On the Contrary

It is no surprise that I am an atheist and after a horrendous event like the tornado in Moore Oklahoma, you get a lot of thanking God, which assumes everyone believes in some fairy godfather. But the best was from Wolfe Blitzer on CNN who asked an Oklahoma tornado survivor if she “thanked the Lord” on live TV and she responded “I’m actually an atheist.”

What I wish she would of said was, “and should I thank him for the destruction and the taking of 24 lives?” You can’t have one without the other. Oh, but he works in mysterious ways. It is amazing that they never get that they are shoving their religion in our face 24/7 or how inane and illogical it is.

Do we believe what we need to believe, or do we let reality inform that view? I struggle with that all the time. Apparently not many others do. There was an op-ed piece in the New York Times recently on hearing the voice of God (Is That God Talking?) by anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann that set my teeth on edge. But I will let one of the letter writers responding to this article express my thoughts:

I am one of those “secular liberals” who T. M. Luhrmann expects will be alarmed by the vivid experiences people have in prayer. I am not. What I find alarming is that neither they, nor evidently she, distinguishes between sensory experience and reality.

Sensory experience is not trustworthy, and the intensity of the experience does not make it more so. Runners can feel lighter than air; they are not. Amputees feel pain in limbs they no longer have. Insomniacs can be kept awake by the roar of absolute silence.

Meditators frequently have sensory experiences that are untrue: the folded hands seem to expand to enormous size; the body seems to float above the cushion; the body disappears. These illusions are so common that they have a name in Japanese Zen — makyo — and practitioners are taught that no matter how vivid or compelling they seem, they have no meaning and are of no importance.

Having auditory hallucinations is not particularly rare, and need not be alarming. Believing in them, however — and especially believing that they have the authority of a supreme being — is the most dangerous of all possible delusions.

David Berman, New York

Continue reading ‘The Search for Reality and When it Matters’ »

I have to say, who cares about selecting a leader that about 90% of catholics think is out of touch and most ignore, but then I realize that is just my parochial view of the “Church”. With all the hope for a Pope that might modernize the church (get real, we are looking at mostly fat white men here), I do not have a lot of optimism on that front. I mean really, white and black smoke? Have they not heard of a press conference?

Yesterday I wrote about one of the things I hate about religion, the tyranny of their ideas, or said another way, using religious belief as a justification to force their beliefs on everyone. But there has been a lot lately in the news about religion and atheists, and in my mind some very confused babble. Two particular articles last week were The Way of the Agnostic by Gary Gutting, and Is Atheism a Religion – Room for Debate. The later is fairly simple to deal with and I am an atheist. No, it is not a religion unless you decide that you have the ultimate truth and everyone else should believe it. The beauty of my atheism is that I can show rationally why most religious beliefs are nonsense, but tomorrow is another day. In other words, I don’t know everything and I am always searching. If you are no longer searching but have the absolute confidence in you convictions, well then it has become a religion for you because now it is based on faith, not on an ever questioning mind that is open to change.

But Gary Gutting’s article gives me a little more raw material to work with. Gary is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and he takes an intellectual approach to understanding some of the nonsense in religion, but to not disavow religion itself. I won’t pretend I understood everything he said. It was a slog, but he made some good points, but I think he missed the simple and direct understanding of religion which I will get to, so eloquently written in Life of Pi. His first statement I believe is pretty much true:

“On the one hand, religions express perennial human impulses and aspirations that cannot plausibly be rejected out of hand as foolish or delusional. The idea that there is simply nothing worthwhile in religion is as unlikely as the idea that there is nothing worthwhile in poetry, art, philosophy or science. On the other hand, taken at their literal word, many religious claims are at best unjustified and at worst absurd or repugnant. There may be deep truths in religions, but these may well not be the truths that the religions themselves officially proclaim. To borrow a term Jürgen Habermas employs in a different context, religions may suffer from a “self-misunderstanding” of their own significance.”

You can read this as religion can be very good and motivate us to find truth and justice in the world, but a lot of it is nonsense, provenly false, but that does not negate some of its basic truths that are not based on literal belief of religion’s stories. Okay, I can certainly go with that. I don’t need to believe in a fairy godfather who watches over each of our lives to believe that the some of the morals and directives for the way we should treat our fellow human beings are not basic truths. He then spends a lot of time explaining how religion typically satisfies these basic human needs, love, understanding, and knowledge. He makes some good points about how religion satisfies these needs. Note that this has nothing to do with whether it is “true”, but a way that it works. He says it best:

“There are serious moral objections to aspects of some religions. But many believers rightly judge that their religion has great moral value for them, that it gives them access to a rich and fulfilling life of love. What is not justified is an exclusivist or infallibilist reading of this belief, implying that the life of a given religion is the only or the best way toward moral fulfillment for everyone, or that there is no room for criticism of the religion’s moral stances.”

He then takes on atheists by criticizing their belief that the very lack of good arguments for religious claims provides a solid basis for rejecting all of them. My problem with the rest of his argument is that it broke down into he said/she said. In other words it became a philosophical argument about morality and aesthetic meanings and how religion gives many the needed moral superiority of their beliefs. He implies that the fact that we can not understand some of our experiences means we can never know the answer to this question. That may be true, but I would add that his view is far evolved from what we actually see embodied as religious belief today, and in that embodiment one can understand why atheism could become a religion, denying all aspects of religion. He finishes with what I think is a great piece of advice:

“We should, then, make room for those who embrace a religion as a source of love and understanding but remain agnostic about the religion’s knowledge claims. We should, for example, countenance those who are Christians while doubting the literal truth of, say, the Trinity and the Resurrection. I wager, in fact, that many professed Christians are not at all sure about the truth of these doctrines —and other believers have similar doubts. They are, quite properly, religious agnostics.”

I found quite a bit of truth and common ground between religion and moral atheists in this article, but I found it a hard slog. Using rational thought sometimes just confuses the issue even though I am a profound rationalist. Sometimes literature can provide meaning that rational arguments struggle to impart. They give us great insight into our human condition. That is why I now turn to that absolutely wonderful book by Yann Martel, Life of Pi.

In this book, the main character, Pi, needs religion to understand the wonder of his world. It is a need basic to his very being. He even shows us how faith is critical whether we believe in a supreme being or not as was embodied in his rational biology teacher who had his own faith in the workings of nature. But Pi was never one into the “literal word” or as as Gary described it above, in the “knowledge” of religion, because he practiced being a Hindu, Muslim, and Christian even though his parents tell him he has to choose because you can’t have contradictory “knowledge”.

Pi then spends 227 days on a lifeboat and he is challenged with the chaos and cruelty of the loss of his family, the punishment he is suffering at the vicissitudes of a chaotic ocean , and his belief in a just and caring god. Yet he sees all the amazing wonder about him so beautifully display in the wonderful motion picture, and can only see this in some spirituality beyond himself. But he resolves all of this and all the questions of atheism and religion when he is being questioned by the two Japanese investigators who just can’t believe his fantastic story about Robert Parker (The tiger he shared his boat with). So Pi tells them a different story about the cook, a injured seaman, and his mother in the life raft. It is a story of violence, murder, and survival. At the end he says to the two interrogators:

“I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum.”

“That’s right.”

“Neither makes a factual difference to you.”

“That’s true.”

“You can’t prove which story is true and which is not. You must take my word for it.”

“I guess so.”

“In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?”

Mr. Okamoto: “That’s an interesting question…”

Mr. Chiba” “The story with the animals.”

Mr. Okamoto: “Yes. The story with animals is the better story.”

Pi Patel: “Thank you. And so it goes with God.”

I think we interpret the world the way we need to. It allows us to do things we do not think we can do otherwise. Sometimes it allows us to far exceed our own abilities and expectations. It allows us to understand and appreciate the world around us or to simply deal with it. It gives us comfort. But in the end it is a personal choice and unless it is used to force choices on others (see yesterday’s blog) or to limit our understanding, why should we care? We are all seeking truth, understanding, and love, and how we get there is not so very important that we have to establish only one path. There are many paths. I think that is what Gary was saying and Yann said in his narrative. That is what religion is all about and the only other blogs I will do on the issue is when fools try to use religion as a tool to enslave the rest of us or limit the ways we can understand the world around us and limit our ability to find truth, love, and understanding.

I picked up the paper this morning, it is after all Sunday Morning, and the first article I see on the front page of the New York Times is, A Flood of Suits Fights Coverage of Birth Control:

“In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.”

Now I will be frank. There is no logic to this. Those that object say they are being forced to provide health care in employer based health care systems that are against their religious (read superstitious) beliefs and say denying people this coverage is their religious right. That might be okay if people had other choices, but the reality is they do not, so if you work for a religious organization that denies this kind of coverage, you are forced to follow their religious beliefs whether you believe them or not. So exactly whose rights are being denied?

Quite frankly health care should be based on science, not superstitious belief, and whether a person choses to eschew certain health care benefits because of their religious beliefs is their choice, not the prerogative of the church to force it down your throats. And more importantly, if the church or religious organization was confident in their beliefs, they would not have to use the tyranny of denial to insure that the faithful are faithful.

But the whole thing even opens up a bigger can of worms. What is religion? If a “religious” organization can deny federally mandated coverage of contraceptives based upon religious beliefs, what about blood transfusions or hysterectomies? What else could they object to that would come under their religious blanket exception of rational thought and science? No, healthcare should be determined based upon good science not faith based thinking.

We could solve this whole thing if we just did away with employer mandated health care and moved on to a single payer system like the rest of the world. But we can’t do that because too many insurance companies make too much money gouging our pay checks and then we wouldn’t have a long term deficit problem. What was I thinking?

The Republicans, with the pundits repeating their nonsense, have said they will have to communicate more effectively with minorities and reach out to them. In other words it is all about re-messaging. This is kind of like a candy manufacturer who produces just a horrible tasting mess of sugar and nuts deciding the sales problem is the packaging. Packaging might be part of the problem, but the real issue is the product itself. Sadly, the reality is that the Republican are just flat wrong about the product, from gays to immigration, from government spending to the economy, and from women’s issues to science. They can’t just change their stripes, to use another cliche, and expect to be viable again, they have to change their policies. I think as Robert Shrum wrote in the Daily Beast the other day, it may be two or three Presidential election cycles before they get the message and are able to transform their base from old fat angry white men who are proud of their ignorance. Of course then they would be moderate Democrats.

The other day I wrote a blog on my own experience as an engineer providing flood protection in the lower Mississippi Valley and trying to point out that it was fruitless (The Corps of Engineers Syndrome) if the government keeps underwriting risky building in flood zones. The problem is that our federal government (you and me) underwrite flood insurance in high risk areas encouraging people to rebuild in areas that are just going to flood again and again. Well, more informed people than I took up the topic with the data that most should understand if we are going to end this wasteful and fruitless program and was in an op-ed in the NYT yesterday (End Federal Flood Insurance) in response to the Sandy rebuilding. Another no duh moment in the obvious, but special interests will continue to influence Congress to put us all at risk, living in flood plains and paying for the disasters that result.

Words are important and you really have to pay attention to their nuances. In the discussion about reigning in Medicare and Medicaid, the majority of Americans are against cuts to entitlements including raising the age eligibility requirements. President Obama has already saved $750 billion in cuts to costs, not entitlements, that amazingly the Republicans promised to restore if they one election.  Now they want massive cuts in entitlements. So note the wording in the President’s proposal to Republicans on the the fiscal cliff, that he will find additional “savings”. The Republican approach is the meat clever approach of cutting entitlements which as with most things Republican, goes after the effect, not the cause (deficit anyone?). The Democrats recognize that the benefits are minimal and necessary and look for savings in more cost effective ways to provide those entitlements. It recognizes that in most of the rest of the modern world, they provide more “entitlements” at half the cost. Another no duh moment in moving forward while the Republicans can’t think outside their carefully crafted ideological box.

Apparently there are major protests in Egypt about their Constitution that was just rammed through a Muslim Brotherhood legislative body. It just amazes me that we are celebrating the birth of “democracies” in the Middle East, when they ignore the core principle of all successful democracies, minority rights. Any democracy based upon a religious fundamental idea of right and wrong is really a tyranny of the majority and that is what you are getting in the Middle East. Maybe they will evolve into recognizing the rights of the minority, but I don’t think so in countries where the sense of right and wrong is interpreted through religious intolerance. Another no duh moment in thinking things are really any better in the Middle East.

Speaking of minority rights, we are having a real discussion about the filibuster where it has allowed the tyranny of the minority. When the Democrats took power, sort of, back in 2006 in the House, nothing really got done as Republicans like to claim, because the Republicans in the Senate blocked anything the Democrats wanted using the filibuster. That has been their modus operandi since then with the average of 1 filibuster a week to block progress.  Now Democrats finally recognize the need to tweak it around the edges. It should be done away with totally. The Senate is already a very undemocratic body since Republican Senators only represent 34% of the American public yet they control what gets passed and not passed. The Constitution was clear about what should require a super majority and the filibuster is just an idea in the rules of the Senate that is past its prime. Another no Duh moment in the obvious, but Harry Reid will only tinker at the edges. Oh by the way, could we get rid of the “hold” that gives an individual Senator control over any nomination for any position?

