The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part III

This is Part III of a three part series.  (Go read Part II if you've not seen it yet!)

Politics/Law

America is in the middle of a severely dysfunctional period of political and social change.

Over the last hundred years, technology has rocketed us from the horse and buggy days to jet aircraft and rockets to the moon.  From simple telephone tech to cell phones and computers in our pockets.

A hundred years ago, information was limited to those who could read, which for the population of the US as a whole was about 90%.  In 1979, that rate was 0.6%.  The ability of people to distribute information was limited.  For a regional audience, newspapers were the norm, and was limited to what the editors would print.  A wider audience could be reached in book publication, but that was limited to what the major publishing house editors thought would sell.

Accordingly, the public picture of what was normal was limited to what people could read, and that was tightly controlled, even with what was then a fairly free press.  The abnormal was easily ignored and any contradicting speech or dissension was often swept under the rug.

Until women got angry, and began working to change things.  By 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women the right to vote after a long and contentious public debate, including protests outside the White House, often resulting in arrests.

Today, information is everywhere.  The Internet allows instant connection to just about any repository of information that has an online presence.  Many traditional repositories of information, including the Library of Congress, are rapidly digitizing their collections.

The Internet has changed communication as well.  In the early 20th century, overseas telephone calls were expensive and rare, requiring coordination by letter so both parties were available at a coordinated time.  While this got easier with time, even as late as the 1960's, calling overseas often required advance reservations of a time slot, and were still not cheap.

By the 1970-'s, with modern satellite communications systems well under construction, such calls became both cheap and easy compared to just a decade earlier.

The Internet changed all that.  Today, there are multiple methods for connecting to people, even across the globe.  Email, texting, land line calls and even cell phones can be used to connect to people instantaneously.  While the online bulletin boards of the early 90's allowed communications by text, today, with such Internet giants as Facebook and Google, communication with huge numbers of people across wide swaths of the globe are as easy as sending an email, posting to a Facebook page or setting up a web site.  Skype and FaceTime allow instant face to face communication across the globe.

Any of this can be done on a cell phone.

This communication explosion has greatly changed the character of our political discourse.  While Americans slowly and quietly moved away from devout religious observance during the course of the late 20th century, the 21st, with the advent of instant internet communication, has resulted in an explosion of secular movements and groups.  The demographic of "None" as related to religious affiliation is the fastest growing category world-wide, not merely in the US.

Many in the movement attribute this to the Internet and the ability of people of a secular point of view to see - for the first time - that they are not alone and are part of a growing and dynamic community.

The growth of secularism, from the 60's on, resulted in a backlash of religiosity, starting with the Moral Majority, and Ronald Reagan's Presidency.  This backlash has grown in political influence, spurred on by the Republican Party allying itself with the religious right in a bid for increased political influence.  Successfully, I might add.

The Religious Right (RR) has gained influence on a regional and local basis through intense local organizing and political activism.  The resulting political power thus gained has allowed the Republicans control of a substantial majority of State Houses, allowing the RR to bend the political discourse far to the right of center.

A movement known as Dominionism (of which I've written here extensively) has orchestrated much of the successful passage of laws undermining education and science, causing much social controversy and political division, especially in the area of abortion and women's reproductive health.  In many States, there is a virtual dearth of any legal means of abortion, and now the fight is being directed towards a subject everybody thought was won decades ago - contraceptives.

So, today, after decades of successful advancement of women's rights, including the right to vote, the right to divorce, including no fault provisions, the right to contraceptives and abortion, and the right own property (largely won in the 19th century), women's groups are now having to gear up and spend vast amounts of money fighting for the continued existence of rights once thought secure.

Most of this is due to religion.  Patriarchy, biblical proscriptions against women (whether real or not) and a Dominionist movement intent on converting the US from a democracy to a theocracy have all brought the American political scene to a complete and utter standstill.

RR's efforts haven't stopped there.  There is a litany of things they are working on.

abstinence-only education - Instead of medically accurate information and thoughtful conversation about intimacy and childbearing, teens get promise rings and slut shame. 

Opposing protections and rights for children.  Thanks to the influence of biblical Christianity, the U.S. stands alone with Somalia in failing to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  

Undermining science - The scientific method has also become an existential threat to Bible belief. We know now that the Genesis creation story is myth, neurotransmitters rather than demons cause mental illness, mandrake roots and dove blood don’t improve female fertility or cure skin diseases, and the cognitive structures of the human mind predispose us to certain kinds of religious belief.

Promoting war - George Bush didn’t need to seek input from his earthly father about the invasion, because he asked his Heavenly Father.  Besides, Jesus is coming soon and war in the Middle East is predicted in the Bible.  That makes it not only inevitable, but—in a manner of speaking—desirable.

Abuse of LGBT persons and refusal of equal rights - They've fought equal rights for these folks for decades, and still are, and it would be bad enough if we were simply talking about history. But homophobic American Christians, thwarted at home, have turned to inciting oppression in Uganda and Nigeria where their hatred still finds fertile ground.

Destroying Earth’s web of life and endangering future generations - Climate change denial and refusal of reasonable methods of keeping our air and water clean and unpolluted is based on biblical scripture giving man "Dominion" (there that word is again) over the earth and all its animals, as well as the believed inevitability of the Second Coming, where God will simply create a new and better Earth guarantees that the RR will refuse to assist in doing anything to protect the environment or protect future generations from the consequences of our irresponsibility today.  Add Republicans' devotion to Corporate welfare, and the die is cast.

(Thanks to Valerie Tarico at Salon.com for her ideas and some of her language.)

I guess the greatest harm in general that religion (right wing fundamentalism in particular) does to this country is through its insistence that we support Israel.  The most vile technique they use is to accuse detractors of being anti-Semitic.  Even people who have reasoned and logical arguments against that support are branded with that epithet.

I am not, in principle, opposed to Israel.  I am not even against some form of support for it.

But our foreign policy regarding Israel is held hostage by the RR for religious reasons (because of the Second Coming) and tolerates no deviation from complete and total support.  Regardless of whether American interests are harmed or even devastated by that support, they insist that we continue to support Israel, blindly and without digression.

This has resulted in anger towards the US and much hatred of us by the Muslim world, and has resulted directly in the attacks on the World Trade Center (both of them), and a continued campaign of terrorist activity against American interests.

Our responses to that have been goaded by the RR to the point that our constitutional rights are now under attack at home and US Intelligence has eroded America's reputation for even handedness and high standards of morality to the point of almost nonexistence.  The RR's toleration and indeed, insistence on, classifying water boarding and "advanced interrogation techniques" as acceptable has completely destroyed the ability of this country to hold other countries accountable for similar actions against our own citizens, resulting in the inability of the government to protect American Citizens overseas.

Even if the Progressive movement (such as it is) managed to gain political ascendancy in the next election by some miracle, it would take decades for us to regain our good reputation for being a humane and law abiding nation.  As it is, forget it.

Obviously, this examination of the negative affects of having the population of this country believe in superstitious Bronze Age beliefs is incomplete.  If I tried to classify it all, I'd have to write a series of books.  One wouldn't be enough.

But the short story is a beginning.  If the only negative affects of religious belief were what I have touched upon here, it would be bad enough to justify organizing the secularists of this country to incite political influence and action to combat it.

But it is far, far worse than this.  The struggle to overcome religiosity and its negative affects on this country will continue into the future, and may never be fully complete.  Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been here, collectively, for over three thousand or more years.  That kind of influence doesn't go away overnight; we've been fighting it since the beginning of the Renaissance in the 12th century.

Let's not allow it to make a comeback.

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part II

This is Part II of a three part series.  (Go read Part I if you've not seen it yet!)

Sex

The subject of sex in the US is so screwed up, and it is mainly because of religion.  The system of patriarchy discussed above forces men and women into gender based roles.  While the social aspects of patriarchy are bad enough, the affects on sex and human sexuality are even worse.

As noted above, men are forced into a false and totally artificial image of "manhood", that is as false and artificial as the image of "womanhood" the ladies are forced into.  This produces mental and psychological stress and often damage that hurts the individuals, their families and their friends - often their employers as well.

Why?  Why is it damaging?

Several reasons.  (Stick with me - I'll get to LGBT issues in a bit.)

I think the most obvious is in personal confidence.  Body image, and how a person portrays him or herself sexually is extremely important in this country.  Heck, for that matter, in much of the world.  It affects our social standing, our family and how it is viewed by the larger society, and eventually, how and whether we are accepted as marriage potential.

Accordingly, we are obsessed by sex, we are obsessed with youth and the sexual aspects of it.  The secular commercial realm tells us that sex is good, it is natural and wholesome and, well, whoopee!

But...

In American society, sexual beauty and attractiveness is so skewed from the norm that millions of Americans, both men and women, suffer from severe lack of self confidence because they perceive themselves as unattractive, through failing to live up to an artificial and false vision of beauty.  No, this isn't because of religion, it is because of rampant and unregulated capitalism.

Religion, or the so-called "Judeo-Christian" or "Abrahamic" religions, especially in this country, as mentioned above, enforce a patriarchy.  A large part of that system is the second class status of women, and therefore, control over their public behavior.

Christianity especially, enforces a view of sex that restricts sex to the role of procreation within a family context.  This comes, probably, from the role of the family, or the clan, as the center of Roman life.  The individual wasn't important, the family or family group, was.  Loyalty to that group was paramount, and for women, that meant only having sex with their husband, to preserve the purity of the bloodline.  Hence the religious obsession with sex as procreation, looking down on both abortion and contraception.  One because it is an "illegal" rejection of the man's seed, and the other as rejection of a man's control over his woman.

So, religion forces us into this weird, twisted image of sex - the patriarchal picture of gender roles, mixed with the god-smacked rejection of women as full humans, subservient to men, and under their full control.

This results in our social culture allowing this culture of rape.  Men are supposed to be virile, strong and manly, which is supposed to drive women into raptures of sexual frenzy.  Women are supposed to belong to men, which means they owe us sex, and they owe us their love and devotion.  Women who reject this and refuse to go along are subjected to campaigns of hate and vitriol, threats of rape and violence.

If a guy doesn't fit that manly, virile picture, he is a failure, and is ridiculed as such.

So.

For women, you have to fit this image of womanhood that reflects the stay at home mother, homemaker, sexy wife and willing brood cow, while the larger social milieu tells you that you've got to be beautiful, sexy, and available to any guy that pinches your ass.  If you don't, you're a prude, and you'll never find a husband, especially if you are ugly.

In the meantime, religion tells you that if you DO, you are a slut, a sinner and you'll go to hell.

Guys, largely, get a pass on the religion thing because, you know, patriarchy.  Unless, of course, they aren't manly, so they're failures.  Or if they allow their wives to "hen-peck" them, they aren't following the bible, so they'll go to hell then, too.

Double-failures.

Especially if they are rejected by the ladies.  Since this isn't anticipated by the traditional patriarchal framework, guys that see themselves as manly and virile who get rejected by the ladies anyway can't comprehend that rejection.  They get mad and blame their failure on the ladies, who, of course, OWE them sex.  Severe mental pain and emotional confusion are common resulting from this condition, and has been known to generate violent reactions.

Is it any wonder that Americans are so screwed up about sex?  The true wonder is how any of us manage to grow up with normal pictures of reasonable and responsible relationships in time to have families.

But wait, I'm not finished.  Not everybody is a cis-gendered, heterosexual human being.  Some folks are homosexual.  Some folks are trans-gendered, and some are bi-sexual.  There are other categories, but I don't feel qualified to talk about them.

These traditional roles I spoke of above, as screwed up as they are, aren't the whole picture, especially since they ignore our LGBT friends.  That alone is responsible for untold misery,  family fights and estrangements.  Since these folks don't fit the "normal" categories, they have traditionally been either ignored or forced into playing roles they were not comfortable with, and often beaten or killed for refusing.  All of them are condemned by religion, and totally ignored by the patriarchal system unless they rock the boat.

The 21st century's success in this country in advancing marriage equality for homosexual couples is a remarkable story of the LGBT movement's ability to go mainstream, but is still being fought tooth and nail by the religious right.

Demographics tells us that the religious will lose this fight.

But wait!  That's not all, folks!

Let's examine some other issues, like clergy abuse of both children and adults, sexually.

Everybody knows, by now, of the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal.  The RCC has spent millions of dollars in the US alone just to make this go away.  Not much to actually stop the abuse, but surely to make it go away.

One wonders, as one examines the issue and how the RCC hierarchy responded to the scandal at first.   How prevalent IS the abuse of kids by Catholic clergy?  And how long has it been going on?

There are some clues.

First, in Ireland, we've all heard of the "laundry scandal", where unwed mothers and their children were warehoused by the Church (with complicit authority from the Irish government of the day) in homes, and were made literal slaves in big laundries.  Scorned by the Church for their sexual sins, their children were as badly treated as they were.

This broke even bigger a couple of years ago and again recently when news broke (over here) of the discovery of almost 800 graves in a hidden graveyard, with an unknown number of bodies even hidden in an old unused septic tank.  Graves going back over a hundred years.

Also in Ireland, the scandal of a few years ago of stories of child abuse and murder in Irish Catholic monasteries. possibly going back hundreds of years.  Horrific stories of terrible abuse, both corporal and sexual, often combined.

In Europe a number of decades ago, there were archeological discoveries of monasteries and cloisters, built fairly close by one another, with hidden tunnels linking the two.  The most horrific part of the discovery were chambers off that tunnel containing the graves of infants and fetuses, most of whom were probably buried hours after or before birth.

All of this is evidence of a terrible epidemic of sexual malfunction in a religious hierarchy, over a thousand years old, denied sexual release and access due to official greed, excused and justified by religious scripture.

(For those who don't know, the RCC finally outlawed marriage not for religious reasons, but to end the bleeding of "church" property through inheritance to families of clergy, especially to noble families with large estates.  With no marriage allowed, thus no heirs, their property was "inherited" by the Church.)

Don't think that only the RCC is involved, preachers of almost every Protestant denomination regularly are arrested and either fired or also charged for either child abuse or sexually predatory abuse of adults.

It's all over the place.

Not to be outdone, Islam isn't far behind, as you may have noticed in the recent re-emergence of the quote of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

He says: ‘A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable. If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister… It is better for a girl to marry at such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband’s house, rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.’ 

Read more.

Not only is this considered child abuse, but Islam has doubled down on it and authorized it because Mohammed did it.

At least, the Muslims are honest - they'll tell you God wants this to happen.

Talking about child abuse, let's talk about masturbation, something Christianity in most of its forms doesn't like to do.  In many denominations, it is banned and called out for being sinful and of the devil.

But now, scientifically, we know that it is not only a natural urge (even infants play with themselves) but it is known to be actually good for you!  It releases hormones and endorphins that make you healthier and live longer.

Heck, we know, both from scientific study and from statistics that people who have a long term sexual relationship that is happy for both parties not only stay together longer, but also live longer.  Regardless of whether they have kids or not.

So, in summary, religion in this country (and throughout the world) twists sex and sexuality in humans to the point that millions of people are, at best, dysfunctional and at worst, mentally ill and twisted towards pedophilia and sexual predatory practices, even the clergy.

It taints our marriages, our dating practices, and inculcates a culture of rape that regularly threatens the lives and well being of over a half of all women in the United States and probably causes a significant percentage of our divorces.

It directly harms our LGBT friends through violence and intimidation, forcing them into hidden lives and damaging stress by denying them a happy and healthy lifestyle.

And because sex keeps us healthy and can help us live longer, by discouraging sex in most forms and twisting our sexual practices so badly, religion is also killing us.

Are you mad yet?

(Come back tomorrow for Part III)

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part I.

I was perusing Ophelia Benson's Facebook page last Saturday morning and ran across a post she put up Friday about the post on Dave Muscato's wall regarding Jaclyn Glenn's Youtube video slamming feminism and how she is disappointed - no, outraged - that AA is supporting Glenn's anti-feminism.

One of the comments (which I can't find to quote, dang it) made a comment about the negative consequences of believing in superstition.  It rang a bell with me, so here we are!

There are numerous negative things religion brings to society which many religious folks either overlook or are brainwashed into thinking they are good, mainly because they believe it's good because they're told it is, but have never actually examined the issues to see what the reality is.

But today, we're going to look at a few things.

As I see it, there are at lease three major areas in which religion (believing in a superstition) brings negative consequences to society.

1. Patriarchy (Part I)
2. Sex (Part II)
3. Politics/Law (Part III)

Of course, these aren't the only things at issue, but each of these are major, affecting broad areas of society.  So, let's take them one at a time.

(This is going to be a long post, so I will post in installments.  This is the first, the others will follow tomorrow and Monday.)

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is defined as:

1.  social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly :  control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
2.  a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy

This sounds very clinical, and almost reasonable, doesn't it?  But what are the consequences of these things?

In the modern context of our present day political scene, the relevant part of that is about the legal dependance of women and children, though we will see other consequences of it as well.

In today's western society, especially the US, the practice of patriarchy is at least partially based on religion.  In the Republicans' "War on Women", it IS based on biblical strictures requiring men to be the head of the household, and women being denied the right to be "in charge of" men.

In other words, they are relegated to second class citizens.

Now, in the larger US society, in the last hundred or so years, we've managed to back some of that off.  Women can now own property in their own names, vote, drive cars, work outside the home (and in fact, at jobs traditionally reserved for men), and can marry (or not) according to their own wishes.

But, I am going to back things up a bit and note some negative consequences of allowing the Fundies to begin denying women those rights, as they seem to want to do - which will highlight some ways in which we have failed to progress into a more modern way of thinking about women.

First of all, think about the term "dependance" in that definition above.  Legal dependance, especially. What does that entail?  Briefly, it means a woman (or a child) has no legal rights of her own.  She has to have a male guardian who has the right to "care" for her, as a legal responsibility.

That has two consequences.  The most obvious is that she has no rights of her own.  He can pretty much force her to obey his every wish, and she has no legal recourse, unless he is neglecting her welfare.  She is, in fact, virtually his property.  In many countries, this is in fact, the case.

But wait, there's another side to it.  HE is obligated to care for her.  That means he is responsible, legally, to feed her, clothe her and provide her with shelter.  This isn't something he has a choice in, it becomes his legal obligation, for which he is liable if he fails.

What if he can't?  What if his resources aren't up to the task?  Sure, he can neglect her to her detriment, but that leaves him vulnerable to accusations of neglect which may, if his society cares, cost him.

Either way, this kind of situation isn't exactly fair to either one.  Worse for the lady, since she is the one losing rights, but if she is prevented by the social or legal rules to not be able to work, the whole family suffers.  In fact, the entire society suffers.

This is actually the worst part of the patriarchal system.  The entire society, from the individual, to the family, to the potential employer, to the city, State and the entire country, everybody suffers, both socially and economically.  To stop half of the population from working is to cut your potential GDP in half, at the very least.  Even if you only go halfway and allow women to work, but restrict them to certain jobs (and, equally, restrict men to certain jobs) you are still preventing people from working in their best way and potentially most skilled career.  The potential of people working at their best level and in a skill that they are best suited for is huge, and the frustration (for both men and women) in being prevented from doing that is as huge as the potential.  The cost of such false restrictions based on arbitrary and unnatural reasoning is perhaps not as bad as a complete ban on women working, but it is a non trivial figure.

Society suffers in other ways.  Women are, actually, as smart as men, and as capable of doing anything men can, save perhaps (on average) some jobs or tasks requiring major body strength.  (...and even there, some women exceed that standard and do quite well in those circumstances, as on the other hand, some guys fail!) In the US, after over a century of women working, there is plenty of evidence that many aspects of society are better off with the participation of women.  Corporations find that women make better organizers, deal better with adversity and are better at mediating conflict.  In politics, women (when allowed to work independently) are often better at compromise and negotiations than men.

