarters for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and contains offices, meeting rooms, and a library (no pulpit.) FFRF is a national organization composed mostly of atheists and agnostics, and it works on church/state separation issues.
There is, however, an active “Church of Freethought” down in Texas — and last I saw it was developing branches in other states. Although an atheist, I sometimes attend a local UU “Fellowship” — the attraction is mostly social. Not all of us are lucky enough to live in areas which have coffeehouses filled with intellectuals who love a good discussion.
creed
n.
1. A formal statement of religious belief; a confession of faith.
2. A system of belief, principles, or opinions: laws banning discrimination on the basis of race or creed; an architectural creed that demanded simple lines.
“My” definition of the word is shared by every speaker of English on the planet. What’s yours, darthWilliam?
as an atheist Jew, I just can’t get over the “church” thing
I notice a number of UU groups title themselves “Congregation” or “Fellowship” rather than “Church” — probably in an effort to escape some of that historical baggage.
it irks me when people automatically equate freethought with atheism. why is this? there is absolutely nothing about principle, or even the word itself that indicates atheism. it’s especially irritating when atheists themselves confuse the two.
I think it depends on the said atheists’ life experience. If where you live religion is opressive and misinforming, free thought is atheism and atheism is the only possible solution for a free thinker. If religion takes care of souls and leaves politics alone, religious thinkers are free as well.
So it doesn’t have a pulpit. Presumably it also doesn’t contain a fountain of non-sanctified secular water either. However, besides whatever national significance “Freethought Hall” has, it also serves as a meetinghouse for Madison atheists — growing up in Madison and attending UW-Madison I would often see flyers on kiosks advertising meetings.
No, it isn’t. You don’t seem to understand how word senses and dictionaries work—and you proceed to condescend to people as if you do, and they don’t.
Dictionary definitions are often vague or approximate, or even substantially wrong. A given definition may have more than one sense, as above, and a given sense may actually hide several related senses, due to ambiguities in the words it’s defined in terms of. (Like “religious” and “faith” in sense 1 above, or most of the significant words in sense 2.)
I could even say that Unitarians have less of a creed than our local atheist group—or that they don’t have a creed in more senses. They don’t even require that you believe in god(s), or that you don’t; we explicitly require that you be “an atheist” to join.
Either way, neither group has a creed in as many senses as, say, a fundamentalist Christian group that requires a strong commitment every line of the Nicene Creed, and throws you out if you don’t toe the line.
There are ambiguities in these terms, and matters of degree in several dimensions.
“‘Religion is some people deciding to tell stories for the rest of us, to us….The word spirituality should be banned from the English language for at least 50 years…'”
So what is novel-writing, by people who suggest banning words?
How not to be spiritual, by theologian Richard Swinburne.
“Math Proves Christ’s Resurrection“, via Netscape/CNN.
Read the article to find what these “complex calculations” were. Go on, I dare you.
Oh yes, I forgot to say that I heard about this one via Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math.
Typical postmodern nonsense. Ever hear the saying “there’s no such thing as being a little bit pregnant”?
It doesn’t matter whether UUs have a creed that requires belief in a god — what matters is that they have a creed that requires belief in certain things. The “extensiveness” of that creed is irrelevant. UUs claim they do not have a creed, yet they do. They hold certain beliefs in common, and the congregations are sworn to affirm and uphold those beliefs.
Typical Caledonian clueless condescending bullshit.
“I notice a number of UU groups title themselves ‘Congregation’ or ‘Fellowship’ rather than ‘Church’ — probably in an effort to escape some of that historical baggage.” — lt.kizhe
It’s not working: if you capitalize the words, they have baggage.
When I tried to come up with a better word — one that describes what I would be hoping to find if I visited a UU church — the first one that came to mind was “klatch.”
Oh, brother.
UU: “We UUians don’t have cars.”
Caledonian: “Um, there’s one sitting in your garage, and your name is on the papers, and I’ve seen you driving it, and you’ve bragged openly about how great your car is.”
Paul W.: “There are degrees of car ownership. Some people lease, others take out loans and haven’t paid them off yet. A guy down the street has two cars, and there’s a house five blocks down with a four-car garage, so UU’s statement is open to many interpretations.”
Blake Stacey,
???????
I really have a headache now. That was…. no, I can’t. I can’t even start to deal with that article.
Caledonian,
creed
n.
1. A formal statement of religious belief; a confession of faith.
UUs do not have this! The primary definition. The answer is no. Is that clear to you?
2. A system of belief, principles, or opinions: laws banning discrimination on the basis of race or creed; an architectural creed that demanded simple lines.
There are principles yes, so “2” could apply. But UUs never claimed *not* to have this in the sense of “2”, only in the sense of “1” above. So there is no inconsistency. Unless you dont understand how words can have multiple definitions (as Paul W pointed out earlier). Every english speaking person I know understands this simple concept.
…darth
But UUists DO have formal statements of religious belief. That’s the whole point.
Caledonian,
Wow you are stubborn. From the UUA website:
The Association declares and affirms its special responsibility, and that of its member societies and organizations, to promote the full participation of persons in all of its and their activities and in the full range of human endeavor without regard to race, color, sex, disability, affectional or sexual orientation, age, or national origin and without requiring adherence to any particular interpretation of religion or to any particular religious belief or creed.
and this:
We believe that personal experience, conscience and reason should be the final authorities in religion, and that in the end religious authority lies not in a book or person or institution, but in ourselves. We are a “non-creedal” religion: we do not ask anyone to subscribe to a creed.
I don’t see how it can be any more clear than that. Did you have some kind of bad experience with UUism at some point?
…darth
It can’t be any more clear than that: the creed of UUism is self-contradictory.
In the very sentence before they declare that they have no creed, they establish elements of their creed. Their inclusiveness excludes all kinds of religious concepts.
Which is of course the point: a group cannot be defined without excluding possibilities incompatible with that definition.
It can’t be any more clear than that: the creed of UUism is self-contradictory.
Caledonian, this is simply obstinate stupidity.
Of course, any formally-constituted group has to have some statement of principle or purpose — otherwise it has no reason to exist. If you want to call that a “creed”, then I guess it’s a creed. But keep in mind the traditional (and still very much alive) usage of creeds: things you learned at Catechism and recited during Mass. Things you were required to hold to without question, or suffer ostracism or worse. It’s a pretty poor excuse for a creed that says: “You don’t have to believe anything anyone says; figure it out for yourself” now, isn’t it? (You do know where the word “creed” comes from, don’t you?)
Which means they absolutely don’t deserve your original accusation:
Unitarian Universalists showcase what happens when you keep such an open mind that your brains fall out. They end up recreating the kind of nonsense that they supposedly oppose in theism.
I’m not a UU, but I do belong to the local Humanist Association. So tell me, is this a creed: http://www.humanists.ca/Principles.htm ?
Common English calls that a creed. Any other language would translate that into ‘creed’. If you want to deny that a formal system of religious principles is a ‘creed’, you can always abandon language and revert to grunts and hooting.
Not true. Catholics can and do question those things — the Church doesn’t care, as long as they continue to accept them.
How does UUism deal with members who reject those core principles, not just question them?
lt.kizhe “2) A social community (we all need that — and I don’t believe on-line relationships are an adequate substitute).” Not true, about all of us needing a social community. Lots of us are quite happy with a very small number of close relationships, or quite possibly a largely solitary life. My guess is that there is some underlying genetic variation here. This comments thread seem to be divided to some extent between people who DO “need a social community” (and therefore understand the appeal of UU in the absence of any religious belief) and people who DON’T “need a social community”.
The argument about the meaning of the word “creed” seems to me a bit pointless. But the humanist association principles can be summarised as “I don’t believe in a god but I want to believe in something” and offhand I can’t think of a better word than “creed” for this.
On the other hand, surely a creed needs to be reasonably well-defined, and I literally can’t make sense out of most of that page rather in the same way that I don’t know what “spirituality” means.
“The Association considers Humanism to be fully secular and non-religious, and Humanism is, therefore, not to be considered a religion.” WHAT is this sentence supposed to mean?
“…human beings are responsible for giving meaning and purpose to their lives relying upon their human capacities of reason and responsibility and natural and social resources.” Responsible to whom? Responsibility imposed or conferred by what? What does “meaning and purpose” mean? What is a “human capacit[y] of responsibility?
Anyway, thank-you for the reference, it gives me a wide range of things to puzzle about.
Me:
Caledonian replies:Common English calls that a creed.
But even non-religious groups have that sort of thing. Here are some brief statements of purpose from a couple of other organizations I belong to:
http://www.nmra.org/member.html
http://www.ovar.ca
I’m sure you will agree that neither of those are “creeds”. My point is that (contrary to your binary assertions) when it comes to organizational goals, the concept of “creed” sort of fades off into “Principles”, “Mission Statements” and vague “Purpose of Our Club”.
However, as someone else has noted, hair-splitting about the meaning of “creed” is a side-issue. This really started when you said something which you snipped from my previous post:
The “nonsense that they oppose” here is not represented by having some sort of formative principles (call them what you will) — as I point out, any organization has those, even if it’s just a hobby club. Again, look at the history (including the 19th century context out of which UU was formed). Questioning of your church’s teachings (think pre-Vatican II RCC) was token at best. Same goes for the fundamentalist churches, whose apologetics do a superficial job of “questioning” the doctrines, only to come back to a foregone conclusion. The individual dissident can get away with a lot more today, if only because it’s much easier to simply walk away than it used to be, so the churches in practice tend to pull their punches, but the attitude of “this is true by definition; God told us so” is still there in all the more conservative churches.
How does UUism deal with members who reject those core principles, not just question them?
Not being UU, I have no idea. However, if my experience in a liberal Protestant church is any guide, I doubt they have a formal ex-communication, nor is anyone going to regularly quiz you on your “orthodoxy”. So pragmatically, it’s a non-issue.
Here I was all ready to jump in and explain to Caledonian how wrong s/he was, then I looked at the Humanist link that lt.kizhe provided. The declaration of 12 “Humanist Principles” sure reads like a creed to me, and the statement “Although the Association endeavors to provide certain rites of passage and other services traditionally provided by religious institutions, this fact does not in any way imply that Humanism is a religion” would, I think, cause the US Supreme Court to call it a religion (if it was in the US, I’ve no idea how that might work in Canada).
Likewise the UUA has a list of priniciples they “affirm and promote.” (link)
So I think in a formal sense Caledonian has a good case. In a practical sense, however, these two creeds are a lot different than what we are used to from the Christian churches (e.g. Nicene Creed, Apostles’ Creed, Westminster Confession) which are quite specific and make claims about supernatural events. potentilla sums it up nicely when saying the argument is rather pointless.
UUA says explicitly they don’t require you to have any particular beliefs. Their “creed” seems more like a notice, “here’s the kind of things you’ll find members believing,” and not “you’ve got to swear to this before you can be a member.”
Oh gods, now we’re going to have an endless argument about the One Correct Definition of “social community” ;-)
As it happens, I (and my wife) would also fall into the category of those who prefer a small number of close relationships — as social butterflies, we are stuck rather firmly at the pupa stage. Nonetheless, even we need some level of human contact, and we found that after a few years out of church, we do miss the sense of belonging to a local community (our close/long-term friends live in other cities), especially as a way of connecting to the Worthy Causes aspect of life.
As for the Humanist Principles: yeah, there’s some wooly stuff on that page that makes me go “What?” Maybe they’ll kick me out for saying so (though I doubt it ;-).
And apropos of some other posts on this thread, we did join the local Humanist book club, which really does meet at a fair-trade coffee shop ;-) (http://www.bridgehead.ca).
Indeed, neither of them are. Those are statements of purpose, not systems of principles. If either organization had sworn or affirmed a set of principles, those *would* be creeds.
UUs affirm a very specific set as well. Whether it involves anything “supernatural” is irrelevant.
Listing things that members might happen to believe is both utterly pointless for a supposedly freethinking organization, and not what was actually being done in this case.
Well, lt.kizhe, if you guys are pupae, I think that makes us caterpillars. I also think there may be two separate things going on here; introvert/extrovert and joiner/non-joiner. I am only a mild introvert, but I am an extreme non-joiner (and have been all my life). Human contact yes, but organised group….nooo, can’t do it. A choir was the nearest I ever got. I would be interested to know if there’s any academic work on this, if anyone happens to know.
Well, lt.kizhe, if you guys are pupae, I think that makes us caterpillars.
Caterpillars crawling around munching leaves are more social than pupae hanging about metamorphosing :)
there may be two separate things going on here; introvert/extrovert and joiner/non-joiner
I think that’s a very good point. I think stronger introverts may be *more* likely to be joiners. Speaking as lt.kizhe’s aforementioned introverted spouse, I find it far easier to be with a group of people where I understand the structure and my part in it, as opposed to being in a more free-form social situation where I have to figure out what to do in response to random events.
Whereas I immediately have a strong desire to subvert the structure….which makes other people cross, on the whole.
Re butterflies, I was thinking linearly. Maybe we’re butterfly eggs, then, with occasional brief excursions into butterfly-dom.
I don’t think on-line relationships are a substitute for a social community – I think they *are* a social community and anyone who doesn’t see that is being hopelessly shallow. (Nobody denies the humanity of the voice on the phone… at least not anymore.) Where does that put me?
Humanism is a sort of philosophy certainly – it talks about ethics, ideals, all of those those ‘woolly’ things that go beyond fact. Since I agree with most of those principles, and generally I support the society being more rational, I consider myself a humanist. I wonder if humanist organizations are tax exempt in the same way churches are?
don’t think on-line relationships are a substitute for a social community – I think they *are* a social community
Agreed that on-line relationships are a type of social community. They certainly can be very serious and important to people’s lives; as much so as any face-to-face relationship. However, on-line interactions (and telephone interactions) do not *demand* the same level of maturity and accountability that face-to-face interactions do.
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