Going around the messengers
(Via the Atheist Bus Campaign UK)
A simple, marvelous message currently on display in four UK cities. It’s also #6 in the list of best practices on page viii of Raising Freethinkers and one of the most important concepts in freethought parenting. Heck, it’s practically, the definition of it.
Our family spent the best six months of our lives in the UK in 2004. And though I’m sure my British readers can strip me of my fawning rosy visitor goggles in no time flat, I found very little of the deep anti-intellectualism that we here in the Colonies swim in every bleedin’ day.
Also nice was the fact that religious disbelief is not a terribly big deal in the UK. A large whack of public figures — entertainers, giants of industry, journalists, politicians — are out nonbelievers. Thanks to this, secular humanists can move on from our current location on Horton’s speck (“We are HERE, we are HERE, we are HERE!!”) to taking positions on actual issues, such as suggesting that children not be labeled with complex worldviews that they cannot have chosen themselves (including, of course, “atheist”).
I’d guess from my own UK time that the billboard is raising relatively few hackles among the sane majority of religious folks there. But there will always be some colorful responses, and the news outlets were determined to find them. From the Belfast Telegraph, under the super-cool, pot-stirring headline, “Humanist poster stirs up religious storm” :
The giant poster, at the junction of Great Victoria Street and Bruce Street [in Belfast], shows a photograph of a young girl against the backdrop of “shadowy” descriptions such as Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh.
(And Atheist and Agnostic. Sorry, am I blowing things into proportion?)
Reverend David McIlveen from the Free Presbyterian Church said: “It is none of their business how people bring up their children. It is the height of arrogance that the BHA would even assume to tell people not to instruct their children in the religion.”
See how the slope slips? The poster says nothing about not instructing them in the religion. He continues:
“It is reprehensible and so typical of the hypocrisy of the British Humanist Association today…I think it is totally arrogant, presumptuous and sparks of total hypocrisy… I will be expressing my public position on it in my own church on Sunday. I will be saying that this advert is another attack on the Biblical position of the family and will be totally rejecting it.”
McIlveen was the gent behind an anti-gay ad campaign in the UK last year that was hateful enough to draw a ban from the British Advertising Standards Authority. I doubt very much that he represents most British Christians — certainly not those I met while I was there.
Also quoted in the article is
Sheikh Anwar Mady from the Belfast Islamic Centre: “We believe that every child is born as a Muslim. Religion is not given by the family, but it is a natural religion given by our God at birth. The role of the family is to teach the traditions of the faith. But that faith is implanted at birth.”
Okay. Now here’s my question: How many news outlets made an effort to find religious spokespersons who thought the poster campaign was perfectly acceptable? The BBC article online includes only one quote from a religious leader, and it’s frothing mad. And who did they find to represent the religious point of view? Why, it’s the Reverend David McIlveen from the Free Presbyterian Church.
Maybe they were all working from the same wire story, but I checked a dozen major news outlets covering the story and was unable to find a single quote from a religious leader in support of the campaign. But does that mean they aren’t out there—or that the news outlets are interested only in stirring the pot to draw readers?
Waaaait a minute. Lookie here!
Justin Thacker, head of theology at the Evangelical Alliance, said it was great to see humanists were now agreeing that children should make their own decisions about faith. “Evangelicals do not believe that God has any grandchildren, only children,” he said. “You are not a Christian simply because your parents are. Every child or adult has to make up their own minds about the reality of God.”
This marvelous quote is not to be found in the news. It’s squirreled away on a small number of religious websites.
An equally good question is why atheist bloggers aren’t generally taking the time to find that voice. I’m afraid in many cases, the answer is the same: in addition to confirming our own biases, the loony McIlveen quote is simply too attractive as a pot-stirrer to go seeking mere balance. We bloggers can blame the media, and the media can blame the wire story. At some point, we’ve all got to dig deeper to get beneath the shitstorm on the surface of these things.
I’ve sent a message to the folks behind the poster suggesting they post that EA statement. It’s another opportunity to isolate nuts like McIlveen, showing that the non-crazy majority of religious and nonreligious have more in common with each other than with their own less-tightly-hinged members. I’ll let you know what happens.
_______
UPDATE: Sure enough, BHA were already on top of it. Messages of support, including several sorry, ONE from a religious believer (not enough), are posted here. There’s also a Facebook Group for the campaign, and it’s being Tweeted avidly.
There is also some misunderstanding about what the ad is advocating. Among other things, it does NOT say families should not attend church together or practice their religious traditions. It simply suggests that children be made to know that the choice of identification is ultimately their own.
This is one of the central messages of Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers. If you support the idea, get busy Tweeting and blogging it. And be sure to extend the circle of support to include religious voices. If you find other good quotes, let me know in the comments.
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]
Pigeonhole THIS / Can you hear me now? 7
When she says “I’m Sagittarian”
I confess a pigeonhole starts to form
And is immediately filled with pigeon
When she says her name is Storm.Tim Minchin, “Storm”
We all do it. We listen for a few clues, then assign a pigeonhole to the speaker. Maybe the beak’s still moving, who knows. It’s hard to hear since we’ve already shoved the bird headfirst into the hole.
Though some might forget this by the end of the page, I’m NOT calling for an end to the pigeonhole. It’s a necessary, practical shortcut. We don’t have the luxury of time or energy for a full investigation into every minor question. When it matters most, I take that time. But for a thousand decisions a day, I pick up clues and come to conclusions before I have all the information. There’s simply no choice.
What I’m suggesting, in the interest of getting more things more right, is that we work on delaying the leap to the pigeonhole just that little bit.
When I listen to another person, I try to listen and think a few minutes beyond my natural tendency to stop — juuust in case the pigeonhole I’m carving isn’t the right fit after all. I find in the end that I make slightly more comfortable pigeonholes that way, better tailored to what the person actually says and thinks.
And I end up with a much more interesting coop.
I’m sure Richard Dawkins wonders at the pigeonhole he’s been jammed into. He has become a conveniently polar figure for atheists and theists alike, the banner carrier for scorched-earth Atheism. But for the most part, it doesn’t fit with what he says, nor even how he says it.
It’s easy to maintain this caricature if you never hear him speak or read his books, or if you do so only through the filter of preconceptions. Richard spends vast whacks of time acknowledging the positive contributions of religion, the Bible’s contribution to Western literature, the need for religious literacy, the difference between moderates and fundamentalists. But once he’s in the extremist pigeonhole, all that nuance goes unnoticed by BOTH sides. Wouldn’t want to have to carve out a whole new hole, now would we.
One of my favorite moments is when one of those carefully-formed complexities finally gets itself noticed by the pigeonholers. The result is pandemonium as the question is raised: Is so-and-so actually in the completely OPPOSITE pigeonhole?
That was the sadly comical case when Antony Flew, under his own power (or not) renounced his atheism (or didn’t) to become a Christian (or a deist, or something else). The Flew affair was not just a battle between believers and nonbelievers, but between pigeonholers and nuance. (If you’re not familiar, the Wikipedia article on Flew includes a nice synopsis of the whole farce.)
Then there was a remarkable speech by Sam Harris at the Atheist Alliance convention in 2007. His talk (as always) was brilliantly crafted and filled with subtleties that most of any given audience can’t hear because they’ve ensconsed him in the pigeonhole of either Extreme-Atheist-Yay! or Extreme-Atheist-Boo!
You’d think the title of his talk — “The Problem with Atheism” — would have forewarned the AAI crowd that this wasn’t the typical self-congratulatory slop on which we sup. But the opening sentences lulled a lot of us into complacency:
To begin, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge just how strange it is that a meeting like this is even necessary. The year is 2007, and we have all taken time out of our busy lives, and many of us have traveled considerable distance, so that we can strategize about how best to live in a world in which most people believe in an imaginary God.
A few sentences later, he tried to signal what was coming:
In thinking about what I could say to you all tonight, it seemed to me that I have a choice between throwing red meat to the lions of atheism or moving the conversation into areas where we actually might not agree. I’ve decided, at some risk to your mood, to take the second approach and to say a few things that might prove controversial in this context.
Then, the crux splendidior of his message:
Given the absence of evidence for God, and the stupidity and suffering that still thrives under the mantle of religion, declaring oneself an “atheist” would seem the only appropriate response. And it is the stance that many of us have proudly and publicly adopted. Tonight, I’d like to try to make the case, that our use of this label is a mistake—and a mistake of some consequence.
Oh dear, thought the group, looking at their nametags and banners. Several hundred atheists had awakened to find themselves holding the flapping pigeon of Sam Harris — and began searching frantically for a new hole into which he could be stuffed.
I won’t excerpt his actual argument here since it must be read in full and slept on, then read again. (Please do that at the end of this post before responding to Harris.)
By the end of this unprecedented speech, Harris provided many in the room with the evidence they needed to dispose of him when he criticized the tendency of many atheists to auto-reject anything that has ever been associated with religion or spirituality.
Take meditation, he said — and proceeded to discuss how important the practice has been to him and how seriously he pursues it.
I could barely hear the rest of the speech for the sound of birds slamming home around me: Sam Harris isn’t a bold atheist crusader after all — he’s a fuzzy-headed devotee of flim-flam and woo-woo!
Those are the only choices, you know.
Harris had “take[n] some pains to denude [meditation] of metaphysics” for the audience, but that went largely unheard. Sure enough, the very first questioner walked to the mike and said, “I was very disapppointed with your speech. I did not know you were a supporter of spiritual nonsense.” Most of the rest were much the same.
A similar re-pigeoning mini-kerfuffle happened recently after Richard Dawkins suggested in a Newsweek interview that some intelligent people believe evolution can be reconciled with traditional religious belief. Even though he said he himself continues to find them irreconcilable, scores of atheist blogs suddenly lit up with the title “RICHARD DAWKINS, ACCOMMODATIONIST?”
I spend a huge amount of energy resisting pigeonholes myself so that my favorite nuances can be heard. Many religious readers see “atheist” and slam me into the hole with Stalin and Pol Pot. Many atheists have me pigeonholed as a “nice atheist” or part of “Atheism 3.0.” It’s often assumed, despite the evidence, that I believe all points of view are deserving of respect, that we should “all just get along.” And when I step out of that cartoon by (for example) suggesting that religious moderates need to “get off their butts” and help me oppose religious extremism, I am accused of violating a Nice Atheist oath I never actually took.
My hope here is to help raise our collective awareness that careless pigeonholing can get in the way of hearing and being heard.
Sam Harris speech in full:
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
Being heard / Can you hear me now? 5
My plan was two posts about Facebook, but events keep running ahead of my little typing fingers. This is the second of a probable five-in-a-row about Facebook. I’ll start by describing an exchange in which I took my own advice pretty well, then continue with a couple of less successful efforts.
A reminder: This series is NOT about how to engage in big formal discussions. It’s NOT about trying to directly challenge this or that element of religious belief or to change someone’s beliefs. It’s about finding ways to be out and normal in a room with people of mixed perspectives. Most of all, it’s about hearing and being heard. (Tired of that yet?)
I posted a status update on Facebook:
Just back from a great trip to the Ethical Society of St. Louis. WHY is there not an Ethical Society in every city? Not a rhetorical question.
Somewhere during the thread that followed, I said
If more people knew what these Societies were like (the benefits of church community w/o the negatives), they’d be everywhere.
A good high school friend (“Bob”) asked what I considered to be the negatives of church community. Another good HS friend (“Andrea”) seconded this very reasonable question.
My first reaction to this is always, “You’ve GOT to be kidding,” as the list of negatives ballooooons before my mind’s eye. I typed, “It’s really beyond me how anyone could fail to see the negatives”—then deleted it. Sure, it’s obvious to me. But it clearly wasn’t obvious to Bob or Andrea. Is my goal of being heard served by bringing up their defenses? Not a chance. I have to accept that it wasn’t obvious to either of them or they wouldn’t have asked.
This is why you don’t reply with your first reaction—because if you do, you’re only talking to yourself.
I started drafting — phrasing, rephrasing, venting, deleting, adding modifiers. As I did so, both my accuracy AND my “hearability” increased.
Before I could finish, a good friend of mine (“Wendy”) with a similar POV replied:
Negatives: Promising Heaven, threatening with Hell, brain washing from a very young age, ignorance, discrimination against homosexuals… just to name a few.
I winced. This is exactly how I used to answer. But these are guaranteed to draw the “not-my-church” denial, and often rightly so. Those on the other side of the conversation feel that their experience refutes these claims on a weekly basis. Having seen me unjustly paint them with my broad brush, they stop listening.
And I can’t blame them. Think of the last time someone brought up Stalin as a renunciation of atheism generally. That’s my clue that the person has nothing useful to say, and I can’t get myself to take them seriously from that point forward. If I don’t take a minute to think about how something will register from the other person’s perspective, I don’t deserve to be heard.
Sure enough, Andrea came back:
@ Wendy – Ok. I’ve been a Christian all my life. Never been promised anything I didn’t have to work for, never been threatened with Hell. I don’t feel brainwashed and am far from ignorant – also, 3 of my very best friends are gay…just to name a few.
I put on the brakes:
Hold on, we have to do this right. First, read what I’ve written about the positives. Then I’ll post my thoughts on the rest.
The link goes to a post about things I think Christians do better than secular types. Establishes my evenhandedness, keeps ears open.
I needed to speak to my concerns without doing a leg-sweep that left the other person nowhere to stand. Allow them to share your concerns, even if only in principle. Let them distance themselves from the target if that’ll help them hear you.
Here was my answer:
For some people there are no negatives. For others, there are no positives. I can only speak for myself.
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.
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. To then watch what I believe is a false idea lend unchallengeable authority to bad ideas along with good is very, very painful. Honest questioning is too often disallowed, the word “values” often turned on its head. There is ever so much more, but not in this space.
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.
Andrea responded:
@ Dale – Thanks for your answer. I agree with you wholeheartedly about learning your personal path and I greatly respect the search for your truth. You are by far one of the most well-spoken, amiable and approachable atheists I have ever encountered. Not only do I appreciate that as a person, but as a Christian, you make me feel like there is always room for discussion – which is not all that common from either side…Seriously, thanks for answering.
I’d accomplished just what I wanted to. I’d been heard.
Wendy sent me an email with the subject line “How do you do it?”:
I don’t know how you do it. So you have these questions on your FB status. You give some cool answer, after which the asking person tells you what an awesome person you are… blah blah… and you move on. I admire you for that.
That was when I realized I might have something useful to share and this little series was born.
Next time I’ll take apart my answer to Bob and Andrea to see why it worked.
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.
Silos / Can you hear me now? 3
There’s a natural and adaptive human tendency to cling to the familiar, to distrust difference. That worked well for millennia to keep us safe, but now it’s an unhelpful relic that fuels groundless fears and keeps [insert favorite fearmongering media villain here] afloat. Most of us are surrounded by friends who think like us, who reinforce our choices and our sense of self, who nod and smile and laugh with us, who put us at ease. Most of us read magazines and watch news channels and listen to talk radio that reinforces our worldview rather than challenging it.
(Those of you busily protesting Not me, not me, I surround myself with ever-so-divergent people and opinions— congratulations on that. It’s very good news, and you can tell us about it at the end.)
Contemporary culture is increasingly willing and able to bend over backwards to assist us in walling ourselves off from difference.
It used to take a bit more effort. Simple example: As a teenager, I listened to radio stations with broad pop formats and would stumble across unfamiliar things all the time—ska, reggae, punk, funk, new wave, R&B, alternative rock, even novelty songs. Once in a while I’d find something new that I liked. Now radio seems to carve out narrow, carefully defined demographic slices. You like alternative rock? Great, I have the station for you. I promise you’ll never have to hear anything else. As a bonus gift, you’ll dodge the risk of encountering anything truly new.
Same with politics, religion, social opinion. You can now find entire TV networks, magazines, talk radio programs, websites, and blogs devoted to reinforcing your opinions and protecting you from any serious risk of developing new ones. And all the while, the science of “behavioral marketing” sniffs behind you, studying what you do so they can profitably feed you more of the same.
As a result, we’re dividing ourselves up into smug, self-satisfied silos, each with everything it needs, including pundits devoted to telling us how very smart we are to be in the silo we’ve chosen.
It’s not good.
This cultural siloing not only shuts us off from our own growth but erodes our ability to communicate with or understand those outside of our own silos. Most of us felt it in the 2008 election—two utterly separate subcultures, one Red, one Blue, each with its own set of “facts,” each with a well-oiled machine of expert opinion and slick presentation designed to reinforce and cherry-pick and coddle and stroke and castigate and denounce as the need arose. Then we all marched into the polls, pretending we were not de facto citizens of two different nations.
This is not a new observation. I know that. But I want to bring it into this series on communication across worldview lines because this cultural siloing is right there at the heart of the problem.
Churches are among the most efficient cultural silos. They tend to bring together likeminded people and reinforce their likemindedness. Sometimes the result is an empowered community that devotes itself to good things like service and social justice. Sometimes it can focus and facilitate hatred and division that would not be possible without the reinforcement of that likeminded community.
Now, thanks in large part to the Internet, the nonreligious are finally finding each other and forming communities—with the same good and bad results. Sometimes we devote ourselves to good things like service and social justice, and sometimes we focus and facilitate a level of hatred and division that would not be possible without the reinforcement of that likeminded community.
So it’s not just a religious thing. It’s a human thing. And the difference between the good and bad result goes right back to comfort and contact with difference.
The more a group shuts off contact with unlike minds, the sloppier it gets. A little less care and thought goes into each statement. You know the room is with you, so you just say it. They’ll laugh at the cheap joke about the other group, they’ll nod at less and less grounded generalizations. Eventually we’re all a self-satisfied mutual admiration society with no remaining ability to communicate outside of our silo.
About ten years ago I became so desperately tired of that self-righteous dynamic among the religious that I stopped attending church. Last year, I became so desperately tired of that same self-righteousness among the nonreligious that I stopped attending humanist/atheist/agnostic meetings and conventions. I simply can’t stand the smugness of the silos—especially when I feel it starting to percolate in myself.
Our siloing has a double effect: One silo loses the ability to speak AND the other loses the ability to hear.
I’ve realized recently that I have a bit of an advantage in all this, which is why I’m writing this series. I’ve spent an unusual amount of time surrounded by and talking to people whose worldview is very different from mine. In addition to 25 years of churchgoing, I worked for a while as assistant music minister at a Methodist church and spent 15 years teaching at a Catholic college. Sometimes I communicated stupidly and ineffectively. Sometimes I did much better. I began to take notes, to work on my approach, to improve my effectiveness at hearing and being heard.
I get comments about this all the time. The most recent was an exchange on Facebook, which is where I’ll go next time.
But first, tell me this, regardless of your perspective: How “siloed” do you feel you are, and how do you think that affects your ability to communicate across lines of difference?
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.
Raising a Ruckus in Atlanta
I’ve done a metric flurry of interviews recently, including one for the holiday issue of Parenting Magazine about what nonreligious families do at Christmas. My usual reply is some variation on, “Oh…there’s a religious version too?” (But nicer.)
Talked to Dr. Zach Moore for the Apologia podcast a while back. Last week it was a radio program in Denver called Mom’s the Word, and yesterday, after speaking at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, I sat for a filmed interview for a planned documentary on Camp Quest.
Another interview I did last week particularly caught my attention. It was for an article in a brand spanking new parenting magazine distributed locally here in Atlanta. It’s called Ruckus — “the parenting magazine for Atlanta families who don’t fit the traditional mold – blended, gay, bi-racial, adoptive, tattooed, pierced, just different” — and Volume 1, No. 1 is currently on the racks.
From the editor, Lea Holland:
The magazine’s name reflects our feelings about raising kids. We’re teaching them to stand up for what they believe in and to share their opinions, even if it creates a ruckus. Actually, it’s better if it ruffles some feathers! We want our kids to have fun, be active and learn there’s more to life than following the leader.
Mmmmmm.
That such a thing comes out of Atlanta shows how much the urban South has changed in the last 20 years. Thanks to a huge influx of transplants (like me and mine), even up here in the relatively red suburbs it’s much more diverse than ten years back (or 20 miles further out of town). Within 100 yards of our front door are families from ten states and at least six countries. That ain’t Brooklyn, but it ain’t yo daddy’s Atlanta, neither. And I couldn’t be pleased-er.
Read Ruckus online at their wickedly cool website, and fan them on Facebook if you like what you see. They’re currently mining for story ideas. You know you’ve got ’em — so give ’em!
God(s) in the classroom
ERIN (11): Mohammed is believed by Muslims to be directly descended from the Angel Gabriel.
DAD, looking up from his book: Uh…really? I didn’t know that.
ERIN: It’s a question, Dad. True or false.
DAD, suddenly interested: Is this homework?
ERIN: Yes Dad, it’s homework, social studies, world religions, I’m terrible at it, so is it true or false??
DAD: Well you won’t get better at it if I just give you the answers.
ERIN: Plee-he-he-heeease, Daddy.
DAD: First tell me who Mohammed is.
ERIN: (*Sigh*) I don’t know. Some Jewish guy.
I could barely contain my delight. Not that she had bar mitzvahed the Prophet, which gave me the shpilkes, but that she was learning about religion in school — something I didn’t think the district would dare do.
Contrary to the fears of many nontheistic parents, and despite irritating nonsense from the occasional evangelical teacher, the vaaaaast majority of U.S. public school administrators are not the least bit interested in injecting religion into the classroom. On the contrary, they are terrified of getting into a constitutional row over it. In the early 90s, Becca’s principal forbade teachers to so much as put up the word DECEMBER in alternating red and green construction-paper letters lest (by associative property) one religion be invoked above others, however distantly.
But this isn’t that. Erin is studying religions, in the essential plural, an entirely good thing when done right.
I surfed over to the Georgia state social studies standards for sixth grade and found this standard tucked away under SS6G11, “The student will describe the cultural characteristics of Europe”:
b. Describe the major religions in Europe; include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
By grade seven in Georgia, “The student will
explain the diversity of religions within the Arab, Ashanti, Bantu, and Swahili ethnic groups
and
explain the diversity of religions within the Arabs, Persians, and Kurds
and
compare and contrast the prominent religions in Southern and Eastern Asia: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Shintoism and the philosophy of Confucianism
and even
describe how land and religion are reasons for continuing conflicts in the Middle East.
I LOVE THIS.
It would be wrongheaded (and unconstitutional) to favor any one religious perspective in the classroom, though that was the practice in the U.S. for generations. But a well-designed and well-taught curriculum in comparative religion would go a long way to improving our shameful status as one of the most religiously faithful AND most religiously ignorant countries on the planet.
My co-author Jan Devor put it this way in Raising Freethinkers (emphasis mine):
Europe and the United States are diametrically opposed in not one but two religious respects: belief in and knowledge of religion. The U.S. is both the most religiously enthusiastic and the least religious literate country in the developed world. We believe with great fervor but know very little about the tenets, history, and elements of our own belief systems, let alone those of our neighbors. Europeans, on the other hand, show very low levels of religious belief but, thanks to formal religious education in the schools, tend to have a very deep knowledge of religion.
Because U.S. schools shy away from teaching about religion, religious education falls to the parents—all parents. Religious parents can take advantage of whatever religious education is offered at church but have the detriment of a single, limiting point of view. Nonreligious parents reverse the polarity—the responsibility for the religious education of their children is primarily theirs, but unhindered by an organized doctrinal system, we have a greater opportunity to bring multiple perspectives to bear. And we must. Children who are ignorant of the elements of religion will be easy targets for religious zealotry and will be hobbled in their own free decisionmaking. Ignorance is impotence. Knowledge is power. (p. 69)
Gah, that’s a good passage.
Granted, the curriculum Fulton County is using is lame and uneven. Erin’s class watched three short films about the Abrahamics, then completed worksheets full of typos and oversimplifications ( “T/F: Judaism is diferent than other religions because there is onky one sect” — oy vey).
I don’t like the fact that each of the three is presented as a single thing — “Christians believe that…” is pretty close to meaningless, given the presence of 33,830 Christian denominations by last count — nor a hundred other things about it. But I can quibble with curricula in almost every subject. The important thing is that the kids are seeing Christianity placed side by side with other religions. This simple act has an automatic dethroning effect — mild for some, startling for others. And what balance and depth is missing, I’m helping Erin discover.
I helped her get past her confusion of Judaism and Islam in part by putting them in historical perspective with this insanely cool flash map showing the spread of the five largest religions:
Even this required supplementing, of course. For one thing, I had to point out that the grey areas certainly had beliefs of their own before they were subsumed into one or another of the corporate faiths, and that not everyone in a given color believes the same. I, for example, am not (at least in this respect) blue.
So I’m with Steven Prothero in supporting MORE religion in schools. Let’s call it Worldview Studies to include the nontheistic perspective. If the worksheets linked below are any indication, the current curricula vary from lame to awful. But done well, such a thing would enhance the ability of kids to make informed decisions in the long run.
I’ll expect your curricula on my desk by Friday.
The worksheet on Islam used by our district
The worksheet on Judaism
The worksheet on Christianity