As costs have risen in recent decades, women have been forced into the workplace, bringing in much needed resources and allowing single women to raise children alone under better economic conditions than once was allowed.

I could go on, but it is obvious from these examples (which are only a few examples of many) that were women forced back into the home, the economy of the US would take a hit that would guarantee our immediate slide into third world status.  Poverty would become, instead of merely commonplace, rampant and virtually the norm.  The middle class would be destroyed, and those in poverty would be devastated completely.

Notice that I haven't even touched on the health care aspects of women's rights, and the devastation the American family would suffer were women no longer allowed to control their reproductive rights.  In fact, the proposed restrictions on contraceptives would be devastating to not only women, but to the entire country, as it would push us back into a time where women were not capable of stopping pregnancy.  (This does, of course, include the prohibitions against abortion.)  The social consequences of this would be to push many women out of the workforce, and reinstate the social pressures against allowing women to work, with the consequences noted in the previous paragraphs.

I haven't addressed the other side of the issue, which is the damage to men a patriarchal system can and does do.

This system not only imposes restrictions on women, but imposes strict (depending on the time period and the culture involved) roles for the two different genders.  (Note here, the refusal of this system to even acknowledge the existence of the LGBT folks!)  This framework of strict roles is restrictive and limiting for both men and women.  Men may have a larger menu of choices, but they are no less prevented from crossing that line than women are.

Some women are great corporate managers.  Some are great politicians.  Some aren't.  Many men just suck at those roles, and choose to do other things, including these days, staying home to take care of the kids.  Numerous articles have been written by guys who have done this, and it is liberating for them to be able to do so.  As it is liberating for women to be able to be corporate managers.

Some guys are fantastic secretaries, or office managers, or nurses.  Men can be social workers, cooks, day care workers, pole dancers and strippers.  And they can be good at it.

Patriarchy would prevent them from doing all this, as those are not "traditional" men's jobs.

Men are forced into a false and totally artificial image of "manhood", that is as false and artificial as the image of "womanhood" the ladies are forced into.  This produces mental and psychological stress and often damage that hurts the individuals, their families and their friends - often their employers as well.

It also forces men into this culture of rape we all know so well, but I'll deal with that in the "sex" topic.

In short, patriarchy is not a system that is supportive of society, but is damaging and harmful to a society that hopes to progress into a modern, peaceful, and productive society which accords equal rights for all citizens.

In short, it is un-American, in accordance with the ideals declared by us in the Declaration of Independence.

Some of the last points I raised also apply in the next section.

Come back tomorrow for Part II!

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

As an atheist, are you a hard core extremist, or are you an accomodationist?

I was perusing FaceBook this morning briefly, and ran into an argument about how Atheism should act as a movement.  There were two sides - those who argued that the Extremists were too harsh and intolerant and those who were defending the position, with the argument centered around Dawkins.  As in, Dawkins is either a Grade A Number One Dick, or he's the best thing to come along since sliced bread, at least for the Atheist Movement.

While I agree that Dawkins can be acerbic at times (especially when confronting Theist idiots), but in general, he is pretty British in arguing his positions.  Meaning that he can be very polite while tearing you a new a**hole.

But he isn't counted as one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism for nothing.  All four - Dawkins, Denning, Harris and Hitchens (may he long be remembered for his cutting wit...) are known as such because they performed a singular function.  They are responsible for awakening the world to the growing number of atheists in this country (and indeed world-wide) by being, in a word, A**holes.

They served the same function as the Gay Pride movement, namely, attracting media attention to our existence and our growing numbers.

High profile, indeed!  They wrote books, gave interviews, went on TV, established web sites, then blogs and have, in general, made themselves into tremendous pains in the a** for influential theist leaders everywhere.  By telling the world that we are here, we are growing in numbers and influence and will NOT go away.  (and by ripping their theology into very small, very insignificant pieces...but that's another discussion.)

And we've got opinions about religion that are in the process of upsetting the balance of power in, especially, the First World.

As for the argument, there is a contingent that argues that being an a**hole and intolerant of the beliefs of theists isn't changing minds.  That it is counter-productive because it turns them off and makes them ultra-defensive.

Of course it does.  So did the in-your-face Gay Pride movement.  They paraded around the country in big cities where they had the numbers to defend themselves and got people talking.  They allowed others like themselves in less gay-populated areas to realize that THEY WERE NOT ALONE!  They made the media pay attention.

As time has gone on, the methods used by the Gay Movement have mellowed.  They do still have Gay Pride parades, but you don't see the radical dressed-up outrageously decked out folks in those parades like you used to.  These days, you can hardly (even if you squint) tell them from the regular folks who also march with them in support!

Which is kinda the point - gays are just like us.  They have lives, loves, jobs, dreams and debts.  Just like straights.

So do atheists.

We, too have lives, loves, jobs, dreams and debts.  Heck, walking down the street, one can hardly tell an atheist from a god-lover these days!  Ahem!  Sorry, I digress...