One last thing. I will remind you that in my blog (Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It is Over the Fiscal Cliff We Go) I predicted that there will be no compromise. I listened to Howard Dean last night on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, talk about how that is the best thing that could happen to control the deficit. What was left out of this discussion was that we need stimulus spending to not stifle the economy with this massive austerity bomb that the Tea Party forced upon us. I think Democrats need to be careful. While they get raised tax rates on the wealthy and major cuts in defense spending that is probably unobtainable any other way, they must not forget to push that we need to use the savings to create jobs. If they leave this discussion out of the equation like Howard Dean did, they allow the discussion to focus once again on the deficit instead of jobs, which is what the election was about. Paul Krugman today in Class War 2012 addressed how the plutocrats are using this moment to protect their interest by using just this tactic. Another no duh moment is that the real problem is about jobs, not the deficit.

One has to wonder how the wacky base has so captured the Republican Party, and then I picked up an editorial by Kathleen Parker, a moderate Republican, and there on full display is why the Party is devolving into nut cases. The moderates are in denial and la-la land. The particular editorial is Electoral culture war grabs a few headlines.

She starts out by lamenting that we are not focusing on the issues, but have devolved into talking about the cultural wars, blaming it on Obama and his attempt to get contraceptives covered under the affordable care act. Really? I would think this is a health issue and then she claimed the Democrats have pushed the “War on Women” line as though poor Republicans were just bystanders pulled into the fray while quietly practicing their religion. She calls the statements by Todd Akin and Scott Mourdock:

Random comments by a couple of outliers provided wind for Obama’s sails. Akin’s remarks, that women don’t get pregnant when “legitimately” raped, was just idiotic and immediately dismissed by Republican Party leadership, including Romney. Yet Mourdock’s view, that a child conceived by rape is God’s will, deserves some perspective.

These are just the heartfelt feelings of a few and of course they would not try to force them down the throats of the rest of us. She ignores the last two years of bill after bill in both Congress and State legislatures to deny woman the right to control their bodies, the bills co-authored with Paul Ryan by both of these, “outliers”, the Blunt Amendment, or the Republican Party Platform. She is in total denial.

Then she says:

Although most Americans, including those who are enthusiastically pro-life, support exemptions for rape and incest, Mourdock’s argument is not nonsensical. If life begins at conception, then one life is not worth less than another owing to the circumstances of creation. The embryo bears no blame.

Given this context, Mourdock’s argument is logical.

Again she ignores the fact that this is his religious belief and he wants to legislate it on the rest of us. Do you remember when the conservatives used to believe we need to keep government out of our private life? Once again it is a rationalization of denial that is almost breathtaking and truly sad.

She continues:

Romney’s position on the subject is clear. He supports exceptions for rape and incest. He also said early in the primary season: “Contraception, it’s working just fine. Just leave it alone.”

Really? That is true he did say that. He also said he supported the Blunt Amendment and that life begins at conception, so which is it Kathleen? You are picking your facts selectively to live in a fantasy world.

Probably the most galling claim came at the end when she said:

The same ol’ culture wars. But, of course, women have had access to birth control for decades and no one is trying to take it away. Anyone who suggests otherwise may have been spending too much time with Big Bird.

Yep Kathleen, the Democrats invented this whole thing to take the voters eye off the ball and nobody in the Republican Party wants to take away contraception or the subject you totally ignore, control of their bodies. Apparently she did not read the Blunt Amendment that all the Republicans voted for in the House or read the Republican Party Platform, or paid attention to the legislative attempts to control woman’s bodies, or let their employer choose their health coverage and deny them procedures they find offensive. Sadly this is the state of Republican moderates and is one more person I don’t have to read anymore as they beam themselves to the la-la land of denial.

Watching the events in the Middle East we could say this is about religion, but I don’t think it really is. I watched Hillary and Barack in an amazing display of class and statesmanship, greet our fallen fellow Americans. I watched Mitt, Paul, Sarah, and John McCain embarrass me. They want us to get tough, but just exactly who would we get tough with (separate the Libya incident from the rest of the rioting)?

Our best way forward is to hunt down the killers in Libya, but do nothing other than protect our envoys elsewhere. We are a nation of free speech and we should not change that. Middle Eastern young men are focusing their frustration on the West and if we were to react, we would just worsen the situation. Somebody has to be an adult in the room. It certainly isn’t our right wing and Mitt who is falling for the get tough nonsense and trying to tell us we can fight two wars. That is interesting coming from people who have never fought a war anywhere.

But what really got me to see this whole episode in a more human light was watching that old movie, Jesus Christ, Super Star. Now granted I am an atheist, but this movie is not about belief or non-belief. It is about the human condition and our wanting something, someone better. I love this movie because it brings the story back to a very human level with all our foibles. It is about us today. The reach for a guiding light, to be better than we are, is what makes us human and what allows us sometimes to be better than we are. Even if that guiding light is really all in our minds.

I have no idea what happened back then, but this is as good as anybody else’s version and makes it truly human. As the crew is leaving the set, their looks back at the cross and the whole scene reflects my thoughts, something happened here, but I am not sure what. . God or no god, did something momentous happen or do we need something momentous to have happened?

Well what should we make of it?  No I am not talking about Mitt the Nit whose actions speak for themselves. I am talking about how a 14-minute trailer uploaded to YouTube which depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a sex-crazed child molester and murderer, led to riotous crowds and death in the Muslim world.  McClatchy News reported tonight that there may not be a movie and the actors have claimed they said nothing about Muhammad or denigrated Islam  (Bizarre YouTube clip “Innocence of Muslims” infuriated faithful, baffled Media).  The upsetting language may have been dubbed in after they shot a few scenes.

If we take out the killings in Libya which appear to be an orchestrated attack that may have had nothing to do with the film, what we may have is three nut jobs, who have been connected to the film, who can inflame the world.  Now what bothers me about all this is that we have a situation in the Muslim world that is so fragile that any fruitcake can start these riots.  So is the problem three nut jobs, or some Muslims who are out of control and need to grow up?

I have to admit that I was disturbed when back in 2005 the Muslim world rioted over a few cartoons printed in a Danish Newspaper.  I was disturbed because I could not see the cartoons that were the source of all this anger as our media was self censoring.  What I found disturbing was the self censoring.  Are we so intimidated by rioters that we can not exercise our most important value, free speech?

So which is worse, some tasteless jackasses who denigrated their religion, or brainless mobs who do damage to themselves and others because they won’t tolerate free speech, albeit, disgusting free speech.  I find the described YouTube clip extremely offensive and in poor taste, but should we censor those kinds of things for fear of offending some Muslims? Some people find the truth offensive (I am not implying that the film had any truth in it), but when we start censoring ourselves out of the fear of the reaction, do we also lose truth when sometimes the truth is a threat to change?

I find it interesting that the Muslims in the street (note I am not generalizing to Muslims in general) want respect, but act like drunken teenagers throwing a tantrum.  They demand respect in the most disrespectful way.  Although I am an atheist, I certainly respect the beliefs of others (atheism after all, is a belief system albeit based on rational thinking) as long as they don’t use those beliefs to coerce me to live by their beliefs (See the Republican Right and Women).  But all belief systems have to be challenged to grow and adapt.  What we are witnessing today in the actions of some Muslims to demand that others don’t dare judge their religion or to criticize it, is a denial to examine their beliefs in a contemporary world.  They are attacking an American government that had nothing to do with the ideas expressed in the film except that we believe people can have bizarre ideas as long as they don’t hurt others.

So I guess the bottom line here is that we should understand their anger at this childish and disrespectful slight to their religion.  But we should stand firm that we live in a country where people are free to think what they will, and if it is truly slander, we have peaceful means of dealing with it. Sorry, but there are nut cakes out there and this will not be the last time.  Try to grow up and learn to act like adults instead of drunken college students running amuck in the streets.  Welcome to the connected world where ideas cannot be controlled and you are being manipulated by your own reactions. In your act of demanding respect in a violent and disrespectful way, you are playing right into their hands.

One other note.  President Obama has handled this well.  Instead of over reacting to this violent behavior, he is trying to find how our long term interest will be served and do the prudent thing.  What that is, is not clear right now and we have to feel our way along.  Over reacting like Mitt did would probably just have inflamed the situation worse.  I saw Sarah Palin explain how we had to be “tough”.  Hmm.  Would that be like the rioting Muslims in the streets who are showing us how tough they are?  Soon we would have two toughs brawling in the street.  Sometimes being a grown up is just too hard for Sarah, Mitt, and apparently some Muslims males rioting in the streets.

You know this argument about a fertilized cell is a human being is almost laughable if you take the logic and extend it.  Here is the logic:  If a set of cells if left to grow in the controlled environment of the womb, would become a human, then it is a human.  Now here is where this logic gets in trouble:  If cloning ever becomes feasible (moral objections aside) then every cell on your body is a potential human being with the right environment.  So if you scratch your arm because it itches and brush off potential cells that could be cloned, are you a murderer?  Please can we get real here?

The other argument that George Lakoff raised in the referenced blog, is that if you are really pro-life, then you would not just be for preventing abortions, but for critical pre and post pregnancy care that ensures that a new baby will surviveannd thrive.  But of course they aren’t as they fight universal health care and claim we can’t afford it.  Well if you are pro-life and it is about money, wouldn’t you be focusing on those who want children and then spend our scarce resources to see they have the best shot at life?  Nope we just want to ensure they are all born, then it is somebody else’s problem.  Don’t you just love these guys and gals?