thinking by druthers 2
[Second installment in a series on confirmation bias. Back to Part 1.]
An audience member at my Austin talk asked a good and common question. In The End of Faith, Sam Harris apparently made the case that those who do not hold religious beliefs must be willing to challenge the irrational beliefs of their friends and neighbors. (I say “apparently” because I started but didn’t finish EOF. I am the choir, he had me at hello, and I had other fish to fry.)
“So,” asked Audience Guy, “do you agree that we should more actively challenge the irrational beliefs of friends and neighbors?”
I said no.
I know this will strike a lot of y’all as heresy, and it depends on the relationship in question — but I don’t think we should make a general practice of confronting people we know and challenging their beliefs uninvited. I am opposed to aggressive evangelism of ALL kinds. And not because it isn’t “nice.” The reason is that uninvited personal critiques of belief, especially of irrational ones, are almost never effective. Of the scores of people I know who have given up religious beliefs, approximately zero did so as the result of an uninvited challenge by another person.
There are all sorts of things we can and should do to make it more likely that they challenge themselves, but you can’t force another person to think. You can help another person become curious enough to invite the discussion, in part by being a visibly contented nonbeliever yourself. Once you have an invitation from the other side, a lot is possible. Otherwise, forget it.
“But but but…I have such a great argument!” You crack me up. Sit down and listen. The very idea of argumentation is based on the premise that you’re after the truth. It works brilliantly when a person is convinced of the virtues of the scientific method, convinced that there is nothing so beautiful as reality and nothing so ugly as self-deception.
But traditional religious belief isn’t arrived at by a critical determination to avoid error. It is arrived at by the focused determination to confirm one’s biases. Now, quite suddenly, you are asking a person to switch pole stars — to reorient his or her entire way of thinking from confirmation bias to a love of reality wherever it lies.
You’re funny. No no, in a good way.
“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into,” said Jonathan Swift, supposedly. If you have ever tried to argue a religious point with a fervent believer, only to see the goalposts move and terms redefine themselves in midair, you know what he was talking about. But you may not have known why: the other person is working from an entirely incompatible operating system. Stop being surprised that he can’t open your attachments.
A lifetime of cherry-picking evidence on the basis of its confirmation value rather than assessing its value as evidence can lead people into unintentional hilarity. The more they surround themselves with nodding people who are busily confirming the same biases, the more hilarious it gets. The nonreligious are by no means excluded from this disease — more on that in part 3. But traditional religion, founded as it was on the principle of confirmation bias, is an especially fun source of rib-tickling.
During some down time in my room before my May presentation at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst NY, I indulged in one of my favorite masochistic pastimes: watching EWTN, the Global Catholic Network. A panel discussion was under way, and a priest was going off on the evils of condoms, of homosexuality, of abortion — anything, really, other than unprotected-face-to-face-one-man-on-top-of-one-woman-he-is-married-to-resulting-in-baby-sex. (You know…like the kind priests have.) There was never a risk that the rest of the panel would do anything but nod, so of course his statements got ever-stranger and ever-less-supportable.
Finally he hit bottom. “And why do you think there is a priest shortage?” he asked. “That’s right: abortion! Nothing could be more obvious.”
Nod, nod, nod.
The next topic was end-of-life care. “Too many doctors are woefully ignorant of Catholic bioethics,” said an expert on, presumably, Catholic bioethics. “They will, for example, pull the plug on a patient merely because all brain activity has ceased.”
Nod, nod.
“What they fail to realize is that the suffering of the body in those final hours may be necessary to get that person into Heaven.”
Nod, nod.
“By denying the person that suffering, the doctors, in their ignorance, may be contravening God’s will by denying a chance at redemption.”
Nod, nod.
“And by moving so quickly, they may be denying God the chance to intervene miraculously to bring that person back.”
Nod, nod.
These are very close to verbatim. I was writing as fast as my little paw could push the pen.
An outsider looks at such a fatuously silly misuse of the neocortex with astonishment — and out spill the arguments. Wasn’t the plug contravening God’s will, and the removal of the plug restoring God’s intended situation? Does God, who exists outside of time and space, actually need “time” to perform a miracle? How much, exactly? Yes, yes, yes. Fine.
But those around her are having their own biases confirmed — so nod go the many heads, and she digs deeper and deeper for nonsense.
WE ALL DO THIS, myself included, as noted in the last installment. The key is to make yourself vulnerable to disconfirmation, to be in the room with people who will call you on it when you make a bias error, and to be properly embarrassed when it happens.
Need more? Enjoy this, remembering all the while that the arguments apply only to bananas — especially at 0:19, 0:41, and 0:51:
“Seriously, Kirk,” he says — which is how you know he’s serious.
Yes, fine, these are fairly extreme examples. But I think the essence of religious thought as confirmation bias is nicely captured, as is the essence of the difference between religion and science. Next time I’ll finish up by showing what it is that makes science work differently. And psst…it isn’t the superior moral or even intellectual fiber of scientists.
[On to Part 3.]
Reaching out to Harry AND Sally (1 of 3)
by Dale McGowan
[An essay in three parts on current atheist outreach. Appears in the current issue of Secular Nation.]
The scene was the ballroom of the Kansas City Airport Marriott at the 2006 convention of the Atheist Alliance. On stage was the smart and articulate Hemant “Friendly Atheist” Mehta.
Hemant was talking about his book I Sold My Soul on Ebay. He was also, unsurprisingly, talking about friendly atheism, suggesting that atheists show a friendlier face to the religious world than we often do.
Intentional ridicule and insult directed at religious folks, he said, are especially counterproductive. Included among his examples was the “Smut for Smut” campaign at the University of Texas San Antonio, in which atheist students offered to trade pornography for Bibles.
“BULLSHIT!” screamed an audience member near me. “THAT’S BULLSHIT! Those people have courage, they’re out there fighting for your rights, and you ought to be honoring their courage!! For you to stand up there and…”
You get the idea. A kind of atheist “Support Our Troops” thing.
It was a seminal moment, a genuine clash between two different heartfelt visions of atheist activism. Both seek to move atheism out of the margins, but only one of them sees force as the way to get there.
Mr. Bullshit isn’t alone in thinking that a two-by-four between the eyes of religious folks is the best tool for advancing freethought. But neither is Hemant alone in thinking otherwise.
Each of the two approaches can be effective, just for very different receivers. I have met a few formerly religious people who said they needed a little cranio-lumber contact to rattle the fillings of their faith. They couldn’t hear Corliss Lamont or John Stuart Mill with an ear trumpet, but a good wedgie from Hitchens got them kicking the tires of their belief system at long last. There are also the silent, anonymous atheists among us who finally found their voice once someone like George Carlin or Pat Condell assured them that yes, it’s okay to call breathtakingly stupid things breathtakingly stupid.
These things can certainly go a bridge too far. David Mills’ response to the Blasphemy Challenge (in which Mills uses a bible to pick up dog feces, smearing the feces on a picture of Jesus while swearing a blue streak in front of his laughing 10-year-old daughter) leaps to mind. But it’s much more often the case that atheists are accused of playing too rough—Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens—when in fact they have merely refused to pull punches in a fight that genuinely matters, and the entrails on the ground are evidence not of excessive force but of the opponent’s refusal to go sensibly to the mat for anything less.
But there’s another audience out there, one that dwarfs the fans of the two-by-four by a good many multiples. This includes believers cautiously open to disconfirmation and closeted nonbelievers cautiously open to coming out. Numbering in the millions, they are predisposed to our message but unwilling to gird for culture war.
Though both approaches have long been available, only the two-by-four has generally been audible. Lamont’s joyful Humanism was there at the same time as Madeleine Murray O’Hair’s “Religion is induced insanity,” but only O’Hair’s efforts made it to the general radar. She achieved great and noble things, Madeleine did, but her approach, even as it emboldened the True Unbelievers among us, also made the cautious, silent majority of the nonreligious slump ever-further down into the “no comment” pew.
There is an audience that is well-served by the no-prisoners approach, and I count myself among them. But I’m thrilled to see that the “friendlier” frequency is gaining bandwidth of late, beginning at last to tap that huge reservoir of potential self-identified freethinkers who are reached more effectively on that wavelength than the other.
All three of the outreach efforts featured in this issue [of Secular Nation] — the Tree of Knowledge (Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia), the turnpike billboards (FreeThoughtAction and now PhillyCOR), and the highway cleanup (Atheists United and dozens of other groups nationwide) are operating on this less abrasive frequency. I believe that in doing so, they are moving us into the second of three phases in our courtship with the population at large.
The Courtship Challenge
Though we need to make ourselves visible to the public, visibility is not enough. A four-car pileup is also visible, but that doesn’t mean you want to be a part of it. We need to engage in something beyond exhibitionism—something closer to courtship.
Courtship is a three-step process: (1) be noticed; (2) be attractive; and (3) deliver the goods. In the all-too-recent past, freethought was stuck in step one, trying desperately to convince the public—and each other, for that matter—that we exist. As recently as 2003, when I began floating the proposal for a book on nonreligious parenting, agents and publishers shrugged it off, saying “there’s no audience for such a book.” Then the Four Horsemen took care of visibility once and for all.
Now for step two.
To make yourself attractive to the beloved, you’ve got to see yourself through that person’s eyes—an effort organized freethought has too seldom made. Too often we spend our time ranting in frustration at the general public’s inability to see how darn good-looking we are instead of finding out what really turns them on.
All three of the featured outreach efforts are giving consideration to attractiveness. Each is positively focused and speaks to one or more of the specific human hungers that church has traditionally satisfied.
The highway cleanup by Atheists United and others sends a message of civic responsibility and a desire to work for the greater good.1 FSGP’s Tree of Knowledge (a holiday tree decorated with freethought bookcovers) makes use of a familiar, attractive holiday symbol with happy and loving associations, underlining what is shared between worldviews rather than what differs. Finally, the billboard by FreeThoughtAction speaks to the desire for the embrace of community while at the same time cleverly addressing the existential fear of human aloneness in the absence of the divine—i.e., “you are not alone” in your disbelief and “you are not alone” despite the absence of God.
All three also invite the public into the third step in the courtship—assessing the substance of organized freethought. The FreeThoughtAction billboard provides a prominent and memorable web address, leading to a brilliantly-designed site with well-organized links for additional exploration of the world of freethought.2 The book covers on the Tree of Knowledge represent invitations to explore freethought. And the Atheists United name on the freeway adoption sign provides an easy-to-remember, Googleable point of contact.
These three efforts share another crucial feature: simple clarity. In five seconds, I get it. And I know I’m not alone in finding wit—especially nuanced wit—to be an intellectual aphrodisiac. The Tree of Knowledge names and celebrates precisely the thing that Yahweh forbade in Genesis 2:17, while the FTA billboard is a gentle (and cheerier) counterpoint to the white-on-black messages signed by God.3
[continue to part 2]
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1Though I winced hard when one spokesman for the group was quoted as saying they made the efforts “so we get to keep the sign.” A nice benefit, but if exposure is all it’s about, that’s more than a tad duplicitous.
2And, through the use of the capitals, turns the potentially unfamiliar concept of “freethought action” into three positive and lively words: FreeThoughtAction. Brilliant!
3Which I must admit to adoring. It’s fairly rare to see religious folks making effective use of humor.
ACTS (bookin’ through the bible 12)
[back to DEUTERONOMY]
A few years ago, a Catholic friend and neighbor of mine put the foundation of her belief into words for me. There are lots of reasons to doubt the divinity of Christ, she said, but one powerful thing continues to keep her doubts at bay. During Jesus’ life, the apostles were doubtful, denying, noncommittal. Then something happened to transform them, and they were willing to sacrifice their own lives in the name of their newfound convictions.
“I find it hard to account for that kind of radical transformation unless he really rose from the dead and was really the son of God,” she said with a shrug.
I didn’t say the obvious thing — that using one part of a book to prove another is meaningless. If I said I know Chapter 49 of the Koran is true because Chapter 50 says so, she would rightly laugh at me. But it wasn’t that kind of conversation, so I kept my mouth shut and gained a powerful insight into which book is the keystone and linchpin of the New Testament—the Acts of the Apostles, a.k.a. Acts.
Though its significance hadn’t hit me before, I’d already heard that argument several times before and have heard it since in various forms. The “Easter faith” of the apostles is the clincher. If you want to know something about Christianity, read a gospel. But if you want to understand Christianity, to get a sense of what makes it tick (and fizz, and shine, and honk, and occasionally explode), read Acts. Christ is born in the gospels, but Christianity is born in Acts.
It’s in Acts that we get several post-resurrection appearances by Jesus; the Great Commission, in which Christ instructs his disciples to spread his teachings to all the nations of the world (the origin of evangelism); Pentecost, speaking in tongues, exorcism, and the raising of the dead; the first stories of persecution of Christians and the first Christian martyrs; the conversion of Saul/Paul (who was alleged to have been a persecutor of Christians), his early ministry, and his arrest and imprisonment; and the first glimmer of the spreading, enthusiastic, universal church that continues to motivate evangelists today.
As a result of all of this passionate and very human action, Acts delivers some of the best mythic narrative in the Bible. But by the end of the book, something more profound has been achieved than the gathering of heroes and transformation narratives: Christianity is converted from a Jewish sect to a religion in its own right. The teachings of Christ are now said to be for all humanity, not just a local group.
My neighbor may (or may not) be surprised to hear that the book in whose testimony she places such unsinkable faith is perhaps the most altered, amended, and interpolated book in the New Testament. Here’s bible editor and theologian Bruce Metzger writing in The Text of the New Testament: Writing in The Text of the New Testament, bible editor and theologian Bruce Metzger noted (disapprovingly) the position of many theologians including Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort regarding the Book of Acts:
Words, clauses, and even whole sentences were changed, omitted, and inserted with astonishing freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness…. Another equally important characteristic is a disposition to enrich the text at the cost of its purity by alterations or additions taken from traditional and perhaps from apocryphal or other non-biblical sources… Another impulse of scribes abundantly exemplified in Western readings is the fondness for assimilation… But its most dangerous work is ‘harmonistic’ corruption, that is, the partial or total obliteration of differences in passages otherwise more or less resembling each other.
That such a well-traveled and freely-altered book continues to convince smart people like my neighbor of anything is testimony to the incredible power of confirmation bias and provides a nice foreshadowing of the upcoming blog series. Acts also provides a handy lens through which Christians can see and “understand” nonbelievers: we are Paul before the Damascus road, the apostles before the Resurrection. They saw the light — someday, surely, goes the narrative, we will too.
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Next and final episode of the series, thank the Lord God Jehovah: REVELATION (date TBA)
parenting and the safest sex of all
by Dale McGowan
We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.
Lily Tomlin
Joycelyn Elders, the most quotable U.S. Surgeon General of all time, once said, “Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily.”
That kind of quotability can get a political appointee fired. At a UN conference on AIDS in 1994, Elders was asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation to prevent young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity. “I think that it is part of human sexuality,” she replied, “and perhaps it should be taught.”
Never mind that the answer was sensible. Never mind that it was true. Once U.S. conservatives pictured their progeny receiving instruction in self-gratification—complete with cucumber-based demos, no doubt—Elders’ dismissal was assured.
Sense and truth have never had much place in our cultural discourse on sex, and few aspects of the topic have been more twitchingly mismanaged than masturbation. Those who recall the baffling mix of intense pleasure and intense shame that accompanies most discoveries of masturbation should want nothing more than to spare our own kids the unnecessary torment. Yet masturbation, the very first form of sex kids will generally encounter, is the topic most often missing from parent-child discussions of sex.
The roots of our dysfunctional attitudes toward masturbation are intertwined with the age-old distrust of bodily pleasures. That distrust probably didn’t originate in religion. Among other things, religion is simply a place to put our most beloved bad ideas for safekeeping. But when it comes to perpetuating and reinforcing dysfunctional attitudes toward the safest sex of all, it’s hard to beat the Abrahamic religions for over-the-top hysteria.
The Catholic catechism calls masturbation “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” One popular 19th century Jewish theologian called it “a graver sin than any other in the Torah.” Mormonism teaches that “masturbation is a sinful habit that robs one of the Spirit,” while Shi’a Islam forbids it completely, quoting sect founder Imam Ali as saying “one who masturbates commits a sin equal to killing me eighty times.” ¡Ay caramba!
But at least one influential religious conservative has voiced support for a more accepting, naturalistic parenting approach to masturbation—and has been excoriated for it by his fellows. The following passage refers to a conversation he had as a boy with his minister father:
We were riding in the car, and my dad said, “Jim, when I was a boy, I worried so much about masturbation. It really became a scary thing for me because I thought God was condemning me for what I couldn’t help. So I’m telling you now that I hope you don’t feel the need to engage in this act when you reach the teen years, but if you do, you shouldn’t be too concerned about it. I don’t believe it has much to do with your relationship with God.” What a compassionate thing my father did for me that night in the car.
Aside from “I hope you don’t feel the need” and the bit about God, this is almost precisely the message I want to get across to my own kids. And it comes from none other than James Dobson.
He still tangles it with silliness, suggesting that boys in the act think not of any girls they know but only of their “eventual wives.” Christian author Herbert J. Miles goes one better, suggesting that boys pray first, thanking God for the gift of sexuality, then think only of him during orgasm (which certainly gives “Oh, God!” a whole new meaning). But let’s give credit to both of them for getting the basic message right and thereby reducing the number of children growing up with unnecessary self-loathing and sexual repression.
In the absence of communication on the issue, children are guaranteed to feel tremendous shame and guilt when the natural developments of early adolescence lead them to self-stimulation. When your child is on the cusp of puberty, casually let him or her know:
- What masturbation is;
- That it’s a normal thing nearly everyone does at some point;
- That it’s a natural indication that the body is becoming ready for sexual activity and reproduction;
- That all of the stories about grave consequences are complete nonsense;
- That though it is not shameful, it should be done only in private.
Removing the guilt and shame from our children’s first encounters with their sexuality requires no detailed description or instruction—just simple permission. And nonreligious parents, free of repressive doctrines, are in an ideal position to give their children that permission, as well as the mental, emotional, and sexual health that comes with it.
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This column also appears in the June 4 issue of Humanist Network News.
A nice page of info on masturbation from Cool Nurse — Teen Health, Teen Advice.
“hey, mr. cunningham”
You never know someone until you step inside their skin and walk around a little. –Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
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A few years ago I was teaching a seminar on the use (and misuse) of the arts in the Third Reich when a student asked a great question — one of the best I ever heard as a professor:
“What would you say is the basic difference between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’?”
What an unusually great question. I stared at the carpet for a week or so as I worked out an answer. Then, amazingly, an answer that I still consider the right one came bubbling to the surface.
I think the central distinction between liberal and conservative is the attitude toward difference. Conservatism embodies our evolved tendency to value what is familiar, shared, and traditional while distrusting the unfamiliar or foreign. Liberalism tends instead to distrust sameness and to see greater value in diversity and change. It seems to (liberal) me that this distinction is at the root of things.
Correct me since I’m wrong.
We watched To Kill a Mockingbird a few days ago. I wasn’t sure if the kids would take to it — B&W, some wooden acting, etc. — but once again they surprised me. As of this morning, Laney and Erin have watched it three times.
I remembered the story as an indictment of racism, but the racial narrative is just one thread in the larger message of the film (and book) — that we fear what is different or unknown, and that that fear drives us to kill mockingbirds (i.e. to hate and harm the innocent).
Tom Robinson is a black man falsely accused of beating and raping a white woman. Mrs. Dubose, the cranky elderly neighbor, is assumed by the children to have a pistol under her shawl. The unseen Boo Radley is assumed to be a homicidal maniac who “eats raw squirrels,” while his father is assumed to be “the meanest man who ever drew breath.” Even a dog walking down the street erratically is assumed rabid and has the Bush Doctrine unleashed on him.
If my definition of the difference between conservatism and liberalism holds water, To Kill a Mockingbird seems to be an extended tribute to the liberal impulse and indictment of the conservative. But again, I’m a damn liberal, so I might very well be engaging in confirmation bias. I’d be interested to see if a conservative sees it differently.
There’s one scene that seemed relevant to the nonreligious — who are, after all, among the hated-different-unfamiliar in our society. A classic lynch mob has gathered at the jail to kill Tom Robinson, only to find his lawyer, Atticus Finch, sitting in the doorway, reading a book.
The mob already has Atticus neatly labeled and dismissed as a “nigger-lover” and a “tricky lawyer” (and now a book reader! Pinko elitist to the core, this one). Having replaced his humanity with a caricature, they will find it a simple matter to do whatever it takes to get past him.
But then Atticus’ children Jem and Scout show up. He orders them to leave. They refuse, and Atticus does not beat them to death (permissive parenting!). Then Scout recognizes a face in the crowd: Mr. Cunningham, a farmer for whom Atticus has done work and whose son Scout knows. “Hey, Mr. Cunningham,” she says:
I said Hey, Mr. Cunningham. Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one early morning, remember? We had a talk. I went and got my daddy to come out and thank you. I go to school with your boy. I go to school with Walter. He’s a nice boy. Tell him ‘hey’ for me, won’t you?
She says his name. She says her name. She reminds him of their connection and offers a kind greeting. Cunningham’s body language says it all. He squirms. He looks at the ground. He tries to hide behind the brim of his hat. He can’t keep the caricature from dissolving in the face of Scout’s humanizing connection.
I spend a lot of time telling nonreligious parents that one of the best things we can do for our children is to be out — to have our views known by those around us. It’s far less important to engage and challenge other beliefs than to simply put a known and loved (or hell, even mildly liked) face on the abstract bugaboo of religious doubt.
It works for every kind of reviled “other.” It’s easy to go to war against distant foreigners as long as “they” are “over there,” safely unknown and simplistically drawn. It’s easy to convince yourself that gays are a perverse threat to all that’s holy as long as you don’t know anyone who’s gay. And there’s no difficulty in convincing yourself that atheists are immoral hedonists if you continue to assume that those around you are all believers.
That’s why it’s important for those who differ from the majority — blue people in red states, red people in blue states, gays, atheists, the works — to be out of the closet, to be a smiling, normal, ethical contradiction to all the fearful assumptions. So I try to convince nonreligious folks to seize those “Hey, Mr. Cunningham” moments and put a human face on disbelief. And it’s equally important for us to avoid drawing a caricature of all religious belief — to recognize the normal, sane, ethical believers all around us. That’s the way the caricature crumbles — one person at a time.
Not just because I said so
We often talk about moral development as if it’s a mysterious process by which a child, born either tabula rasa or seething with apple-infused evil, somehow becomes good. Or not.
In our rush to replace amorphous mystery with rock-solid fable, any discussion of morality will eventually run straight to the most obvious off-the-rails moment in modern history: Nazi Germany. And even though the technique is so overused that it has its own fallacy and even a Law to describe our tendency to overuse it, I think it would be even dafter to not look to Nazi Germany for moral lessons.
But why stop with the guy on top? And why do we waste time debating whether Hitler was a Christian or an atheist, as if both worldviews were not already rife enough with examples on both extremes?1 Nazi Germany consisted of millions of people, some of whom participated in the horrors, others of whom heroically opposed it. Why not look deeper than Hitler for our moral lessons?
Fortunately someone has. Everyday Germans of the Nazi period are the focus of a fascinating study discussed in the PBB seminars and in the Ethics chapter of Raising Freethinkers. For their book The Altruistic Personality, researchers Samuel and Pearl Oliner conducted over 700 interviews with survivors of Nazi-occupied Europe. Included were both “rescuers” (those who actively rescued victims of persecution) and “non-rescuers” (those who were either passive in the face of the persecution or actively involved in it). The study revealed interesting differences in the upbringing of the two groups — specifically the language and practices that parents used to teach their values.
Non-rescuers were 21 times more likely than rescuers to have been raised in families that emphasized obedience—being given rules that were to be followed without question—while rescuers were over three times more likely than non-rescuers to identify “reasoning” as an element of their moral education. “Explained,” the authors said, is the single most common word used by rescuers in describing their parents’ ways of talking about rules and ethical ideas.
Ethicist Jonathan Glover applied the same questions cross-culturally, looking at the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda in addition to Germany, and came to similar conclusions. Dictating a set of authority-based rules turns out to be the worst thing we can do for ethical development — yet we are continuously urged to do exactly this because it feels ever-so-decisive and bold.
The alternative is not a home in which kids are free to ignore rules. All that’s required to get kids actively engaged in their own moral development is a willingness to explain the reasons behind the rules. My kids know they have the right to hear our reasoning, and yes, it’s sometimes a pain. But it’s a path that leads more reliably to ethical adults who will question both commands and commandments rather than boldly do whatever Zod says.
In short, instead of doing what feels right, I humbly suggest we try the approach that appears to, uh…work.
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1Not that it isn’t a fascinating sidebar to the topic. If you’re interested, start with this excellent and thorough Wikipedia piece on the complex subject of Hitler’s beliefs. Good news: both atheists and Christians can reasonably disown him, and neither should throw him into the other’s camp.
sex and the balls of the evangelical
Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on Earth, and you should save it for someone you love. –Butch Hancock, country singer/songwriter
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COLORADO SPRINGS — After dessert, the 63 men stood and read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”
The gesture signaled that the fathers would guard their daughters from what evangelicals consider a profoundly corrosive “hook-up culture.” The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing, was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed. (from “Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose,” New York Times, May 19, 2008.)
The photo is of a “Purity Ball” in Colorado Springs, where evangelical dads pledge to protect the “purity” of their daughters until marriage. It’s one of a growing number of such balls from coast to coast. “It’s a huge effort,” said one evangelical father. “A single ball won’t do it. Spreading the message that abstinence works takes a lot of balls.”1
Let’s begin by recognizing my common ground with these evangelical fathers. I too want to keep my daughters from becoming pregnant (and my son from getting someone pregnant) before certain events run their course. “Certain events” for me include education and time getting to know one’s adult self; for evangelicals, it’s marriage. So let’s just say we’re both happier with the idea of a daughter who is pregnant at 25 than at 15. I’ll call that common ground. But then the ground opens up. The Times article continues:
“Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” [event host] Mr. Wilson, 49, told the men. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”
(“Rapunzel, Rapunzel…”)
“The culture says you’re free to sleep with as many people as you want to,” said Khrystian Wilson, 20, one of the Wilsons’ seven children, including five girls. “What does that get you but complete chaos?”
This is another constant refrain: you have a choice between being Raped by The Culture (one monolithic thing) or being Rescued by the Men of God. Either way, there’s a man on top.
I for one never got the memo that I could sleep with as many people as I wanted to. That’s a bad idea for reasons that go beyond “purity.” The invitation to promiscuity is out there, but so are other voices. How about teaching kids to discern between good messages and bad, even when Dad is not in the room?
For the Wilsons and the growing number of people who have come to their balls, premarital sex is seen as inevitably destructive, especially to girls, who they say suffer more because they are more emotional than boys.
There was a time when I’d revel in the double entendres of that sentence, but I’m far too mature now. Instead, let me point out the continuing message that girls are weak and in need of male rescue.
Recent studies have suggested that close relationships between fathers and daughters can reduce the risk of early sexual activity among girls and teenage pregnancy…Abstinence is never mentioned at the Colorado Springs Purity Ball, but a litany of fathers’ duties is — mainly, making time to get involved in their daughters’ lives and setting an example.
Excellent! Again we overlap as evangelicals find their desires in sync with the research. But as the name “Purity Ball,” the white dresses and the constant pledging make clear, S-E-X in general and abstinence in particular are the unmentioned elephants humping in the corner. As is so often the case in the evangelical movement, any research that is inconvenient to their preferred narrative is simply ignored. The abstinence-only approach, like so many of our well-intentioned crusades, makes things worse:
But studies have also shown that most teenagers who say they will remain abstinent, like those at the ball, end up having sex before marriage, and they are far less likely to use condoms than their peers.
An inconvenient truth.
In a ballroom after dinner, bare but for a seven-foot wooden cross at one end, the fathers and daughters gathered along the walls. Kevin Moore, there with his three girls, told the men they were taking a stand for their families and their nation. Then he and Mr. Wilson walked to the cross with two large swords, which they held up before it to make an arch.
Is it chilling in here, or is it just me? Read that bolded passage again — an amazing condensation of religion, militarism, nationalism, authority, and patriarchy. That’s our favorite soporific, a seductive brew that bubbles up over and over in human history, right before everything goes to flaming hell.
Each father and his daughter walked under the arch and knelt before the cross. Synthesized hymns played. The fathers sometimes held their daughters and whispered a short prayer, and then the girls each placed a white rose, representing purity, at the foot of the cross.
The girls, many wearing purity rings, made silent vows. “I promise to God and myself and my family that I will stay pure in my thoughts and actions until I marry,” said Katie Swindler, 16. Every half-hour, Mr. Wilson stopped the dancing so that fathers could bless their daughters before everyone.
Yeesh. Yeesh.
One of things that most deeply saddens me about all this is the way it demonizes sex. Yes, it’s a powerful thing. It can turn your world upside down in several ways, not all of them good. But I want my kids to know that it’s also beautiful and amazing and fun and good. It’s the reason we’re here, after all. In evolutionary terms, it’s the best thing there is, which is why it’s fun.
Connor and I have talked about the fact that our bodies “want” to have sex for evolutionary reasons as well as emotional ones. Imagine two populations, I said. One is wired up to enjoy sex; the other is indifferent to it. Which one is going to pass its genes along, and which will die out? He got it immediately, even declared it “so cool.” And when his body starts insisting that sex is a good idea, he won’t be blindsided by the feeling (unlike some kids in Schenectady). He’ll understand it, which gives him a better chance of staying in control of it. If instead kids learn that these feelings are evil and inspired by Satan, they’ll spend their adolescence convulsed with guilt and retain a deeply dysfunctional view of their bodies and of themselves.
Equating abstinence with “purity” sends the instant message that sex is not a great good but something that renders us impure. Evangelicals counter that it suddenly goes from purely impure to wholly holy after marriage — but by then you’ve rather insulted and debased it, haven’t you? Just imagine the confusion in these kids’ heads when that coin suddenly flips.
[Thanks to Hemant Mehta, I think, for bringing Purity Balls to my attention.]
________________
1Unfortunately I made this one up.
Visit the new BY THE NUMBERS page for some interesting sex ed stats.
View the documentary Abstinence Comes to Albuquerque on Google Video (2006, 27 min.) The compelling story of a faith-based organization using federal funds to bring abstinence-only sex education into public schools in Albuquerque.
One Safe Generation
I’m thrilled to announce that ONE SAFE GENERATION has now gone live at the Institute for Humanist Studies. Many thanks to Matt Cherry and the rest of the folks at IHS for providing a home for this project.
ONE SAFE GENERATION is a humanist initiative to create a more humane, ethical, and reasonable world by breaking the chain of inherited violence and fear. Our goal is to make it possible for one generation to grow up free of violence. In support of this goal of “one safe generation,” we are advancing initiatives to combat violence against children in the home, in the community, and on the fields of war. Below is the introduction to the site. Throughout the summer I will post periodic focus pieces highlighting the elements of this project.
One Safe Generation
Introduction
Our reason, our judgment, and our ethics are all severely impaired when we are afraid. Examples of individuals, groups, and nations thinking poorly and acting immorally under the influence of fear are innumerable.
Violence and other social pathologies are perpetuated from one generation to the next, as victims of violence in childhood are likely to become the perpetrators of violence in the next generation. From corporal punishment and neglect on the individual level to the forced conscription of child soldiers and the disproportionate victimization of children in war, each generation of adults has a choice to pass on traditions of violence and fear—or refuse to do so.
ONE SAFE GENERATION is a humanist initiative to create a more humane, ethical, and reasonable world by making choices to break the chain of inherited violence and fear. Our goal is to make it possible for one generation to grow up free of violence at all levels, from the family home to the urban streets to the field of war.
By recognizing that all manner of social pathologies—from violent conflict to religious fundamentalism to the suppression of free expression—are ultimately rooted in fear, humanists can focus our energies on that root cause even as we work to lessen the damage done by its various expressions.
One generation liberated from violence and fear would be more rational, more compassionate, more confident, and far less likely to perpetrate violence on its own children. By allowing a single generation to grow up safely, the tradition of inherited violence can be broken and the future remade.
ONE SAFE GENERATION will gather valid research and resources in a single, accessible location; counter the advocates of violence in public forums; advocate progressive public policies on related issues through op-eds and legislation; and encourage support for existing organizations and advocates in three areas:
1. Nonviolent parenting
2. Advocacy of progressive child social policies
3. Protecting children from the effects of war
In identifying fear itself as the enemy, Franklin Roosevelt made a statement of greater lasting import than he may have intended. In these pages, you will find resources for information and action in the service of raising a generation of children less fearful, and more hopeful, than any of their ancestors dared dream.
References:
- Bloom, Sandra. Ph.D. Neither liberty nor safety: the impact of fear on individuals, institutions, and societies, part I. Psychotherapy and Politics International, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2004)
- Gershoff, Elizabeth Thompson. ‘Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review, Psychological Bulletin 128 (2002)
ode to a mother-in-law
< Sadly, the very first thing that comes up
in a Google Image Search for "mother in law"
There’s a laugh line in my seminar that isn’t meant to be a laugh line. It’s entirely serious, but they always chuckle.
In the section on extended family issues, I recommend letting your kids go to church once in a while with trusted relatives — and they chuckle at the word “trusted,” just a bit. It’s a knowing chuckle, of course. There are both trustworthy and untrustworthy religious folks, and many of us have both in our extended families. The untrustworthy are the sneaky proselytizers, the ones who tell our kids in whispers that Jesus loves them, that “I’m praying for your mama and daddy,” or even drop little hints of hellfire — not as a threat, of course, but as the thing they’re working so hard to save mama and daddy from.
The trustworthy are those who preface their input to my children with “I believe” statements instead of presenting everything as…well, gospel, and respect our decision to let the kids work it out for themselves in the long run.
It is my very good fortune to have a mother-in-law in Category #2.
The daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, graduate of a Baptist college, and devout churchgoer, she nonetheless has been absolutely fabulous about respecting our choices with the kids. I am quite certain she’d rather her grandchildren were being raised in the church, but she’s never pushed the point. When our kids do attend, perhaps 3-4 times a year, it’s always with her.
Her stock has begun rising even further with me lately. A few weeks ago I heard (secondhand) that a member of her church asked if it bothered her that neither of her sons-in-law is a Christian.
“Pfft,” she said. “You listen here. Those two boys treat my girls like queens. I can’t ask for more than that.”
She’s also been known to suggest that I’m more Christian than many Christians she knows. Considering the source, that’s a compliment I’m very pleased to take.
As I talk to nonreligious parents around the country, I encourage them not to assume too much about their religious relatives. Even those who are very serious about their own faith are often more willing to bend than we sometimes think. It’s not always the case, of course. Some will do their level best to put you in hell well before you’re dead, and once you’ve seen that in action, it’s more than an assumption. But I’m convinced that we jump to that conclusion too often. And I’m glad to hold up my own mother-in-law as an example.
Happy Mother’s Day, Babs!
the interfaith alliance
I don’t usually wax too political in this space, but there’s an activist organization I’m getting all hot and sweaty for lately. It’s The Interfaith Alliance (TIA), a coalition of 185,000 members from over 75 different religious and nonreligious perspectives founded in 1994 “to challenge the radical religious right” by protecting religious pluralism and the separation of church and state. They’ve had it with the use of religion as a tool of political manipulation and division. They think it’s bad for the church AND the state.
I have a collective crush on these people.
The president of TIA is Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana and host of the program State of Belief on Air America Radio.
Gaddy is a Baptist who remembers that church-state separation was woven into the founding of his denomination and remembers why. He is awesome. He is a force of nature. (And I’m not only saying that because he declared himself “so impressed” with my “important work” when he interviewed me on December 22. Goodness, I’ve forgotten about that completely.)
It was TIA that pointed out last week, in a way both brilliant and hard to refute, that “if a potential employer asked you questions about your religious beliefs in a job interview, it wouldn’t only be offensive, it would be illegal.” Yet one interviewer after another in the presidential campaign asks questions about personal religious convictions. And what is a campaign if not an extended job interview?
Asking how a candidate thinks religion and government should intersect — well, that’s a terrific question, and one that’s rarely asked. Instead, we get a litany of questions that violate the Constitutional guarantee that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” (Article VI, section 3), in spirit if nothing else.
This week had TIA drawing attention to an effort by Focus on the Family to put the “National Day of Prayer” (seven days away) squarely in the hands of evangelicals:
The National Day of Prayer Task Force requires volunteer coordinators to sign a pledge stating: “I commit that NDP activities I serve with will be conducted solely by Christians while those with differing beliefs are welcome to attend.” The coordinators must also sign a statement of faith that includes the following language: “I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God.” This clearly aligns a government-sponsored event with a particular Christian denomination, in violation of the basic provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
And so it always goes. When religion and politics mix, “religion” will inevitably become a single narrow expression of religion. In the case of the U.S., that’s evangelical Protestantism.
Anyway, I could go on all day about the great work of The Interfaith Alliance, but I’ll let you chase links on your own if you wish.
The questions about religion that TIA thinks candidates should answer
The campaign for a more inclusive Nat’l Day of Prayer (if we must have one at all, *sigh*), led by a Jewish group of First Amendment defenders called…wait for it…Jews on First! Oh, how I love it!