Which is why the Four Horsemen were and are needed - to wake people up.  To show them that we ARE HERE, and we are NOT going away.  We live alongside you, we are in your schools, your grocery stores, your parks, even in your churches!

And the more people see atheists as normal people, who do not eat babies nor worship Satan, the more they will see that we have common interests - like the Separation of Church and State.

Those who are derisively called "accomodationists" ARE needed.  Yes, it is Ok to be tolerant of others' religious beliefs.  Yes, we need to work with theists to bring together this society to push out the extremists of all kinds so we can learn to live together.  So we can build a country (and a world) that is neutral at the governmental level so everybody can hold and discuss opinions different from others.  So we can have political disagreements and discussions that will not result in violence and hatred.

In short, this is a big world, with a lot of different people in it.  Just as there are as many religious opinions as there are people, there is room in our movement for many differing techniques for approaching the theist audience, depending on who they are, and what interests we may have in common.

Instead of bad-mouthing other atheists who don't approach the subject like you do, try to understand who they are trying to reach, and discuss how to make them more effective in that effort.  Discuss how YOU can be more effective in reaching YOUR audience, too.  Try to see how the different approaches can be used effectively together, instead of accusing each other of being hurtful.

We've got billions of people to reach, and we can't reach them all using just one technique.

Cooperation works better than infighting.

Robert W. Ahrens

The Cybernetic Atheist

Some Notes from John Shook’s’ Talk - "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response".

by Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook, author of The God Debates has much to say about the
public critics of religion, but at a recent WSH MDC chapter his
topic was “The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of
Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response". The talk was
partially inspired by Dan Dennett’s Breaking the Spell and
the new research advances to the scientific study of religion. One
expression of the idea is to: “study religion as a natural
phenomenon, as carefully as you might study the trajectory of a
baseball or the embryology of the mouse”. Recently,
the Center for Inquiry (CFI) held a conference called "Daniel Dennett and the
Scientific Study of Religion: A Celebration of the Fifth
Anniversary of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon. " Shook interviewed Dennett as part
of this workshop and this talk represented an update to
some the thinking in Dennett’s earlier book. Three type of
scientific studies have emerged those of brain, Behvipr
(cognition) & Belief (e.g.commitment) – as shown in the Picture at the top of this
Blog. Group practices, such as ritual conformity, can be seen as
connecting the Belief and behavior making it “ meaningful
belief” for such things as existential coping.

Only a small portion of these from Shook’s talk are covered in
these notes (and non of Lee's great food/snacks is available, for that you have
to come to the meetings), but an important point of departure concerns the
question of why religious belief phenomena happens. Why are
there religions? <As many have suggested there are
many explanations of why religion exists: as an

• explanation for what we don’t understand;


• psychological reaction to our lives and surroundings; as an expression of social needs;


• tool of the status quo to keep some people in power and others out;
  


• focus upon supernatural and “sacred” aspects of our lives; and


• evolutionary strategy for survival.

The old story is that such belief is based on some mixture of
fear, ignorance and mistake. The new view is a bit
different and argues that religious belief naturally
develops as part of human cognition. This makes sense when
we consider human curiosity mixed with such things as
reaction to tragedy within small group. Groups must
develop habits of correct conduct so we see the eventual
purposes of churches for group support. Deep
evolution of communication in human species from 1-2
million years ago, which allowed simple rituals which
religion evolved from and builds on. We’re not
sure when more organized beliefs to support group
dynamics arose as what we now think of as religion, but
a working guess is between 50 -100,000 yrs ago when
biological anthropologists and others speculate that a
superior narrative ability arose as a systematization of
earlier animism & magic into one with priests and
other baggage - a position of early researchers E.B. Tylor & James
Frazer. The good news is that religious evolution and
transformation is a step towards more intellectual
discovery. But this means more than disproving older theories that are
wrong if it is to lead to secularism. Among the points made and
argued in John’s talk were:

Brain Studies:

There is no religion brain or modules but religious thinking uses existing modules..
No amount of research helps provide evidence forsupernasturalism.But believers like that we see differences in brain activity during meditation and other quasi-religious
activities. It is really not surprising that we get brain activity responses that correlate with a
variety of unusual experiences.

Some will appeal to the brain as a direct cause of religion. But there are no pure brains. Brains are connected and encultured. It co-changes with culture.

And brains won't do everything, there are limits to what it does in isolation

But to do this the beliefs must conform to older universalmoral intuitions and must be able to explain some things in Why are the Gods of this era like us? Human-like error helps

Belief commitment:
There are consistencies between belief systems.

But belief correlates with error, sacrifice and risk are
problematic for believers and their supporters. How do such
systems survive?

The idea is that there are benefits/yields to consistent social benefits that
outweigh the downsides. So religions get social payoffs for
trust in some beliefs and committed behavior. They can get
away with false positive because we are not killed for false
belief like believing in spirits as we would about a belief
of wolves being in the woods.

Such beliefs helps groups get though hard times when there
are no rational solution.

But to do this the beliefs must conform to older universal moral intuitions and must be able to explain some things in some fashion.

So religions tend to use slightly, but only slightly, unnatural beings, usually anthropomorphic, like Gods that have human like qualities.

Stewart Elliot Guthrie argues that “Religion is Anthropomorphization Gone Awry”

They may employ naive psychology that most people have like the idea of
a mind without body. These are simple narratives and as
noted before seem to part of the human makeup.

Cultural anthropology is making progress on real roots of religion in terms of social
functions, animism, totenismm, ancestor worship (assuming
common ancestors), and magic to deal with problems. These
older ideas seem to have been systematized several thousand
years ago especially as part of “urbanization”.

As the river valley civilizations arose religion evolved like language.

Cities required shared duties and religion helped pass through the crisis of having
unrelated people living there by increased inclusiveness and
commonality. A group of people from diverse previously small
tribes are brought together as part if early city life. They
may then learn new skills - they may now be easily replaced
so they must learn skills. To conform they must converge
dialects and start to dress alike. They start to eat the
same foods from the same sources and they endure the same
hardships of living in close quarters (meeting many new
people each day), drought, shortages, prevent cheating etc
(See picture below). It takes quite a bit of work
to indoctrinate kids into all of this.

So early cities became
religious to handle high density and its problems. The Gods of religion had to evolve. People had
moved so were gods far away of not? Now they became gods for all people to relate people of different kinship.

This phenomena was seen early in Egypt & Dowism, but was an obvious solution
happened all around the world and was not a unique idea as was later claimed as part of Jewish
tradition. It had apath and polytheism was intermediate stage explaining how gods are related. The trend is seen from 3000 - 1000 BC where monotheism wipe out polytheism as an aid to managing
great empires.

During this time politics controls religion getting a lid on all them to help
perpetuate empire. Theology evolves to try to enhance
devotion with higher values that serve empire and religion.



With a common god the new urban masses have to becomes
‘fictitious kin’ to get along and make city life work.
Organized religion arose in these circumstances to serve
these needs. One of the new ideas is of a commonality to
humans, We are more than individual but we are also unique. A soul idea helps
explain that so religions start selling the idea of immortal
soul. It makes us we feel good as we are more than a small cog in big wheel of
city and empire, but there is always a tension, Do we have a soul capable of being punished?

John mentioned the work
of Scott Atran [Anthropologist, University of Michigan; Author of In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion and Pascal Boyer as people who help us understand some of the transition.

One of the important contemporary lessons that John argued is that religious
belief collapses when given social support. Evidence of this
is Western Europe is one phenomena that worries American
fundamentalists and explains some of their urgent efforts to
gain cultural influence and diminish secular influence.

Sociology can't say what theological religions are adaptive
or natural. It may have been in long past, but with cultural
change has forced a theological position.

John finished on some lessons for Ethical Secularist and these are shown in the
picture below. Lessons for humanists include the idea that
naturalism by itself can't handle ethics and that we need a
philosophy for modern morality and secular social justice to
relieve stress.

There was a spirited Q and A that followed including:

• Can science prove religion wrong?

• Sam Harris argument that science can provide morality.

• Harris bridges it with normative principles.


• Naturalism can serve, but not prove an ethics.

• How enlightened self interest serves group interest in a consequentialist
  stance

• How control by
  narratives comes in and precedes powerful rational thought

• Anthropomorphism
  of god vs animals.
  

Theists' defense against atheism and human invention fails

By Mathew Goldstein

Sean McDowell and Jonathan Marrow wrote a book "Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists", published in August 2010, that claims to defeat the arguments for atheism and show that Christian theism is true. I have not read the book, instead I recently read a book review. Sometimes, reading a favorable book review is enough to conclude that the book fails to achieve its claimed objective. Why and how does this book fail to make a convincing argument against atheism, contrary to the enthusiastic book reviewer's assertions that the book succeeds? Let's take a look at some of the arguments from the book as cited by the book reviewer.

All people, including atheists, have faith in some things, therefore atheist attacks against religious faith are said to be mistaken. One trusts the unfamiliar pilot of a plane one boards; one has faith that the electrician properly wires your house; one trusts the cook at the restaurant where one eats, etc. The problem with this argument is that it is confusing our day to day faith in the behavior, skills, and good will of other people with faith in factual claims made by religions. It doesn't follow that because we trust pilots to not try to kill their passengers that we are justified in trusting that the angel Moroni communicated the wisdom of God to Joseph Smith as asserted by the book of Mormon.

Atheists are then accused of having blind faith in the ideas that the universe came into existence from nothing, that life emerged from non-life, and the human mind arose from mere matter. None of this is true. Atheists follow the opinions of the experts in cosmology, biology, and neurology: Cosmologists, Biologists, and Neuroscientists. These are the people who have devoted their time and efforts to studying and pursuing the evidence about our universe, life, and brains, including their origins. The evidence suggests that our universe contains a near balance of negative and positive energy consistent with its emerging from an unstable, initial "nothing". Nothing is in quotes here because the evidence suggests that absolute nothingness could be impossible, it exists in the minds of theologians but has no evidenced reality. The evidence suggests that the brain is a completely materialistic entity that is the sole source, together with its supporting body, of our minds. The evidence suggests that life emerged from chemistry and is entirely a chemical and physical process. These are, in fact, the conclusions favored by the available evidence. I, and most other atheists, are absolutely convinced that these are the conclusions that are the best fit with the evidence.

The authors of the book are then quoted as asserting "there is no inherent conflict between Christianity and science”. As evidence for this it is noted that most of the early pioneering scientists were theists. However, time passes and more evidence is accumulated. Today, more scientists are atheists than a hundred years ago. People hold inconsistent beliefs, so the fact that there are many people who hold two beliefs is not sufficient to establish that both beliefs are not in conflict.

The authors claim naturalism “ultimately undermines any basis for confidence” in nature’s order and the powers of reason. It is claimed that under a naturalistic worldview, there’s no reason to trust our reason or our senses; they were merely the result of blind Darwinian accidents. Again, this is false. Our reason and senses are effective precisely because they competitively evolved. To the extent animal reasoning and senses were less trustworthy they were out competed by animals whose reasoning and senses were more trustworthy. The process of evolution is thus not only accidental, it is also directional, it necessarily follows a path that "puts us in touch with reality", because the outcome is shaped by competition for survival. A tendency to walk over cliffs is not an outcome favored by evolution.

The authors defend the concept of miracles, “if a transcendent God exists, then it seems eminently possible that He has acted in the universe”. This if x then y is possible logic is sensible here. But we could just as logically say if not x then not y. While the authors seem to be impressed by the standard philosophical arguments for God, those arguments fail by the only criteria that counts, they don't reach conclusions by following the overall weight of the overall evidence. So the authors are mistaken to consider those various traditional arguments for god to be convincing. Arguing from one possibility to another possibility only makes sense when the evidence favors the first possibility.

The authors claim that Hume mistakenly presumes to know the uniformity of human experience prior to considering the evidence. Indeed, we should always start with the evidences. So do the available evidences favor the conclusion that the universe consistently follows a set of laws? Yes, very much so. Pieces of icebergs break off and fall down into the ocean, but equivalent amounts of ice don't jump up and attach itself to the side of the iceberg. Hume was correct regarding this "presumption" of his. Time has a clear direction from past to future because our universe unfolds uniformly according to fixed laws.

The authors then attack Hume’s argument that one should be skeptical about the improbable. “But surely it is perfectly reasonable to believe that an improbable event can occasionally occur”. No, that is not a reasonable conclusion for any particular imaginable event. Again, this depends on the evidence. We know that Royal Flushes in poker are both improbable and an occasional occurrence, while a human language talking donkey is not only improbable, but physically impossible and thus a never occurred fiction. Believing in any such tall tale events that violate the evidences regarding what is possible, a.k.a. a miracle, is, by definition, unreasonable.

The authors claim that there is not good evidence for macroevolution (changes from one species into another different species), only good evidence for microevolution (small changes within a kind). This is false. The evidence for evolution transcends this micro/macro distinction and is strong for both. Macroevolution is also an unavoidable logical consequence of microevolution.

The authors claim that a purely material reality cannot produce consciousness. Again, this is contrary to the evidence. The evidence that we have favors the conclusion that consciousness is an emergent property of purely material brains. Near death experiences are like dreams, we have lots of evidence that they are fictions, they reflect activity internal to the brain, not what it is true beyond the confines of the person. Intention and free will are not sufficient evidence for consciousness being immaterial. We literally don't have evidence that free will is anything more than an illusion, or that if it is in any sense real, that it is in that sense also non-material.

The authors note that atheism lacks an objective and perfect ground to issue objective moral commandments as well as the means to hold all moral lawbreakers to an account. But neither does theism. The authors claim that “In the theistic view, objective moral laws are grounded in the reality of a Moral Lawgiver." That is a circular argument, it fails to establish what are objective moral laws, or how that is determined. Citing the Christian (or Hebrew or Islamic, etc.) bible as the guide for "Morality" is untenable. Those documents are more distant from being a decent, let alone perfect, guide to moral behavior, or laws, than most atheists could write themselves. Furthermore, it is rather obvious that the content of these documents reflect the state of knowledge and attitudes of the people of the place and time where they originated. Again, the evidence strongly favors the conclusion that the only Lawgivers behind these documents are people.

The book reviewer concludes "They offer several of the leading arguments for Christian theism while toppling some of the most belligerent of the objections promoted by the New Atheists. They have written, with abundant care, to attain a thoroughness that is not often established in popular books. The wisdom and excellence with which each chapter is written makes this a crucial volume for the budding apologist’s library."

The arguments for Christian theism, and more generally for religious theisms, in this book, and in the many similar arguments found in other such books, are often seriously flawed, in conflict with the available evidence, and very weak overall. That books like these are popular is an indication that more debate regarding religious beliefs is needed. There is nothing belligerent, or impolite, or counter-productive, in arguing that everyone should believe in macroevolution, in abiogenesis, in global warming, in atheism, and generally in that set of conclusions which are best supported by the available evidence.