Choosing to Believe?

I finished reading Infidel by Ayaan Ali Hirsi last week. Also, a couple weeks ago on the Daily Dish, there was something of a debate over the nature of belief/unbelief in god; specifically, whether or not it’s a choice. The responses ranged from both atheists and believers arguing that it is a choice, with the believers throwing in the added caveat of “god granted us free will so choosing to believe in him makes it more valuable to him”. On the other side, the believers who claimed that faith is natural and inherent in all people and atheists are in denial, and one odd atheist who claimed he had no choice about his unbelief, and that made him sad, because he deeply envied those with faith and the comfort it seemed to provide them, but he just couldn’t make himself believe.

So it got me thinking. My initial reaction to the debate was “psh, of course it’s a choice! duh!”. I mean, the level of freedom to choose might be limited by your circumstances, but there isn’t anything inherent in the human condition that mandates religious belief. But then I started reading Hirsi’s book… and my position got a little more muddied.

Reading her book, the things that stood out most to be were her rebellions. The questioning, either openly or in private, even when she still believed in majority of Islam’s teachings; running away from an arranged marriage; giving up her religion when the Enlightenment ideals she’d come to love conflicted with it far too much for her to hold both belief systems at once. And every time something like that happened, every time she refused to bend to the social pressures around her, I wondered: why? What gave her the strength, the courage, the backbone to stand up and say no? She was brought up in a deeply religious society by deeply religious parents amongst deeply religious friends. There was virtually no support for her questioning, and yet question she did.

Put it another way: there was nothing nurturing her rebellion, so was it something in her nature that made her do it?

Is there something in atheists that makes us question the dogmatic beliefs of our families, our societies? Something that believers lack? Truth be told, I’m actually kind of uncomfortable with this line of questioning. I don’t like the idea that atheism or belief is… genetic, or based on a predisposition, or something like that. And I have no evidence to support or disprove this theory (although I plan on taking a class on Psychology and Religion as soon as I can– free classes for staff at DePaul is a wonderful thing), so I’m really just kind of brainstorming here. But it’s a nagging sort of question. Why atheism rather than belief? I’ve read all these deconversion stories, and they explain the how, but not the why. Why did the arguments against belief stick? Why did the ones for belief fall flat? What is it in a person that chooses atheism over theism?

Much as I want to believe it’s a choice, something that people arrive at after careful thought and consideration… it doesn’t quite match up with my personal experience. Because while I would never have admitted it back in the day, and while it took years and years for me to admit it… I never really believed. In any of it. Raised Catholic, went to church twice a week for nearly seventeen years, and I look back and I did not believe in any of it. And I don’t know why. My mother was devout, my father is fairly religious, I went to Catholic schools my entire life, my culture and life were steeped in religion, but I didn’t believe it!

And I don’t know why. I don’t regret it, I don’t wish that I did, but I just don’t know what made me go to atheism while others embraced religion. I don’t know why. And I’d like to start hunting for some answers.

Catholic Dogma: Flexible When Exploiting Schisms!

So, the Catholic Church has been in the news a bit lately; or at least, the news I tend to read (which is, I admit, a wee bit biased to the atheist side of things). The first has been Bill Donohue’s latest screed in the WaPo, which basically is another reason I’m glad I stopped reading that paper. The second has been the fact that the Church has decided to make it easier for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church, by basically allowing them to have a weird sort of mini-church within Catholicism. As best I understand it, they’ll be Catholics in name and they’ll answer to the pope, but in practice (church services, hymns, rules for priests, etc), they’ll be Anglican.

The reason? Well, there’s a split amongst Anglicans right now over the roles of women and gays, and the Catholic Church sees an opportunity to up their numbers by soaking in those conservatives who can’t stand the thought of equal treatment for all. (Okay, that’s mildly polemic, but I was just reading Donohue accuse me of being too busy aborting fetuses to maintain proper American culture, I’m a bit tetchy.) Apparently Pope Benny has been eyeing the rift in the Anglican Church for a while, and made the decision seemingly unilaterally. The Anglicans are kind of flailing to put on a pleasant face and act like this is best for everyone involved. And hey, maybe it is– the Catholic Church will become more conservative and dogmatic and disconnected from the mainstream, and the Anglicans will slowly drift into Unitarian territory. The latter part of that is probably wishful thinking, I’m sure.

An interesting side affect of this is the fact that it once again publicizes the fact that the Catholic Church allows converted, married Anglican priests to stay married and priests when they switch. So you end up with this very bizarre situation in which it’s okay for convert priests to be married, but born-and-raised-Catholic priests can’t. And if a lot of Anglicans make the switch, well, you’re going to end up with a fair amount of married “Catholic” priests. The world will probably not end as a result of this. There was an op-ed somewhere,  I believe in the NYT, that theorized this might be the start of liberalizing the Catholic Church towards allowing married priests. I laughed– not under this pope.

Huh. I was going to quote a priest from that article, but it appears the article has been shortened since I first bookmarked it. That’s a shame. In any case, towards the end of the original two-page article, someone asked a bishop what they would do if a congregation led by a female Anglican priest wanted to conver to Catholicism. The bishop just smiled and said “I don’t think that’s likely to happen.”

No shit.

On Education

This is just… incredibly inspiring. A sixteen-year-old kid in India is running a free school out of his family’s backyard, teaching impoverished children how to read and write and maybe give them a chance to get out of poverty. I wonder if Kiva or anyone could organize donations for his school… it’d be really nice to get them into a building of some kind, get them more supplies, things like that.

Speaking of education, Tomato Nation is once again running their Donor’s Choose contest. Kick in some money and help out some kids across America. It’s really heartbreaking that teachers, public school teachers, have to more or less beg for the supplies they need… but they do, so we should try to help them out. Give some kids a chance to learn about biology or astronomy or poetry or art or whatever. The thank-you letters you get back are great. I still have mine from past years.

Arrogance and Atheism (Again)

There’s really no excuse for my letting this sit for so long. I’m going to try to get back in the habit of posting here. Perhaps once I’m taking classes again, I’ll have more material to talk about.

Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog is one of my favorites. He pulls in stories from damn near everywhere, and even if I don’t always agree with him, I can usually at least respect his position. At least until atheism comes up, at which point he falls neatly into the apologist crowd. And it is quite infuriating.

Today, he has a post about an atheist meeting that took place this past weekend. Most of what I’ve read on it has been via PZ Meyers, and it seems like it was a lot of fun (Bill Maher’s presence nonwithstanding). He quotes Jerry Conye’s description of a particular talk, which to me, seems like a fairly standard academic look at theology. Coyne says that sarcasm is the best weapon against this sort of thing, and while I don’t agree 100%, it’s true that sometimes humor can help people have a change in perspective. Not so much for Sully:

They’re really charming, aren’t they? It is as if everything arrogant about the academy and everything sneering about cable news culture is combined into one big snarky smugfest. Maybe these atheists will indeed help push back the fundamentalist right. Maybe they will remind people that between these atheist bigots and these fundamentalist bigots, the appeal of the Christianity of the Gospels shines like the sun.

So… we’re arrogant and bigoted and smug and snarky. I know some would gladly embrace 3 of those terms, I’m just not quite sure exactly how he gets “bigoted” out of the fact that we don’t like religion. Sullivan, it seems, is one of those who is fine with atheists not believing in god, but do we have to, you know, talk about it? And make our arguments about why religion is wrong? Can’t we just shut up and sit down and let the believers run things in peace?

Plus, I’m sorry, but it seems rather arrogant and hypocritical to assert that atheists are arrogant in their beliefs, then spin around and proclaim that “the Christianity of the Gospels”–whatever the hell that means, because no one can seem to agree on it– is so appealing in comparison. He’s making his argument for belief in the marketplace of ideas, same as atheists are making theirs for non-belief, but he doesn’t see it that way. Religion & faith aren’t supposed to be in the same category as anything else. They’re special and fuzzy and should be kept away from outside challenge. Believers can squabble amongst themselves about who’s right, but as soon as an atheists goes “uh, you’re all wrong”, well, that sort of thing just can’t stand.

