Life is more meaningful when based on reality

We are stardust...

Truth Matters

Jesus' and Mo's author says Alain de Botton inspired this one.


"Truth matters because we are the only species we know of that has the ability to find it out. In a way that makes it almost a duty to do so." Ophelia Benson, Jeremy Stangroom

"A Better Life"

Photographer Chris Johnson has a project worthy of your support:

The myth persists. Even in our modern world, countless people believe that without God, one’s life has no purpose or meaning — that our lives are devoid of joy and happiness because we are not religious. Those of us who are atheists know this is not the case. That’s where this project comes in…

I sense a trend coming on.

Remember every Sunday is #AtheistRollCall Day. Let your fellow nonbelivers know they are not alone #Atheism

Godless Atheist ‏ @GodlessAtheist

• Close

This why we need #AtheistRollCall i.imgur.com/xYYeO.jpg #atheism

Apostate

For the record: a Muslim student whom I admire says this is funny no matter who you are. I say it's funny if you don't take yourself, your faith (or no-faith) , or your species too seriously. Religion and philosophy are so much more fun when we can all laugh at ourselves.

I guess that's an invitation: hit me with your best atheist joke.

one god further

People are so perennially confused about how to use the terms "atheist" and "agnostic." "Darwin's Bulldog" Huxley gave us the latter term in 1889: 

It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant... In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith.

Bertrand Russell  addressed the issue years ago:

I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist"... I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods... all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.

My student DH offers this:

"Gnostic" is relating to knowledge. "A" is the negation (not; without) what ever follows, which in this case is "gnostic." So, your agnostic--without knowledge in relation to a god or the supernatural. 

"Atheism" is the same deal. "Gimme an 'a"" (i.e., not) along with theism (the belief in gods) and you arrive a not (the negation) believing in gods. 

It's that simple. 

So we're all agnostic insofar as we don't know about gods or the supernatural. Those of us who go a short step further and assert our disbelief in gods and the supernatural on the basis of that lack of knowledge and compelling evidence are atheists. Simple indeed.


Richard Dawkins makes it even simpler:

I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.

One step beyond, and you're there. Dare to be bold, freethinkers. You have nothing to lose but your ambivalence.

Coming out

Julian Baggini reports on Atheism in America:

A report from the Pew Research Center last November showed that 53 per cent of Americans say it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. That is one reason why many are afraid of coming out...

But coming out they are, in ever-increasing numbers. The New Atheists are one reason, but it's the Internet that's responsible for shining the biggest spotlight into those dark closets.

 “The reason that atheism is on the rise is because there is no way that a person who is an atheist can think they’re alone any more. When I was growing up, I was the only atheist I knew. I had to get on my bike, ride to the public library and take out the one atheist book that they had in the whole library: The Case Against God by George Smith. Now any atheist can go on Facebook or Myspace and find literally millions of friends.”

 So the next time someone says something snarky about the devaluation of friendship on the web, I'm going to speak up more vocally for this medium. Free people should not live in closets.

Do humanists need a chaplain?

Or a church? Or even a community center?

P."Zed" Myers thinks not, emphatically, but at Harvard they've got one, namely Greg Epstein. [HarvardHumanist's YouTube Channel] They've been debating the whole concept of humanist communitarianism on Twitter (#humanistcommunity).

Myers notwithstanding, I've often heard humanists, atheists, and secularists of various other stripes express regret at not enjoying the conviviality and "fellowship" available to church-based religionists. Some of us have the Church of Baseball, of course; but for others Epstein is pushing to create something more like a community of non-believers. He's been hosting talks, not quite sermons, in service of that goal. Jennifer Hecht gave one recently:

atheist hymn

Steve Martin was a philosophy major, stand-up comic, and motion picture star. Now he's a pioneering gospel songwriter:

narrative validity

Let a thousand narratives bloom. But which side are you on?

mirrors

People who live in straw houses...

The barmaid had a lot more to say in the previous installment, about affirmative atheist values.

stairway from heaven

Or is that a stairway to heaven-on-earth, to eternity here-and-now? Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Brief Insight

overlooking

Back-to-back 9th inning jacks from Pujols and Holliday to tie last night's Cards-Brewers game, after they'd trailed all night; and just like that  we're reconciled, my team and I. (Doesn't matter that Milwaukee answered them right back for the walk-off win.) Fortunately the camera didn't pan to Big Mac on the bench at that moment. That's going to be the fly in the ointment all summer.

James was right: the key to wisdom is knowing what to overlook.
==
And, an entirely unrelated thought: Sartre wrote "Existentialism is a Humanism." Someone should do "Theism is not A-theism." It's on my to-do list.

Goldstein recommended

Positive recommendations for our "recommended" novel in A&S class:

"So extravagantly witty and smart that it's making everything else I've read recently seem drab." -Ron Charles, Washington Post 

"Comic and supremely witty, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is both a satire of the academic world and a feast of philosophical and religious ideas." -Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams

"You do not have to perpetrate an act of faith to confront the question of why there is something rather than nothing. It is faith itself that consists of nothing. Rebecca Goldstein, on the other hand, is quite something." -Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great

"Rebecca Newberger Goldstein does it all. She has written a hilarious novel about people's existential agonies, a page-turner about the intellectual mysteries that obsess them. The characters in 36 Arguments For the Existence of God explore the great moral issues of our day in a novel that is deeply moving and a joy to read." -Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated 

"Shiny, Happy Atheists"

Well written, Messrs. L.*

Why is it that we almost never see the noun “atheist” without some pejorative adjective like “dyspeptic,” which Judith Shulevitz shoehorns into her review of “The Faith Instinct” (Dec. 27)? Are the great majority of atheists really sour and sulky, angry and indignant?

Some unbelievers, uneasy at being the only group known by what it does not believe, have started the Brights, an organization that declares its faith in a natural world, without supernatural intervention. The atheist Einstein professed awe and wonder at this earthly home of ours, and I have not read a word of grump in anything he — or William Butler Yeats, or Matthew Arnold, or a number of other nonbelievers, have said. C’mon, play fair.

*RICHARD LETTIS
Ramsey, N.J.



(Re “Atheists’ Ad Campaign” (letter, Dec. 10), about the American Humanist Association’s ads:) Rather than continuing to remain publicly invisible, the association has recently been fulfilling its mission to raise the visibility and respectability of humanism through ads and other activities. Members of A.H.A. identify themselves in various ways — humanist, agnostic, atheist, freethinker and so on. Our ads reach out to kindred spirits to let them know that they are not alone in their nontheism.

Some people are “embarrassed” by the public acknowledgment that we are humanists. People of good will are not offended simply because others assert differing beliefs. I am not offended by those who say they are good because of God. Similarly, they should not object to others saying they are good without God. As long as we are all good, we can be united in our good works. And this unity is what A.H.A.’s ad campaign can accomplish.

*Mel Lipman
Las Vegas, Dec. 10, 2009
The writer is immediate past president of the American Humanist Association.

(published in the Times)

special dust

To the new atheists, the material world of physical beauty and the wonders of science are all the spiritual fulfilment they need. Dawkins writes that a ''proper understanding of the magnificence of the real world … can fill the inspirational role that religion has historically - and inadequately - usurped''.

Joel Kilgour refuses to describe himself as a spiritual person, but, ''if you ask if I have transcending moments, absolutely''. ''Sunset over the ocean, holding the hands of families or friends, looking into the face of my newborn niece … A lot of people claim spirituality for those moments … but I think people just like to feel they are special, that the universe was created specifically for them when, really, we're just a speck of dust.'' Michael Bachelard

Well, are we "just a speck of dust" any more than our planet is a speck of dust, or from a more distant vantage our sun or our galaxy or even our universe? The whole astonishing glorious spectacle of natural existence is wondrous, inspiring, magnificent, humbling, exalting... words do, really, pale.  Our own existence is a natural  miracle, and source of more "spiritual fulfillment" than any of us can adequately absorb.  Of course we're special.  Isn't that what Philip Pullman was talking about, with his "dust"? And Carl Sagan, with his "star-stuff"? And, with their clumsier way of re-branding, isn't that what the "Brights" are talking about too?

"Teflon spirituality"

My friend and colleague Rami Shapiro, the Rabbi, is walking the pluralistic walk many of us typically only talk. "Today I am a Hindu," he proclaims.


I'm a different variety of pluralist myself, claiming no firm anchorage in any of the historically dominant theological or spiritual traditions but happy to take truth wherever it can be found and put to work. And I'm also eager to find the spiritual core of atheism, humanism, naturalism, and whatever other names or labels people march under, though a bit dubious as to the "truth is one" thesis. That is, I don't think it's one yet, but I agree that unity-in-plurality is a worthy aspiration.


Rami: The Rig Veda’s teaching that “Truth is one, different people call it by different names,” frees me from both abandoning names and having allegiance to them. But being a Jew is all about names, especially The Name, and taking that Name very seriously. Yet I just can’t do so. I love languages, I love names, but I never mistake the menu for meal, the name for that toward which it points, and it is the meal I desire.

Judaism is my primary menu. It is the system of names I go to first and most often. But primary does not mean exclusive, and I find value in many names and many systems. And while I do love to explore the differences and incompatibilities between systems in an academic setting, in my personal life they all point me to the same reality, the nameless “—“ that is both the One and the Many.

So today I become a Hindu, but this label adheres no more tightly than any other. In the end I practice a Teflon spirituality allowing me to mix lots of ingredients without worrying that any will stick.


Me: That's one small step for a man (of whatever wisdom tradition), one exemplary leap for cosmopolitanism. Good going, Rami!

Forget Iceland!-

I'd still like to visit Reykjavik, but I'm retiring to Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth... Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 20th at 7.4... Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the chance to explore dazzling beaches on both sides of the country... Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad... Nick Kristof


Trouble is, we're all up against a deep ancestral tendency to "coalitional" conflict, especially us guys. But Andy Thomson agrees: education is our only hope:
 

 
I'm ready to get back to school!
 
And then, eventually, to Costa Rica.
 
In our dreams.

Harris vs. Armstrong

Karen Armstrong wins this exchange with Sam Harris on civility, Harris on sarcasm, and it's a draw on righteous indignation.

SH: I can't quite remember how we got it into our heads that jihad was linked to violence. (Might it have had something to do with the actual history and teachings of Islam?) And how could we have been so foolish as to connect the apparently inexhaustible supply of martyrs in the Muslim world to the Islamic doctrine of martyrdom? In my own defense, let me say that I do get spooked whenever Western Muslims advocate the murder of apostates (as 36 percent of Muslim young adults do in Britain). But I now know that these freedom-loving people just "want to see God reflected more clearly in public life."

KA: But these abuses do not constitute the whole story. Religion is also about the quest for transcendence, the discipline of compassion, and the endless search for meaning; it was not designed to provide us with the same kind of explanations as science, but to help us to live creatively, serenely, and kindly with the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition. As such, it continues to appeal to millions of human beings across the globe. To identify religion with its worst manifestations, claim that they represent the whole, and then demolish the straw dog thus set up does not seem a rational or useful way of conducting this important debate.

Hard to see this morphing into constructive Socratic engagement, but it'll be fun to try in A&S.

USN pm

USN (University School of Nashville) has posted its Evening Classes 2010 catalog, including my little contribution to this delightful annual fundraising venture. Last year I offered a class on Pop Philosophy, the year before on philosophy and humor, the year before that on philosophy and weirdness. It's always a lot of fun, and something in February-- on many counts the cruelest month-- to look forward to.

This year, coinciding with the Atheism & Spirituality course, it's "An Atheist's View of Spirituality." I didn't choose that title, and wouldn't have: I generally shun labels, and when pressed prefer "humanist" or "naturalist" to the hugely culturally-misunderstood and maligned "A"-word. The class is not mainly about my view of things anyway, it's about the varieties of "spirituality" available to those who reject belief in a transcendent Deity.

Call it what you will, it'll be fun and worthy. And there won't be a quiz.

ship of fools?

Not such bad shipmates, I think: