Some thoughts of a Sunday morning
Oct. 1st, 2006 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhI don't really like manifestos. I don't think writing something extreme really moves forward the conversation; it more allows people to ignore the interesting thought that might be in the middle of all the condescension and villify the author. Those that agree can clutch the book to their breasts; those that disagree can throw out the book with the garbage without a second thought.
The recent politics quiz put me as a "third way liberal" and somewhere along the way I've become sort of reflexively in the middle. It serves me well as an historian; ask an historian a yes or no question and their answer is usually "sort of." I'm not sure where this comes from--perhaps it's the biracial thing, perhaps a positive outlook on other people--but I'm always looking for parallels, for commonalities, for a starting place for conversation, for ways we can start to move toward a place "beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing," to quote Jalal al-Din Rumi. Now, dear reader and friend, you may have a different feeling about this, but if I were to go on NPR and talk about "This I Believe" it would be:
Calling those with whom you do not agree delusional is never a good idea.
Being called a nut doesn't make anyone want to hear what you have to say; it makes them want to punch you in the face, or, with me, wonder why you hate them so much. Never mind the polarization, as though intelligent people can only think one way, which simply isn't true. In addition, changing the terms of the debate requires MUCH more subtle tactics. More seduction, less aggression.
The problem with being reasonable is that you won't get much attention for it. It won't win you fangirls. It won't make you enemies. You won't end up getting cited all over fandomwank or whatever supposed "true story" of the past is getting posted on journalfen. It won't give you an flist in the thousands. Most of the time no one comments on your entries, and sometimes you wonder if anyone even reads the comments you make in their journals, much less your own journal. I'd reckon that ten seconds after they read it no one will even remember that you wrote it or that you're on their flist. I've (mostly) made my peace with this, though I get a little grouchy from time to time. It takes me a while to decide how I want to respond to things and by then people have moved on to their new shiny and I feel like an idiot for still caring.
To that end, I'd like to link you to my latest bit of writing, which was about Studio 60 and was posted as a comment on Carrie's LJ, mostly because I like what I wrote. I would follow that up by saying that for all the people that have been killed and wars that have been waged in the name of capitalist imperialism, I don't see a lot of people screaming about how bad capitalism is, which makes the "religion kills" argument somewhat weak in my opinion; I more agree with Lord Peter Wimsey that "the first thing a principle does--if it really is a principle--is to kill somebody."
I had four bits of a post in my head this morning but two of them are moot at this point. The other two are about online friendship, and race. [Poll #834301]
The recent politics quiz put me as a "third way liberal" and somewhere along the way I've become sort of reflexively in the middle. It serves me well as an historian; ask an historian a yes or no question and their answer is usually "sort of." I'm not sure where this comes from--perhaps it's the biracial thing, perhaps a positive outlook on other people--but I'm always looking for parallels, for commonalities, for a starting place for conversation, for ways we can start to move toward a place "beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing," to quote Jalal al-Din Rumi. Now, dear reader and friend, you may have a different feeling about this, but if I were to go on NPR and talk about "This I Believe" it would be:
Calling those with whom you do not agree delusional is never a good idea.
Being called a nut doesn't make anyone want to hear what you have to say; it makes them want to punch you in the face, or, with me, wonder why you hate them so much. Never mind the polarization, as though intelligent people can only think one way, which simply isn't true. In addition, changing the terms of the debate requires MUCH more subtle tactics. More seduction, less aggression.
The problem with being reasonable is that you won't get much attention for it. It won't win you fangirls. It won't make you enemies. You won't end up getting cited all over fandomwank or whatever supposed "true story" of the past is getting posted on journalfen. It won't give you an flist in the thousands. Most of the time no one comments on your entries, and sometimes you wonder if anyone even reads the comments you make in their journals, much less your own journal. I'd reckon that ten seconds after they read it no one will even remember that you wrote it or that you're on their flist. I've (mostly) made my peace with this, though I get a little grouchy from time to time. It takes me a while to decide how I want to respond to things and by then people have moved on to their new shiny and I feel like an idiot for still caring.
To that end, I'd like to link you to my latest bit of writing, which was about Studio 60 and was posted as a comment on Carrie's LJ, mostly because I like what I wrote. I would follow that up by saying that for all the people that have been killed and wars that have been waged in the name of capitalist imperialism, I don't see a lot of people screaming about how bad capitalism is, which makes the "religion kills" argument somewhat weak in my opinion; I more agree with Lord Peter Wimsey that "the first thing a principle does--if it really is a principle--is to kill somebody."
I had four bits of a post in my head this morning but two of them are moot at this point. The other two are about online friendship, and race. [Poll #834301]
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Date: 2006-10-01 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 12:59 pm (UTC)In the current situation, I would, however, not invite a wankstorm of comments by the f_w/b_p crowd by posting about friendship, unless their insanity doesn't phase you at all and you just want to reach those who are prepared to listen.
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Date: 2006-10-01 01:27 pm (UTC)I don't know if you're reacting to the stuff I linked over on my LJ or not, or if this is more about the Michela stuff, but what I will say about the whole New Atheist angle - I do think it's a necessary development. Do I think it advances the conversation toward understanding or detente? I'm not sure that's the immediate point, frankly. The last twenty years have seen a growing gulf in belief - we understand more now about our place in the universe and the mechanisms of life than ever before, but a significant part of the culture has decided they'd rather ignore that and focus on living through faith rather than reason. Which is all fine and good, but some of us DON'T believe that the apocalypse is upon us, and so we have issues with blithely destroying the planet and embroiling the nation in untenable geopolitical situations. I'm not sure how that conversation is supposed to take place without directly addressing the source of the conflict, which is religious belief. Not class distinctions, not education or economic oppression, but belief.
The point remains that the current administration has a stated belief that they or the next few administrations will preside over the apocalypse. Dealing with that insanity is one thing, but there is a defensible position that says that you ALSO have to deal with the conditions that made that insanity possible. One of those conditions is the insistence of the moderate/liberal religious that faith and science are orthogonal and reason can't be applied to religious belief - the religious right doesn't believe this, which is why we have things like "Intelligent Design" in the world. It makes me VERY uncomfortable to hear that kind of rhetoric put forward, mostly for personal reasons, but I absolutely see his point and think that it's a discussion that has to be held.
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Date: 2006-10-02 02:16 am (UTC)I point to David and Las below.
I continue to feel very uncomfortable with being told that everything that I might think about that cannot be "rationally" proven to someone else's satisfaction is a delusion. There are lots of things I can't prove. Right now, at this computer, I can't even prove my own existence. I can't prove feelings. (In fact, that they had no idea how to measure "love" is one reason that pediatricians in the early 20th c were telling mothers not to touch their children any more than necessary--since the effect of love couldn't be measured but the effect of germs could, the scientists went with the germs.) I can't prove an instinct that tells me NOT to walk down that street. I think those conversations--why believe in God when there is no proof that one exists--not only lie about how people live their lives making many many decisions that are not all rational, even about big things, which doesn't make them wrong; but lie about what faith actually means. There's lots of stuff that I believe in--I believe in my fellow man, I believe in the importance of history, I believe that my cat makes my life better--but I have no way of proving any of those things, just like doctors didn't have a way of proving that love and affection are important to the development of children until that whole experiment with the monkeys and the wire frame "mothers." It also presumes that something does not exist unless man has found a way to observe and measure it, which is obviously not the case.
When folks make that blanket "religion has killed a lot of people" comment, they usually mean, oh, since the beginning of Christianity if not before. All I was saying was, why is this the villain and not, say, capitalism? Capitalism runs over a TON of people on a regular basis, people who need to find a way to make sense of their lives, and a belief that there is a better life on another plane is understandable for those that can see no way to make their lives better on this one. If we want to take religion away from those people, what are we going to replace it with? Because that "nothing, there is nothing, rely on yourself" answer has been floating around for a while and it doesn't seem to be satisfying them. Hell, it doesn't even satisfy ME, and I'll be damned if I'll agree that it's because I'm weak or stupid. I'm neither.
(I'll admit: I hear about the Germans being nervous about some NeoNazis and I think, well, what do those NeoNazis want that someone else isn't giving them? Because isn't that the point here?)
I guess I begin to get very nervous indeed when "reason" is made into the highest form of thought, when you don't have to be deeply religious to know how much of thought isn't pure "reason." It's disingenuous, not to mention insulting, to put forth that only the religious have portions of their lives not governed by reason.
I guess for me this all gets back to all that "the little people are stupid" stuff. They aren't. They just don't care about the same things. The Right is giving them what they want while the Left continues to think that by telling them what they should want they will win their hearts and honestly? It really hasn't worked so well so far, has it? So this argument can go on, but it isn't going to win over the people you want it to. It isn't going to make a bunch of people in Ohio suddenly vote Democrat. It will finally dissolve the New Deal coalition as all the churchgoing ethnic whites and blacks leave the party. And then I'm not sure where the hell we'll be.
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Date: 2006-10-01 03:01 pm (UTC)I almost wish I'd watched Studio 60 now just so I could really follow the discussions about the character in question. I just learned she was apparently based on Kristin Chenowith, which isn't a plus for me--she gets on my nerves, religion included (granted based on a very little I've read about her).
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Date: 2006-10-01 03:06 pm (UTC)And coming from one of the whitest countries in the world, I'm always intrigued by posts about race.
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Date: 2006-10-01 04:57 pm (UTC)...As both a Who fan and a liberal Christian, he makes me annoyed.
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Date: 2006-10-01 07:32 pm (UTC)Do most atheists make you hiss? It's just that he's hardly exceptional among us for feeling that we don't understand how people can believe things without proof that contradict science.
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Date: 2006-10-01 07:33 pm (UTC)Hmm, he seems more...rabid than most atheists.
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Date: 2006-10-01 07:38 pm (UTC)He's less cowed than most atheists. It is an absolute breath of fresh air to read Dawkins and be told that no, you DON'T have to reverentially tiptoe around people who believe in a magical omniscient Trinity any more than you have to reverentially tiptoe around people who believe in a winged teapot orbiting Jupiter.
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Date: 2006-10-01 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 07:47 pm (UTC)And if we don't pretend, our friends say 'Hmph'.
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Date: 2006-10-01 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 08:02 pm (UTC)I've never seen any evidence that belief in the Christian God is more compelling than belief in a winged teapot. Have you? And if your belief is based on personal revelation, that's fair enough, it's your revelation, but it's the whole thing about personal revelation is that it's not shared by anyone else.
Given the lack of evidence for God as opposed to teapot, I'm not sure why equating them is 'negative language'. Isn't the whole point of religion that you have faith rather than evidence?
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Date: 2006-10-01 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 09:18 pm (UTC)Science uses empirical data to predict future empirical data within an internally consistent system. Science has to either assume that our senses are providing us with reliable data or assume that nothing can be relied upon because the winged teapot could be fooling us, and cease all research immediately.
If study of the data led us towards any hint of God, that'd bring things rather harmonically together, but such has not been the case.
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Date: 2006-10-01 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 09:45 pm (UTC)I'm not sure why that makes you conclude I have an axe to grind (I don't), but if you don't want to discuss your personal convictions, that's perfectly fine.
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Date: 2006-10-02 12:07 pm (UTC)Second, I think that atheists . . . don't understand how people can believe things without proof implies that you actually have proof for all the things you believe. But do you have proof of the kinds of emotional things that you make decisions about every day? I mean, I can point to things that my mother does that could say that she loves me, but they certainly don't prove it. I believe that going to Harvard changed my life but I'm not sure I could empirically prove it.
This is another false dichotomy, that only those who have some kind of religious conviction ever have "non-rational" thought processes, or make decisions based on anything other than reason. It's that promotion of scientific reasoning--dating from the Englightenment, a period, interestingly enough, when the big thinkers were a bunch of Deists--as always the best way to solve EVERY problem and answer EVERY question that I have issues with, and with that the implication that those that do not use scientific reasoning to answer every question are, by definition, "irrational" and therefore useless. I say this because at college I watched people try to use scientific reasoning to run their personal and emotional lives and it was an unmitigated disaster, not because "women are irrational beings" (which is usually what these boys thought) but because emotions are not rational. This doesn't make us irrational beings; it means that reasoning is really good for a lot of things, and not good for some other things, and I don't think people should be robots.
And yes, there are those who wish people could be robots. I'm not saying that this is any more or less true of atheists--I think it's another strain of thought--but I DO think that the atheist challenge of "you cannot scientifically prove there is a God" leads us to that end. It isn't an argument against faith.
As for the teapot, I think it's a silly thing to say that ends up insulting people. If you chose something that sounded better you could get people to listen to your argument--because I think it's a good and reasonable one--and not be pissy and feel like you don't respect them. Perhaps a mountain, or a tree or something. I know that seems like pandering, but I do think you have to talk to people in their own language to keep them from turning their minds off to you. (Perhaps that's the teacher in me.)
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Date: 2006-10-03 11:04 pm (UTC)I used the word 'magic' advisedly. Not grinding any axes, not trying to fan any flames, I am sincerely baffled as to how to distinguish "leprechauns take people to dance at their revels" from "God takes people to heaven". (NB: distinguish in terms of plausibility, not morality/honour/elegance. Your problem with my teapot example was presumably one also of elegance, yes?)
Now, I know perfectly well that some intelligent people are religious, and that some professional scientists are religious. (Though comparing the stats of believers among high-ranking scientists vs. general population is fascinating.) I'm not insulting your intelligence by calling you a Christian.
But I will ask you this: how, precisely, does religion not contradict science? I don't want to hear about how the beauty of the world strengthens religious belief, or anything like that. I want to hear how God is more plausible than leprechauns.
(Btw, I once knew a fantastically able physics student who decided against studying theoretical physics at university in favour of becoming a nun. She had felt personal revelation of God. I think she is mistaken in the nature of what she felt, of course - but I respect that reason a lot. It may be shaky evidence that doesn't stand up to unbiased analysis, but it's evidence nonetheless.)
Oh, I'll say another thing, actually. I don't go round challenging people's beliefs all the time. It'd be tiring as well as intrusive. I got into this conversation because I felt I shouldn't leave David's virulently anti-Dawkins comment unopposed, and the best way to oppose that was to say: yes, of course he represents normal atheists. Being an atheist doesn't mean that you find religious belief perfectly logical but have decided to opt out because you prefer sleeping in on the Sabbath. It means that you see no reason to think God exists. The reason that atheists will make fun of the cargo cult of Papua New Guinea but not, generally, of Christians, is largely due to the fact that they meet Christians every day.
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Date: 2006-10-01 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 11:59 pm (UTC)In the meantime, do post dearest, your words are always of interest.
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Date: 2006-10-02 12:47 am (UTC)-hugs-
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Date: 2006-10-02 01:26 am (UTC)