Hopefully coming soon: a discussion/review of The Canon! Yay science!

Talking About Sex at the Office

Well, I’m back, after quite a break. Moving and a new job took up a lot of my time. I still don’t have all my books unpacked, sadly.

I’m at the office currently, listening to a few of my co-workers discuss the merits of waiting for marriage to have sex and not masturbating… two things that I think are rather ridiculous concepts. Not masturbating is just silly, and hardly any kind of virtue. There’s not spiritual repercussions from it. Nothing bad will happen if you touch yourself at night. (Or during the day.) And as for sex before marriage… if you’re safe and consenting, who the fuck cares. There’s also the very wise argument about waiting for marriage: “Hey, you wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first, right?” What if you get to your wedding night and find out either a) you have no idea what you actually enjoy and/or b) you and your new spouse have completely different sexual tastes? Sex is not an insignificant part of a romantic relationship, you can’t just go “eh, we don’t quite match up, whatever”. That attitude is going to leave people unhappy and unfullfilled.

I’m not really involved in the conversation, and I haven’t really gotten myself into it. I have to work with these people five days a week, and I’d like to maintain a pleasant working environment. Asking “what exactly are the negative effects of masturbation, other than your imaginary spiritual penalities?” doesn’t really contribute to that sort of thing. Conversations like this come up relatively often, actually, things about sex and gender and religion. Sometimes I jump in and offer my opinion, like when one of my co-workers is making generalist, essentialist statements about men and women. But other times, like now, I stay out of it. I kind of want to speak up, but I’m not sure if I should. I’m probably not going to change anyone’s mind about it, and I would more than likely just start an unpleasant and unnecessary argument. And like I said, I have to work here.

This kind of gets back to one of my oldest (and most frequently commented on) posts, about dealing with moderate theists, especially when I have relationships with those theists. Do I voice my opinions and potentially hurt them and start a fight? Or do I keep my mouth shut and find it difficult to respect a lot of these people’s beliefs and ideas (and, by extension, the people themselves for believing it)?

I still don’t have an answer.

Please Stand By

Life has been beating me up lately. I have plans for a Betrand Russell lit review and links to entertaining videos, but at the moment I’m working on transitioning to a new job and a new apartment. Hopefully I’ll be back at this soon.

Iran Burning

I’ve been following the news out of Iran for the past few days. I don’t really have a lot to say at this point… it’s rioting, not a revolution yet, but it could be. I’m waiting to see when the military gets rolled out, what happens then.

Here are some good links:

Andrew Sullivan has been covering the riots pretty much exclusively since they started.

Iran News has photos and videos… this one in particular really stood out to me:

And Tehran Live is trying to get out information from Iran, although considering the fact that most communications are down it’s slow going.

UPDATE: Excellent collection of images from Iran here.

Obama’s Cairo Speech

Here’s the full text, thanks to Mr. Sullivan. I’ve read over it, and… well, I’m trying to sort through my reactions. On the one hand, I’m impressed. Amazed. It’s a phenomenal speech, honest and open and geared perfectly to his audience. It’s a good start to what will be a long, slow, frustrating process towards resolving the myriad conflicts between the West and the Middle East. I’d be more hopeful if Netanyahu wasn’t Prime Minister of Israel, but it does appear that Obama is actually standing strong on the settlements, and he deserves praise for that. His seven points (Afghanistan/Iraq, Israel/Palestine, nuclear weapons, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, and economic/technological development) speak to a much deeper understanding of the challenges facing the Middle East. It’s not just ideology or religion, it’s material problems on the ground that fuel turmoil and conflict. After eight years of ideologues and religious fanatics running the country, it’s refreshing to have someone with a materialist bent looking at the situation.

On the other hand, this was a profoundly religious speech. Probably just as religious as Bush’s infamous National Cathedral speech after 9/11, though certainly it is a different type of religion. Bush was rallying the troops for a religious crusade; Obama was appealing to the common good in men’s souls. Very different types of religion, but religion just the same. And I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I understand that he’s speaking to a highly religious community: I mean, this has been touted as his Speech to the Muslim World. So references to the big 3 faiths are probably necessary. But it was still somewhat overwhelming to read.

I did notice a few more humanist phrases in his address, though. I think this was my favorite line in the speech:

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

No talk of an afterlife; rather, accepting that we are only on Earth for a short time, and our goal, our uniting human drive, should be to make it a better place than we found it. I think that majority of people, religious or not, can agree with that.

So I guess overall I’m pleased with this speech. It gives me hope. Tentative hope that maybe, if we don’t bow to the rabid fanatics on either side, we can make things better.

EDIT: Here’s a collection of reactions across the Arab world to the speech. It’s interesting. There’s a lot of cynicism and a lot of those rabid fanatics. Obama’s got his work cut out for him.

Justice & Gitmo

There’s an article in today’s WaPo about former detainee Boumediene, who has recently arrived in France after seven years of imprisonment. He argues that he was held unjustly. The article only presents his side of the story, but it seems pretty believable to me… along with U.S. courts, who have ordered him and 60 other detainees to be released, on the grounds that there is not enough evidence to continue holding them.

Two things stood out to me about this article. One, it flies in the face of the argument that even if we’re holding people unjustly, we can’t let them out now, because they’ll become terrorists. But Boumediene clearly has no intention of becoming a terrorist. He had a pizza lunch with his family and talked about trying to sue government officials in the United States for damages. All of which sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If I’d been wrongly held in prison and interrogated for seven years I’d want to sue too.

And two, the fact that we’ve got 60 people who need to go somewhere but no one will take them. We don’t want them. Britain has oh-so-graciously offered to take in two. France took in Boumediene, but doesn’t want any more. Most of the countries of origin don’t want them either. All because of the first fear, that they’ll be terrorists now.

This is a slightly different problem than the “we’re putting terrorists in maximum security prisons sit down and shut up already” thing. This is “letting people who might be sympathetic to terrorism/related ideologies after being unjustly locked up by the U.S. for years wander around.” Which, okay, is something of a concern. And I don’t have a solution for it, sadly enough. But it doesn’t justify continuing to hold people who haven’t done anything wrong. We don’t imprison people based on what they might do at some point in the future. I’d like to think that we’re better than that.

Gitmo Detainees and U.S. Prisons

Okay, what is wrong with people? Seriously?

The Senate rejected Obama’s plan for closing Gitmo due to utterly unfounded hysteria (probably their own and from their consitutents) that if we close Gitmo, Osama bin Laden himself is going to be allowed to walk around New York City with a suitcase bomb and keys to a 747.

All right, I’ll admit, that’s hyperbolic. They think that if we put these guys in maximum security prisons bad things will happen. I’m not quite sure what bad things, as, you know, they’re in maximum security prisons where generally speaking people don’t have a lot of influence on society.  It’s just… it’s insanity. We have terrorists in American prisons already. We’ve held them there successfully for years. Domestic terrorists, foriegn terrorists… somehow we have managed to keep them locked up and not harming Americans. Shocking.

It’s like we think these guys have some kind of superpowers, invisibility or laser eyes or mind-control powers or something, that I guess can only be activated when they hit American soil. We’re giving them power and credibility far, far beyond what they’re capable of. We have a nice legal system and prison system that generally don’t denigrate us in the eyes of the world. They work. They are legal. We should use them, for the love of little green apples.

I just don’t understand how people can be so bloody irrational.

And say what you want about Illinois politicians, it’s almost certainly true, but at least we’ve got Dick Durbin to help make up for most of it: