The Conversation / Can you hear me now? 10
If you’re a nonreligious parent getting serious pressure or interference from a religious family member about your parenting choices, you’ve got to sit down and have a talk.
Last time I suggested a way of rethinking both the problem and the solution. It isn’t about changing the other person’s mind—it’s about reducing the dissonance that results from your differences. It’s not victory you’re after, but a relaxation of tension and building of mutual confidence. It’s détente.
Note 1: This conversation isn’t always necessary just because your religious perspective differs from your parents, in-laws, etc. Some religious grandparents are entirely respectful of their children’s rights to approach religion any way they wish with their own kids. Others offer nothing more challenging than the occasional grumble, whine, or plea. If you have one of these, be grateful. This post is about a stickier wicket—the grandparent or other relative who threatens, harasses, argues, pressures, and/or actively interferes with your right to raise your kids as you think best when it comes to religion.
Note 2: This is also not about your right to confront an antagonistic relative. For all I know, said relative has earned a merit badge in Self-Righteous Scumbaggery with you as the final project, and your right to retribution is enshrined in six different UN charters. But this post isn’t about us and our personal rights. It’s about creating the best possible family situation for our kids.
Note 3: There are countless variations on the nonreligious parent/religious grandparent dyad, but certain basic principles apply across the board. Be flexible and adapt as needed.
And off we go…
This approach is related to Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a powerful and effective concept developed by Marshall Rosenberg and others. It starts with empathy—making an effort to grasp and feel what the other person feels, to hear things as s/he hears them, and to frame what you have to say accordingly. It can leave people feeling heard, understood, and honored – even if they continue to disagree. It can lead to amazing breakthroughs by recognizing that win and lose are not the only meaningful terms in dialogue.
When a secular parent tells me about locking horns with Grandma, I ask what Grandma is concerned about. The answer is almost always the same—the familiar goulash of hell, morality and discipline.
These concerns may be part of the mix, but I don’t think they are usually at the heart of things. The relative may even be convinced that hell-avoidance really is their main concern and may say exactly that, but I have reason to believe otherwise. (I’ll get to the reason by the end.)
Consider this: Most deeply religious people have their religion woven into their personal identity. It’s not just Grandma’s explanatory system or a moral code—it’s often who she is. She’s likely even to see it as the best of who she is. When her first grandchild was born, her visions of herself as a grandmother centered on sharing the best of herself, the deepest and most meaningful part of her life, with her grandchildren, and of proudly sharing her God-fearing descendants with her admiring friends.
The news that said descendants would be raised without religion would have hit her first and foremost as the end of that vision. Worse still, she would often feel personally dishonored and shut out. Finally, she would feel embarrassed by the judgments of her churchgoing friends.
So then: Hell, morality, discipline, identity, self-image, honor/dishonor, exclusion, family pride, and the judgment of others. A pretty potent mix. We can’t solve them all. But we can do some pretty impressive healing with just a few words. And in the process, we will give nothing away and tell nothing but the truth sur cette page.
There are four important elements:
HONOR the person. You can continue to think whatever you wish about the person’s beliefs. But people deserve respect as people. Refuse to grant that and you have no basis for discourse. If nothing else, honor their intentions, which (however misguided you think they are) are usually good.
EMPATHIZE. Make a real effort to see things as s/he sees them.
REASSURE. Some of his or her concerns can’t be helped. Some can. Reduce the concerns by addressing those you can.
INCLUDE. This is huge. A clear gesture of inclusion can repair an immense amount of damage and bring down walls. Most people will respond to that generous gesture with a desire to not abuse it. For the rest, some reasonable limits can be placed.
Here’s the idea:
(Honor)
I wanted to sit down and talk this over with you because you are important to us. I know you want what’s best for the kids, and I appreciate that.(Empathize)
I know your religious faith is a big part of your life. If I were in your position, I’d feel just the way you do—worried that this big part of who I am wouldn’t be shared with my grandchildren.(Reassure)
I want you to know that it will be shared. Even though we’re not going to church, it’s important to us that the kids learn about religion so they can make a choice for themselves.(Include)
We want you to help us teach the kids by telling them what you believe. Let’s set up a time for you and me and Amanda to have a cup of hot chocolate so you can talk to her about your faith. How does that sound?
Details are hammered out next, so you should be prepared with a sense of what is OK and what is not. But ONCE THE CONVERSATION HAS HAPPENED, s/he will be infinitely more receptive to a few simple ground rules. For me there were two: no thoughtstoppers (no reference to hell or the idea that doubt is bad), and present all beliefs as your own (“I believe that…”), not as givens.
Sometimes it won’t work. But I’ve heard from so many people that this was the breakthrough, the approach that finally achieved something positive — including many who had sworn in advance that “It’ll never work with my dad” — that I have to think there’s something there. Several people have described step four as the turning point, the moment s/he is invited to share his or her belief with the kids. The road is not paved with daisies from that point forward, but at least it isn’t paved with IEDs anymore.
And this is why I believe it isn’t really all about hell — because without addressing hell one bit, enormous progress is made.
The bottom line in this is that there is an alternative to (1) saying nothing, or (2) spitting nails, or (3) giving away the farm. We can be the generous ones, the ones who understand where the other person is coming from, the ones who find a way forward, without giving up one bit of parental autonomy.
Reword it for your own situation, but have this conversation sooner rather than later — then come back here to tell us how it went.
The Joy of Giving Up / cyhmn? 8
I started this series-about-Facebook-within-a-series-about-communication by describing an exchange with two normal, non-crazy, hearable and listenable religious friends. I wanted to show (1) that most religious people are, in fact, normal, non-crazy, hearable and listenable, (2) that it’s best to assume someone is all those things until proven otherwise, and (3) that time spent communicating thoughtfully with such friends is time well spent.
On the other hand, I do know many people of religious and nonreligious persuasions for whom no amount of care or thoughtful message crafting justifies the time spent at the potter’s wheel. This post is about giving one’s self permission to recognize pointlessness and walk away, with a smile, before throwing good time and effort after bad.
A recent exchange on Facebook with an old friend — I’ll call him Aaron — illustrates the point.
Though I came to discover a huge gulf between our worldviews since last we met (during the Carter Administration), I doubt very much that Aaron is crazy. I might very well enjoy time in his company as I once did. He has a perfect right to his opinions and to the expression of same. It’s true that I wish fewer people believed as Aaron apparently does. But I think engaging Aaron on religious and related questions offers only an amazing facsimile of actual accomplishment, and that the invested time and energy would be better spent on other things. Like cleaning my gutters.
My exchange with Aaron began when I posted this in my Facebook status:
Congratulations Greg Epstein on the release of “Good Without God: What A Billion Nonreligious People DO Believe.” Sure to be a fine contribution.
Aaron replied
Mr. Epstein is a “Humanist Rabbi”. Isn’t that a little like being an Amish auto-mechanic, lol?
I remember having exactly the same blinkered reaction the first time I heard about Humanistic Judaism ten years ago. Why fault Aaron for being where I once was? So I started with a little empathy, then gave a context for reconsidering:
Hi Aaron! Takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it? But 40,000 Secular Humanistic Jews (among others) have understood and embraced it for two generations. Anyone interested in these questions beyond the LOL should read Greg’s book to see how people without theistic beliefs satisfy the same human needs that have traditionally been addressed by religion.
Aaron saw an opening:
Very respectfully Dale, a casual look at the mess-of-a-world around us, in the news, and on talk shows is ample indication of how people have sought satisfaction and fulfillment apart from accountability to the Bible. I think it was Napolean who said, “People will believe anything as long as it isn’t in the Bible”.
At this point I have some choices. Do I challenge his assertion that the world is a mess? Do I challenge the idea that a drift from Biblical accountability is responsible for what mess there is? Do I point out that the Bible has inspired its fair share of the mess? Correct his spelling of Napoleon? Tell him the quote is actually, “People will believe anything as long as you whisper it to them” and was only changed later, and that it was more likely said by trial lawyer Louis Nizer before being reverse-engineered to Napoleon and readapted to the Bible? Do I point out that the whole tired “mess-of-a-world” trope is refuted by the fact that crime across the board is at the lowest level in modern history?
To answer these, answer this: What result am I after?
Ten years ago I would have started with, “Oh Aaron, Aaron. Where do I even begin?”—then gone after every single one of those points in as superior a voice as possible. In the end, I’d imagine him lying in a pool of cyber-blood.
But most of us eventually notice that winning an argument requires that the vanquished recognize his defeat. Sure enough, time after time, I would be amazed and incensed when the other person — apparently unaware of his demise — came back with more nonsense.
I came to realize that these exchanges accomplish precisely nothing but lost time and gained blood pressure. He comes back, I reply, again and again. We consult our mutually-exclusive rulebooks to see who’s winning. And oh how the pretty painted ponies go round and round.
I want those hours back.
Worse yet, if there’s an audience, such as Facebook friends, a poorly-toned or twelve-point reply can look to the non-choir like so much intellectual bullying. It’s just too much to process as anything else.
One option, rarely taken, is to not reply at all. But but but I have the perfect argument, we say. It’s ever so compelling and irrefutable. Go shout your brilliance into a bucket. Better yet, go find Bob and Andrea. If you proceed thoughtfully, it’s possible to bring a conversation with those two (and most of their fellow reasonables) to an actual conclusion. I may be wrong, but I suspect there is neither end nor purpose to continuing with Aaron. That’s no cause for rudeness or personal disrespect — just an invitation to be done.
So what did I do? I continued anyway. As it happened, I had a minute. My gutters were already clean, and I like to test my own hypotheses about these exchanges. But I continued without illusions. I didn’t unleash a deafening point-by-point but chose a third option: the (potentially) hearable reply.
The hearable reply includes two elements: at least one point of agreement, and ONLY ONE solid, well-supported point of difference:
I share your concern about the mess-of-a-world, Aaron, in a big way. So does Greg. But I think the “casual glance” at causation is precisely what leads us off the mark. Some of the mess is certainly fueled by non-Biblical causes; another large percentage specifically stems from biblical or other religious inspiration. (I’ll assume you don’t need a list.) The best things we can do is get all of us who are concerned with making the world a better place working together instead of drawing lines that divide us.
Another friend forced my hand on a second point, noting that the world in many ways is not more of a mess than before. I agreed with her and offered a link from the US Dept of Justice showing that violent crime is actually at the lowest rate ever.
Aaron was in for a pound:
Terrorism was not in our thoughts a generation ago. Concern for our security and identity, and the measures we need to take to safeguard them, has increased. Carjacking. Pornography. Sex trade. Human and child trafficking. Slave trade. School dropouts. Teen pregnancy. Single-parent households….Increase of welfare as a lifestyle. As the Bible predicted, men will call what is bad as good, and call what is good as bad… I’m reading a terrif book called “The Truth War” by John MacArthur. In his first chapter on Post-Modernism…
At this point I have plenty of evidence that there’s not much to be gained by continuing. He is so deeply siloed that he is unlikely to be able to hear it. More importantly, there’s something to be lost if I look like a bully. I reposted the link he had ignored, mostly so others could see it, and let those who wished to do so fence on.
I used to walk away from these threads only after countless hours of escalating aggravation. Then I began to experience the joy of giving up — the liberating feeling of walking out of pointless exchanges early, with a friendly tip of my hat, my pockets brimming with unexpended arguments and witty retorts, to spend my time and energy hearing others and being heard by them. I don’t always manage it, but when I do, I’m damn proud of my great big grownup self.
Interesting coda: One of those who continued in discourse with Aaron, gently challenging him for another few rounds, was a friend of mine who I know to be actively religious. If I had bullied Aaron, or appeared to do so, it’s likely that Joseph never would have joined in. By taking a bit of care, I had made it possible for a religious moderate to find more common cause with me than with Aaron. I’ll call that a positive result.
(Comic by the matchless xkcd, through which all life stands explained. Hat tip to blotzphoto!)
[The complete Can You Hear Me Now? series]
Anatomy of a reply / Can you hear me now? 6
Last time I described an exchange I had on Facebook. A friend asked what I considered to be the negatives of church community. I answered, and the friend who had asked the question expressed real appreciation for the reply — despite the fact that it includes actual direct critique.
A fellow secular humanist asked how I’d brought an exchange like that to such a satisfying conclusion. Here’s an anatomy of my reply, with key “defusers” in bold to keep the ears open.
Notice that the question asked what I see as the negatives. So I start by acknowledging that
For some people there are no negatives. For others, there are no positives. I can only speak for myself.
Religious folks often think I just haven’t experienced as much as they have, when in fact I’ve usually experienced a helluva lot more. So I need to establish my bona fides and my evenhandedness:
I went to church for 25 years in nine denominations and studied religions in tremendous depth. I have talked at length with ministers, theologians, and believers across the spectrum. I have cared profoundly about the answers. I am now a secular humanist, but I find some religious expressions very appealing: liberal Quakerism and Jainism, to name two.
Then I start with basics, always from my own perspective:
The negatives of theistic churches for me start quite simply with the idea of a god. If I don’t believe such a thing is real, it’s beneath my humanity to pretend otherwise.
I explain why that’s a problem and encourage them to feel empathy for my situation, even if they don’t share my opinion:
To then watch what I believe is a false idea lend unchallengeable authority to bad ideas along with the good is very, very painful.
“Painful” encourages empathy, whereas something like “Pisses me off” would bring up defenses. And I always circle back to include the presence of “good ideas” — there are some, you know, and that’s often all they see, so you’d better mention it. If I only harp on the bad, they’ll think me mad and tune out. I elaborate on what I think is bad, always including qualifiers like “often” and “sometimes” and “much of the time” to avoid doing a leg-sweep (and because it’s true):
Honest questioning is too often disallowed, the word “values” often turned on its head.
I could have said this:
God isn’t real, and it’s beneath my humanity to pretend otherwise. To watch something false lend unchallengeable authority to bad ideas just pisses me off. Honest questioning is not allowed, and the word “values” is turned on its head.
About a ten-word difference, but the other person can’t hear this one. Too busy planning a reply like, “You can ask honest questions in my church!” (as Andrea essentially said to Wendy). Their church is allllllways the exception. And we’d still be going back and forth in escalating, pointless spirals. They cannot as easily deny that it is too often disallowed. I get to make my point AND have my lunch.
Finally the common ground, and a reminder that I’m not trying to take away what they have. I couldn’t even if I wanted to — they can only do that themselves. But this way, they know it isn’t even my goal:
Ethical Societies provide community, mutual care, meaning, inspiration, life landmarks, and other positives of religious experience without the negatives that come reliably — though in different degrees — with supernaturalism. Those who find theistic churches attractive can and should find community there. The rest of us are looking for alternatives.
So what was accomplished here? Is this really nothing more than “making nice,” a case of accommodating any and every religious belief and action?
Hell no. “Making nice” is ever so much easier. I could handle that in a single 50-word post. You just switch off your cortex and say, “Hey, to each his own. Whatever floats your boat. Live and let live. We’re all pursuing our own truths.” That’s vacuous bullshit. I’m not just looking for “co-existence.” I want engaged co-existence.
My reply offered an actual critique. It went to the very heart of what made me finally give up on churchgoing: An idea I see as false lends unchallengeable authority to bad ideas. Honest questioning is often disallowed. Values are too often turned on their heads. But by acknowledging something that’s true — that there are exceptions — I gave the listener a little breathing room, which lets them hear rather than merely ducking.
By the end, I’ve made it possible at every step for the other person to agree with me. It’s a Socratic thing, and it’s really effective. All that remains is to get them off their butts to help me do something about the negative uses of religion. As a bonus, Andrea and Bob might just be hyper-aware the next time they are in church. Not to mention more than a hundred other churchgoers among my Facebook friends who might be listening in the wings.
Was that worth ten minutes of my time? You decide. As for me, ten years of watching (and participating in) shouted exchanges that achieve nothing, or emptyheaded refusals to engage at all, was enough for me. I’m still saying what I want to say, but now, at last, someone’s actually listening.
So what do you think? Is this productive, or just a game of manners? Are we fiddling with qualifiers while Rome burns? Or have you felt the same difference in your own ability to listen depending on how someone says what they have to say?
Next time: The Joy of Giving Up
Unsiloed / Can you hear me now? 4
Two of the corners of my life in which I am the least siloed — in which perspectives and opinions bump against each other more than anywhere else — are family and Facebook.
In most other ways, my family and Facebook are different, even antithetical. My extended family’s mix of perspectives is a received fact, and one for which I’m grateful, especially as a parent. (More on that eventually.) By contrast, the diversity of my Facebook friends results from my own choices.
Another difference: Families don’t often talk openly about beliefs and opinions. As Stephen Prothero put it, they do religion like mad but rarely talk about religion. Facebook, on the other hand, is all about sharing opinions (and every other thing that crosses the cortex. Seriously, pass me one more goddam virtual mojito and I’ll pour it on your motherboard).
I’ll get to family later in the series. First Facebook, in two parts.
I’m a Facebook Slut. I climb into friendhood with anyone who asks. My 600+ Friends fall mostly into five groups: Family, K-12 friends, College friends, Post-college friends, and Readers of my books.
It’s interesting that those five groups are roughly arranged in both the order I entered them in life AND in increasing order of siloing. The older I get, the more they’ve reflected my own choices. My extended family is mostly religious, though they vary in intensity. My K-12 friends mostly differ from me in religious and political views, but not as much as family. Friends met at Berkeley are about half secular and half religious, though almost all politically progressive, as are post-college friends. And readers of my books are naturally pretty secular and (as far as I can tell) mostly progressive politically. See how the silo narrows from left to right?
It’d be easy to cull this list down to a comfortable silo of 400 who would tend to nod at my every Facebook status and post and link. But I’ve been in enough of those situations to know it’s not good for me. Makes me lazy. Gives me the queasy feeling I used to get as I stood in chuckling clutches at this or that atheist meeting, basking in the glow (at last, at last!) of people who saw the world as I did.
It’s helpful at first. Then it gets really old.
About two years ago, my writing and my speeches to like-minded groups began centering on the need to spend a bit of our seemingly boundless other-critical energy on a peek in the mirror. An example was a post titled “Six things Christians do (much) better than secularists.” Some loved it — others were pissed. I considered that a good sign.
I continued in my talks to humanist groups around the US, noting that churches ironically do humanistic community better than we do, and that we can and should fix that. Then in my first announcement about Foundation Beyond Belief, I pointed to the statistical fact that the average individual religious believer gives more to charitable causes than the average nonreligious individual — and was met again with both support and outrage. Never mind that I was making the larger point that it’s pretty clearly a structural problem, not a moral one — that churches have created a “culture of giving” by providing regular and easy opportunities to give. Still a bitter pill for some. And again, I thought that a fine thing.
So I guess I’m involved in a two-part communications project here. I want to hear and be heard more effectively outside of my silos, but I also want to stir up the complacency within my silos. I’ve been doing the latter out loud for a couple of years now. As for the former, I’ve been doing it but not sharing the experiment, until now.
So again — Because of my slutty tendencies, Facebook is one of my main opportunities for adventures in unsiloed communication.
No, I’m NOT talking about deconverting anyone. Haven’t spent a lick of energy on that in years. I realized that people will think about worldview questions on their own schedule and under their own control or not at all, and that active attempts to force the issue usually drive them the other way. No need to “give” anyone reasons to believe or not believe. The reasons are scattered all around our feet, just a click or a thought away. At best, we can spur each other’s curiosity —How interesting, an ethical atheist. How fascinating, an intellectual evangelical– by dismantling preconceptions. And the best way to do that is by being out and normal.
(Funny thing — since I stopped trying to change people’s minds, I’ve started receiving emails from people whose minds I’ve changed. Lots and lots.)
Facebook is one of the places I can be out and normal. It’s also possible to use Facebook to create a silo, of course, and I know many people do just that, consciously or not. Befriend a like mind here, defriend an unlike one there, and pretty soon we’ve built ourselves another echo chamber.
As a result, unlike my more siloed corners, I know when I post something on Facebook that it will be seen by several of the most prominent atheists and humanists in the world AND my wife’s extended Baptist family, by Republican neighbors AND Democratic friends — by hundreds of people I love and respect, including many who see the world in a profoundly different way from me. It causes me to take just that little extra bit of care to be accurate, to be fair, but also honest — to be myself, but also to improve myself. I’m not interested in pandering — instead, I try to say things of substance in such a way that I can be heard by multiple human audiences at once.
Next week I’ll give a recent example — a Facebook exchange that illustrates what I think I’ve learned about hearing and being heard.
Can you hear me now? (Intro)
A Charlotte Allen published an op-ed in the LA Times about just how dreadfully sick she is of atheists.
A Facebook friend asked me what I consider to be the “negatives of church.” A good question that I answered.
Another Facebooker asked why I am “so against God.” An unanswerably silly question. He rephrased, I answered.
Yet another FB friend went positively ballistic when I strayed from the apparent party line in response to the President’s Nobel Prize.
After seven years, my youngest daughter stopped sucking her fingers. Just boom, stopped cold.
A participant in one of my recent seminars wrote to thank me. She had followed my advice for talking to her religious father. A four-year rift was healed, she said, in about five minutes.
I received my 27th email from a Christian gentleman in Missouri letting me know he’s praying for me.
I de-friended an old HS friend on Facebook whose page was filled with Bible verses (perfectly fine) and unfiltered hatred of those unlike him (not fine). Then I wished like hell I hadn’t.
I saw that seven new reasons for not believing in God have been added to a website that for some reason lists such things.
Robert Krulwich of my beloved Radiolab interviewed Richard Dawkins and made me nearly drive into the Hudson River. And I live in Georgia.
I came across a fascinating quote from Charles Darwin with great whacks of modern relevance.
I read the now infamous article in Newsweek in which (atheist journalist Chris) Mooney and (agnostic biologist Sheril) Kirshenbaum suggested that science is done no favors by insisting that it is necessarily incompatible with religion — followed by an epic blog-tizzy of sarcastic proportions.
I read the Richard Dawkins interview in Newsweek, and the blog-tizzy that followed, including many atheists who wondered if Dawkins had become an “accommodationist.”
They probably seem disconnected, this baker’s dozen. But as each happened, the same string was plucked in my head. I decided to blog. The topic strikes me as pretty much all we should be talking about, and I’ve thought about it so intensely for the past ten years or more that I think I might have something useful to say. Who knows. It’s too big for one post, so it’ll be an occasional series for the remainder of 2009.
I’m motivated half by anger, half by frustration, and half by hope. The first two make me want to chuck the whole topic. It’s the third half that makes me care enough to blog — the hope that some of us are finally on the verge of learning how to communicate effectively, both within and between our “camps,” and that naming the problem and suggesting ways around it might do some good.
That’s the topic, by the way — communication. How to stop talking past and through and around each other. Hearing and being heard.
In order to practice what I recommend, I’m going to try very hard to frame this thing in terms of what I have learned, what I have found effective, and how I have changed in my approach in recent years. I don’t plan to scold anyone for how they approach these things, since that puts an end to listening, and hearing and being heard are my primary goals here. But I might ask that others consider how lovely and useful those two goals are, and whether it isn’t a shame that we all give them so damn little attention.
(I tried four more ambitious expletives before settling on ‘damn.’ Like I said, I’m half motivated by anger here. But then I remembered my objectives.)
My intended audience for this series is my fellow atheists etc. Any religious believers who drift in are more than welcome to read along and even comment, but know that even as I talk about how to talk across lines of difference, I’m not doing that now. This is an in-house meeting.
I’ll start next time with Delaney’s fingers.
Foundation Beyond Belief website goes LIVE!
Y’all have been SO patient. At last it’s October 1, and thanks to your generous support in the recent Fund Drive, the pre-launch website for Foundation Beyond Belief has gone LIVE!
This site will carry us through to the full launch on January 1. During this period, you can sign up for membership, watch a video about the Foundation, learn about our first featured causes as they are announced, nominate charities for future consideration, donate to the Foundation itself, apply for volunteer positions, and follow the development of our multi-author blog.
In January we get the whole magillah: a vibrant social network, a discussion forum on these great issues, a full slate of beneficiaries to support, and a member profile panel so you can distribute your monthly donation as you wish.
But for now, let’s get our oars in the water. See you there!
International Day of Peace 2009
(A revised and updated post from September 2007.)
War is most often unnecessary, ineffective, immoral, or all three.
Discuss.
Let’s define necessary as “something essential; something that cannot be done without,” and effective as “something that accomplishes its stated objectives.” I believe war most often fails to meet both of these criteria. It’s usually unnecessary, because there are almost always alternatives that have been proven to work brilliantly if the intervention happens early enough. It’s usually ineffective because it most often exacerbates the very problems it seeks to solve. And it’s usually immoral because (among other things) it brings with it massive unintended consequences for the innocent — my main objection to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some stats to consider:
One in seven countries are currently at war.
More than half of war deaths are civilians.
There are now over 250,000 child soldiers worldwide.
Children account for two-thirds of those killed in violent conflict since 1990.
An increasing percentage of world conflicts involve poor nations (formerly one third, now one half).
The average civil war drains $54 billion from a nation’s economy.
25 million people are currently displaced by war.
Mortality among displaced persons is over 80 times that of the non-displaced.
Half of all countries emerging from violent conflict relapse into violence within five years.
[SOURCE: UN Development Programme Human Development Report, 2005]
Yes, stopping Hitler was a terrific idea. Unfortunately, our public discourse now evokes WWII as the justification for all wars instead of recognizing it as one of the very few necessary wars in our history. (See Ken Burns’ documentary THE WAR for a powerful condemnation of the ongoing misuse of WWII to justify discretionary wars.)
Here’s a nice nutshell: Except in the rare cases when war is necessary AND effective AND morally defensible, peace is preferable.
Seems reasonable — which may be why so many atheists and humanists have added their voices to (among others) the Catholic, Quaker, and Unitarian Universalist peace traditions in opposing war.
This position isn’t universal among the religious, of course. Nearly every day I wind up in traffic behind someone with a bumpersticker collage in praise of God, Guns, Country, and War.
Nor do all nontheists agree. Bob Price lays out an opposing POV in a piece that is surprisingly weak for him. Among my several objections to his essay: he doesn’t mention unintended consequences, my MAIN reason for opposing war; he seems to oppose atheist pacifism in part because it “seem(s) to embrace social ethics that mirror in startling ways the stance of Christianity,” as if any common ground is automatically “startling”; and he presents a straw man of moral equivalency that bears zero resemblance to my position — nor Bertrand Russell’s, for that matter. No surprise that WWII was the sole exception in Russell’s opposition to war. (Price’s depiction of anti-capital punishment positions is somehow even weaker. I oppose capital punishment not because I refuse to “cast the first stone” at a murderer, but mainly because of the high error rate in convictions.)
(Anyway.)
So why bring up war and peace today? No, it’s not Tolstoy’s birthday. Today is the International Day of Peace, an observance created by the UN in 1982 “to devote a specific time to concentrate the efforts of the United Nations and its Member States, as well as of the whole of mankind [sic], to promoting the ideals of peace and to giving positive evidence of their commitment to peace in all viable ways… (The International Day of Peace) should be devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.” (from General Assembly Resolution UN/A/RES/36/67)
News organizations have offered their annual yawn. A Google News search today brings up all of 399 references to the phrase “International Day of Peace” and 355 to “Peace Day” — mostly in non-U.S. media.
Not only do the stats and history seem to support the futility of war, but the foundation of secular ethics is this: in the absence divine safety net, we are all we’ve got, so we ought to try very hard to take care of each other. If war generally fails to accomplish its objectives while impoverishing and killing millions of innocent bystanders, secular ethics ought to oppose it — except in the rare cases when there really is no alternative.
When it comes to this standard, most of our national violence is far more analogous to the Mexican-American War than to the fight against Hitler.
Talk to your kids about your preference for peace, the futility of violence, the situation of child victims of war — and the fact that all of these opinions flow quite naturally from a secular worldview. Donate to Nonviolent Peaceforce, Doctors without Borders, UNICEF, or another organization that’s out there doing the heavy lifting for humanity.
New video from Nonviolent Peaceforce
That’s what I’M talkin’ about!
After watching the Founding Fund Drive for Foundation Beyond Belief slow nearly to a stop at 37 percent of the goal, we are now back on track with a bullet. In a single day, the generosity and commitment of our supporters sent us tearing through the halfway point. As of Wednesday morning, we’re 54 percent of the way home.
We’re not finished yet, but we’re now within striking distance of establishing the first-stage web presence for this pioneering effort in humanist philanthropy on October 1. At that point members will begin registering, setting up personal profiles, learning about our first slate of beneficiaries, and planning their monthly donation strategy.
Donations received between October 1 and December 31 go to the Foundation itself to help fund the first year of operations. When the full site launches on January 1, members will begin distributing their monthly donation among ten cause areas, forming groups, debating causes, following a brand new blog — and making a profound positive impact in the world.
The renewed vigor of the Fund Drive has energized everyone working for the Foundation and redoubled our determination to justify your trust and do this thing right.
Look for a normal, non-Foundational post tomorrow soon. In the meantime, many thanks to those who have donated! For those who were waiting for the drama of the final stretch: THE END TIMES ARE UPON US! Help us reach the goal that will put the Foundation on solid ground by donating through the ChipIn widget in the sidebar.
So…are you in?
Foundation Beyond Belief is halfway through its first fund drive—but only 37 percent of the way to the goal.
Over 1600 people expressed their support for this project by signing up for our mailing list and Facebook group—a fantastic show of enthusiasm. But just four percent of those have so far been moved to donate to this crucial fund drive. We are enormously grateful to those few—but we need the rest of you.
Here’s why.
By the end of next year, we hope to empower a new force in philanthropic giving, fuel the great work of over thirty charitable organizations around the world, and begin to transform the popular perception of secular humanism. On the educational side, we will create both a community and a resource center for nonreligious parents.
To accomplish all of this, we need a world-class web center—not just a “brochure” site with a donation button, but a touchpoint and resource center for a vibrant and engaged community of humanists.
The site will include detailed information about featured organizations, a forum and social network for members to debate, investigate, and help select future beneficiaries, an invitational blog on humanism and philanthropy, and profiles to allow members to distribute their monthly donations among the causes as they see fit.
So—IF you support this idea, and IF you can spare the shekels, please take a moment to help create this Foundation by making a donation of any size in the sidebar.
We’ll do our best to make you proud.
Dale McGowan
Executive Director
Foundation Beyond Belief
The FBB Founding Fund Drive
Two big news items for Foundation Beyond Belief, the new humanist charitable and educational foundation scheduled to launch on January 1:
Web designer selected
Our call for web designers brought applications from 19 high-quality professionals. After a process both excruciating and exciting, the Foundation Board has selected From Concept to Completion to create the initial “pre-launch” site by October 1 AND our fully functional online community for humanist philanthropy by January 1. Our sincere thanks to all those who applied.
Founding Fund Drive
The Foundation is ready at last to accept tax-deductible donations! Our Founding Fund Drive, which begins today and runs through Sept. 1, will help create a world-class web presence for the Foundation community and spread the word about the Foundation through a professional publicity campaign.
We’re working hard to make this initiative a powerful expression of humanism at its very best. Many thanks for your support and encouragement, as well as your patience as we find our way forward.
(To contribute, please click on the big blue ChipIn widget at the top of the sidebar.)
