The old switcheroo
This is at least the fifth time I’ve written about my love of artful distillation. Analogies, concordances, wordclouds, graphics, video mashups — I’m a big fan of anything that helps me grasp the otherwise ungraspable.
Last May I came across another of these beautiful things, then promptly forgot about it until now. It’s a graphic that captures the complex findings of the Pew Study on Religion and Musical Chairs — something like that, the exact name escapes me — which explored changes in religious self-identification in the U.S. Not changes in percentage of the marketplace, mind you, but changes by individuals — how many people raised as Catholics change to something else and where did they go, for example, and the same with other categories.
Looking through the full survey itself is plenty fascinating. But an interesting fella calling himself the Internet Monk boosted my grasp of the whole thing with this simply wonderful graphic (click to enlarge):
(Reading this on Facebook? Click here for graphic.)
Suddenly, in graphic form, you can see why the Catholic college I worked for was so particularly skittish about a freethought group on campus: Catholics leaving the fold are more likely to head to mi casa than anywhere else. More fun: most of those who were raised nonreligious and go elsewhere go allll the way over to the evangelicals. I’ve called this the “teen epiphany” and suggested it might well be caused by too severe a parental allergy to religious exposure. Note also how few nonreligious end up Catholic, that a higher percentage of evangelicals go mainline Prot than vice-versa, and how extremely few of those raised in non-Christian religions end up Christians of any kind.
After I gave a seminar in Indianapolis last May, an atheist dad pulled me aside. Exposing our kids to many worldviews and letting them choose for themselves sounds good, he said. But can we really afford to be that open? Look at the Pew study. Our retention rate is the worst of any worldview! That’s why we need to raise our kids to be atheists, he said.
In addition to the fact that this would (1) do violence to my kids’ autonomy, (b) show that I don’t trust them to think as carefully and well as I have, (III) show no confidence in my own worldview to stand on its own, and (∆) constitute indoctrination every bit as bad as any religion, there’s another reason to relax about our “retention rate” as a worldview — and once again, it’s the Internet Monk who led me to it.
Compare the red block at the top to the red block at the bottom.
The nontheistic worldview as a percentage of the population is growing by leaps and bounds, not because children are being raised into it, but because an ever-greater number of people raised in religion are finding their way out of it. This is a good thing because it moves us out of the margin, gives the nonreligious more of a voice in the culture, and makes it more likely that any given religious person knows someone who is nonreligious. I don’t need or want to control the culture, and I don’t need my kids to follow in lock-step with my beliefs. But I would like a seat at the table, and that’s clearly moving in the right direction.
Sure, a lot of kids raised without religion end up trying on a different worldview. But as the study itself notes, many who change will change again, and again. That’s a good thing. It’s one sign that someone is at least trying to get it right.
Also worth a click: Why people left the worldview in which they were raised — and why they went where they did. Click all of the top tabs for maximum fun.
The reluctant animal / Can you hear me now? 11
(The 11th in a series on effective communication. Full series here.)
Last September, I briefly mentioned a new CD by They Might Be Giants titled Here Comes Science. From the online samples alone I could tell that it was delicious and different. Now, after four months of family listening, it’s time to chat again.
One song in particular is so good in so many ways, I just had to give it its own blog moment. It’s terrific musically, catchy and inventive as hell, which makes it one of the few pieces on Earth I can hear more than a half dozen times without throwing a virgin into a volcano and jumping in after him. But it’s the lyrics that put My Brother the Ape in my Hall of Fame — and in the Can You Hear Me Now? blog series.
You can guess from the title that My Brother the Ape is about evolution, but it takes a different tack. In Parenting Beyond Belief I waxed on about how cool it is that we are literally related by common descent to all living things on Earth, cousins “not just of apes, but of the sequoia and the amoeba, of mosses and butterflies and blue whales” (p. 221). And it is world-changingly, paradigm-shiftingly cool — IF you can get yourself to let go of the concept of human specialness.
My Brother the Ape is sung from the perspective of someone who has trouble letting go and accepting his kinship with other animals. It starts with an invitation:
Well, I got the invitation that you sent to everyone
And I told you family picnics weren’t exactly my idea of fun
You replied that everyone but me said they were going to come
Which is how you talked me into going to the reunionWhen you said everyone, you really meant it
My brother the ape
My brother the ape
Most songwriters, myself included, would have sent the narrative voice to the reunion and had him dance and sing and frolic in the oneness of all life. The Giants go deeper. Even after the reunion, Narrative Voice is still not all that comfortable with things:
I received the photos you sent, and I don’t regret that I went
Or the sight of everybody stiffly posing under one tent
But I don’t feel I belong and I keep wanting to escape
And I fail to see the likeness between me and my brother the apeThey all kept saying how much we look alike
I don’t think that we look alike at all
He starts working it out, bit by bit — two steps forward, one step back:
But I’ll admit that I look more like a chimp
Than I look like my cousin the shrimp
Or my distant kin the lichens
Or the snowy egret or the moss
And I find it hard to recognize some relatives of ours
Like the rotifer, the sycamore, iguanas and sea starsMy brother the ape
My brother the ape
In the end, he begins to come around, though you can see it’s still going to take some getting used to:
They say you don’t get to choose your family
But there’s no other one to chooseSo that’s why I’m writing this now
And you can tell my sister the cow
That I meant to thank her for the gorgonzola, and I’ll allow
That I’ve been acting like a stranger, but you guys are all so strange
Though I think of what I’m like and I can see we’re all the sameSo this time next year, we’ll meet at my place
My brother the ape
My brother the ape
My girls (8 and 12) have latched onto this song in a big, big way. They sing it around the house, they request it as a bedtime song, over and over and over. And in the process, the message that we are related to every living thing sinks in, bringing wonder with it.
It’s not that my kids have ever been reluctant animals. We’ve underlined our place in the scheme of things since they were born. We point out that the trees in our backyard are related to them in exactly the same way their cousins are, except with a common ancestor millions of years further back than Grandma. We refer to our dog as our wolf and ourselves as her monkeys. So for my kids, the song is mainly a fun and catchy reminder of just how cool that is and how far the kinship goes — to lichens and starfish and beyond.
But for someone who has been raised with the notion that humans are specially created in the image of God to “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (Gen 1:26) — or even coming from a pretty natural position of human chauvinism — evolution represents a serious demotion and a choking slice of humble pie.
A song that empathizes a bit with that reluctance can offer a place for the listener to stand, and sing, while they consider whether or not to come to the reunion.
Parenting Beyond Belief now in Apache
My mother’s book has been translated into Apache. Apache, Helen! Not even Shakespeare or Dickens has been translated into Apache!
T.S. Garp, in The World According to Garp
Okay, PBB has not been translated into Apache. But that line from The World According to Garp was the first thing that popped into my head when I learned yesterday that Parenting Beyond Belief has appeared in its first translated edition — and at first blush, it’s hardly less surprising than Apache.
PBB is now available in Polish.
We’ve been hoping for two years to secure a contract for a French edition, especially given fascinating cultural changes underway in Québec, about which I posted in late 2007:
So why the sudden interest among the Québécois about parents non-croyants? It’s a fascinating story.
Québec has historically been the most religious of the Canadian provinces. Over 83 percent of the population is Catholic — hardly surprising, since the French permitted only Catholics to settle what was New France back in the day. But now Québec is considered the least religious province by a considerable margin — and without losing a single Catholic.
Non-religious Catholics, you say? Oui! French Canadians are eager to maintain their unique identity in the midst of the English Protestant neighborhood — and “French” goes with “Catholic” in Canada even more than it does with “fries” in the U.S. Yet educated Catholics — I’ve discussed this elsewhere — are the most likely of all religious identities to leave religious faith entirely. There is, by all accounts, a very short step from educated Catholic to religious nonbeliever.
Poland shares that tight equation between Catholicism and national identity. Fully 89 percent of Poles self-identify as Catholics. The church is considered by many, even some nontheistic Poles, to be a bulwark against the countless threats to Polish identity that pepper the nation’s history (though it was of little use to the three million Polish Jews murdered in WWII). The papacy of John Paul II and the end of Soviet influence in Poland combined to produce a renewed affection for the Catholic church.
So what does all this have to do with a book on raising children without religion? It’s simple. As in Québec, Catholic identity in Poland is high, but observance is fairly low, with Mass attendance at 40.4 percent in 2008. Poland is also a highly educated and literate country, and (as noted above) educated Catholics are the most likely of all religious identities to leave religious faith entirely. So there is a large and probably growing community of Polish parents trying to raise their children without the undue influence of that looming institution.
I’m happy to help.
Full launch at last
Foundation Beyond Belief — a non-profit charitable and educational organization created to focus, encourage and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists and to provide a comprehensive education and support program for nontheistic parents — is alive.
Foundation membership is now open, and our first slate of beneficiaries is in place.
And what a slate it is. There’s an organization of scientists committed to biodiversity, another providing health care to marginalized communities on five continents, and a secular alternative for addiction recovery. There’s a non-profit bringing safe drinking water to five countries in desperate need, an advocacy group for refugees fleeing war, and an advocacy group for asylum seekers fleeing torture. There’s a scholarship fund for GLBT students who have been disowned by their families, an organization protecting children in war zones, and another protecting the environment by working toward “greener” buildings and cities.
Selecting these has been a challenging and powerful experience. In the end, we chose a wide range of organizations in size, budget, mission, and scope. Members will now in turn choose which of these organizations they will support with a percentage of their monthly donations—which in turn will inform our future selections.
It’s a chance to watch the evolution of humanist philanthropy.
No more words. Time for pictures:
Now go. Join up.
UPDATE: As is to be expected with a site and project as complex as FBB, we’ve had some technical hiccups. If you’re having any trouble signing up, give it a couple of days and our brilliant webster Airan will have it all ironed out.
A Hall of Fame reply…maybe
Had a lovely visit last month with the Freethinkers of East Cobb, a secular parenting group here in the Atlanta burbs. One of the group members named Kirstin left me a great gift — the cleverest reply I’ve ever heard to one of the most common questions nonreligious parents get.
She and her husband cross paths with the occasional evangelical Christian homeschooling parent in the neighborhood. At some point, by Georgia law, the Christian parent will ask where they go to church. Kristin told me
“Whenever we get that question, we just say, ‘Oh, we homechurch.’”
The more I think about it, the better this answer gets. You would NOT want to use this to hide your beliefs, but the inevitable follow-up question will give you the opportunity to go there. It ends up being a gentle and interesting sidestep into, rather than around, the larger question.
According to the Googlemind, the coinage “homechurch” is rare but not unheard of.* It’s apparently used most often by Christians who are “between churches” for one reason or another. But it also works for a secular parent who is making an effort to raise religiously literate kids (and selves) without the shortcomings and single note of the traditional church.
I’ve written at length about what I think is the ideal approach to religious literacy, which boils down to several thousand little conversations, connections, observations and experiences woven into the daily fabric of family life for 18 years. Described that way, it’s more similar to “unschooling.” But saying “We unchurch” would be immediately misunderstood — an experience unschoolers are surely familiar with.
So my vote is unchanged. “We homechurch” goes straight to the Secular Parenting Hall of Fame. Use it responsibly, and send Kirstin a nickel every time you do.
____________
*UPDATE: Or not. If you search with a space (“home church”), you uncover a whole movement of believers who “home church” because actual churches have gone too liberal on them. I avoid church (in part) because the perspective is too narrow and exclusive for me. They avoid it because the perspective is too broad and inclusive for them. Oy! (Thanks to several commenters for pointing out that dark reflection.)
The Conversation / Can you hear me now? 10
If you’re a nonreligious parent getting serious pressure or interference from a religious family member about your parenting choices, you’ve got to sit down and have a talk.
Last time I suggested a way of rethinking both the problem and the solution. It isn’t about changing the other person’s mind—it’s about reducing the dissonance that results from your differences. It’s not victory you’re after, but a relaxation of tension and building of mutual confidence. It’s détente.
Note 1: This conversation isn’t always necessary just because your religious perspective differs from your parents, in-laws, etc. Some religious grandparents are entirely respectful of their children’s rights to approach religion any way they wish with their own kids. Others offer nothing more challenging than the occasional grumble, whine, or plea. If you have one of these, be grateful. This post is about a stickier wicket—the grandparent or other relative who threatens, harasses, argues, pressures, and/or actively interferes with your right to raise your kids as you think best when it comes to religion.
Note 2: This is also not about your right to confront an antagonistic relative. For all I know, said relative has earned a merit badge in Self-Righteous Scumbaggery with you as the final project, and your right to retribution is enshrined in six different UN charters. But this post isn’t about us and our personal rights. It’s about creating the best possible family situation for our kids.
Note 3: There are countless variations on the nonreligious parent/religious grandparent dyad, but certain basic principles apply across the board. Be flexible and adapt as needed.
And off we go…
This approach is related to Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a powerful and effective concept developed by Marshall Rosenberg and others. It starts with empathy—making an effort to grasp and feel what the other person feels, to hear things as s/he hears them, and to frame what you have to say accordingly. It can leave people feeling heard, understood, and honored – even if they continue to disagree. It can lead to amazing breakthroughs by recognizing that win and lose are not the only meaningful terms in dialogue.
When a secular parent tells me about locking horns with Grandma, I ask what Grandma is concerned about. The answer is almost always the same—the familiar goulash of hell, morality and discipline.
These concerns may be part of the mix, but I don’t think they are usually at the heart of things. The relative may even be convinced that hell-avoidance really is their main concern and may say exactly that, but I have reason to believe otherwise. (I’ll get to the reason by the end.)
Consider this: Most deeply religious people have their religion woven into their personal identity. It’s not just Grandma’s explanatory system or a moral code—it’s often who she is. She’s likely even to see it as the best of who she is. When her first grandchild was born, her visions of herself as a grandmother centered on sharing the best of herself, the deepest and most meaningful part of her life, with her grandchildren, and of proudly sharing her God-fearing descendants with her admiring friends.
The news that said descendants would be raised without religion would have hit her first and foremost as the end of that vision. Worse still, she would often feel personally dishonored and shut out. Finally, she would feel embarrassed by the judgments of her churchgoing friends.
So then: Hell, morality, discipline, identity, self-image, honor/dishonor, exclusion, family pride, and the judgment of others. A pretty potent mix. We can’t solve them all. But we can do some pretty impressive healing with just a few words. And in the process, we will give nothing away and tell nothing but the truth sur cette page.
There are four important elements:
HONOR the person. You can continue to think whatever you wish about the person’s beliefs. But people deserve respect as people. Refuse to grant that and you have no basis for discourse. If nothing else, honor their intentions, which (however misguided you think they are) are usually good.
EMPATHIZE. Make a real effort to see things as s/he sees them.
REASSURE. Some of his or her concerns can’t be helped. Some can. Reduce the concerns by addressing those you can.
INCLUDE. This is huge. A clear gesture of inclusion can repair an immense amount of damage and bring down walls. Most people will respond to that generous gesture with a desire to not abuse it. For the rest, some reasonable limits can be placed.
Here’s the idea:
(Honor)
I wanted to sit down and talk this over with you because you are important to us. I know you want what’s best for the kids, and I appreciate that.(Empathize)
I know your religious faith is a big part of your life. If I were in your position, I’d feel just the way you do—worried that this big part of who I am wouldn’t be shared with my grandchildren.(Reassure)
I want you to know that it will be shared. Even though we’re not going to church, it’s important to us that the kids learn about religion so they can make a choice for themselves.(Include)
We want you to help us teach the kids by telling them what you believe. Let’s set up a time for you and me and Amanda to have a cup of hot chocolate so you can talk to her about your faith. How does that sound?
Details are hammered out next, so you should be prepared with a sense of what is OK and what is not. But ONCE THE CONVERSATION HAS HAPPENED, s/he will be infinitely more receptive to a few simple ground rules. For me there were two: no thoughtstoppers (no reference to hell or the idea that doubt is bad), and present all beliefs as your own (“I believe that…”), not as givens.
Sometimes it won’t work. But I’ve heard from so many people that this was the breakthrough, the approach that finally achieved something positive — including many who had sworn in advance that “It’ll never work with my dad” — that I have to think there’s something there. Several people have described step four as the turning point, the moment s/he is invited to share his or her belief with the kids. The road is not paved with daisies from that point forward, but at least it isn’t paved with IEDs anymore.
And this is why I believe it isn’t really all about hell — because without addressing hell one bit, enormous progress is made.
The bottom line in this is that there is an alternative to (1) saying nothing, or (2) spitting nails, or (3) giving away the farm. We can be the generous ones, the ones who understand where the other person is coming from, the ones who find a way forward, without giving up one bit of parental autonomy.
Reword it for your own situation, but have this conversation sooner rather than later — then come back here to tell us how it went.
Beyond win-lose / Can you hear me now? 9
A couple of years ago at a convention, I made a passing comment about family dissonance during a Q&A. “If you’re getting serious pressure from a religious family member about raising your kids without religion—Mom, Grandpa, mother-in-law, whoever—you need to address it directly. Don’t assume that it will get better with time. It will usually get worse.” Something like that.
After the talk, a gentleman cornered me in the ballroom. Great advice, he said. In fact, I just talked to my mother-in-law a few months ago and laid down the law.
(Ruh roh.)
What follows is as exact a transcription of his story as I could manage by scribbling it on a hotel pad a few minutes later:
I sat her down and said, “Okay, look. Let’s get some things straight. I am not going to apologize to you or anyone else about raising my kids without religious brainwashing. I don’t know why you are so obsessed with this. It’s no big deal that we don’t go to church. In fact, if we can get the kids to the age of eighteen without seeing the inside of a church, I’ll consider it a great success. I don’t want to hear any Jesus-this or Jesus-that around the kids. If we can agree on that, you can spend time with them.”
Just seven words in, she would have lost the ability to hear him as the blood began pounding defensively in her ears. No one can really hear and think under this kind of assault. And the veiled threat at the end is a particularly nice touch.
To get a real taste of just how this sounds to religious Grandma, reverse the poles a bit. Imagine you’re a secular humanist grandparent with a religious adult child, who says to you:
Okay, look. Let’s get some things straight. I am not going to apologize to you or anyone else about raising my kids without atheistic brainwashing. I don’t know why you are so obsessed with this. It’s no big deal that we’re keeping the kids out of science class. If we can get the kids to the age of eighteen without seeing the inside of a science book, I’ll consider it a great success. I don’t want to hear any evolution-this or science-that around the kids. If we can agree on that, you can spend time with them.
Ow, ow, ow. That’s about where this guy left his mother-in-law. Fight or flight. He looked at me for affirmation.
“Oh…okay,” I said, hesitantly. “And, uh…how’s it goin’?”
“Well,” he said, “we haven’t spoken since then. But I won.”
Aw geez. He’d missed the whole point.
Now I don’t know anything else about this guy’s situation. Maybe this woman put him through ten kinds of hell and deserved nothing more or less than to be cut off at the knees. Maybe there was no hope of achieving anything beyond that self-satisfying gofuckyourself. But even if the former is true, the latter almost never is.
If his situation was like 95 percent of those I’ve seen or heard described, his “I won” showed that he misunderstood both the problem and the solution. What did he win—the right to raise his child without religion? As the parent, he’d already “won” that right (barring inter-spousal differences — another post.) If his mother-in-law is actively, directly controlling his parenting decisions, he has a different (and much larger) problem, one that his monologue did nothing to solve.
In most cases, the problem isn’t that Grandma is actively preventing you from parenting the way you want—it’s that an atmosphere of tension and dissonance and poison is created by your differences. Sometimes that atmosphere can turn into something more concrete—sneaky proselytizing of the kids, demanding that other family members choose sides, or outright shunning—but it’s the tension itself that’s at the root. Reduce the tension around your differences and you reduce the symptoms of the tension as well.
Whenever I say this in my seminars, I see a half dozen heads shaking slowly. I know what they’re thinking. There’s no point. She’s never going to change her mind, and I’m sure as hell not going to change mine.
This is where we go wrong—by thinking that changing someone’s mind is the only goal of such a conversation. If it was, they’d be right. There’d really be no point. But one of the central idea of this little series is that changing minds is not the only way forward.
What’s needed in these situations is not victory but détente.
Anyone who lived in the U.S during the Nixon years tends to hear that French word spoken with a German accent. Whenever Kissinger said, “Vee ah voorking vithin a framevoork of détente vith de Zoviets,” I thought it meant, “We agree not to bomb each other for now.” Turns out détente is a much more interesting vurd meaning “a relaxation of tensions and building of mutual confidence.” It is not a ceasefire nor a compromise, but something designed to make an actual exchange of warheads less likely. In the Cold War, détente meant (among many other things) exchanging ballet companies and art exhibits and such to show each other our human sides.
I do think it’s best to sit down and address tensions about your nonreligious parenting with any religious family member who is especially distressed by it. The key is to aim for a reduction in tension, not a “win.” You’re the parent. You’ve already “won” the right to do your thing. What you want is to scale back the tension and discomfort resulting from those choices so your kids can grow up in the best possible family situation. And you can do it without giving up anything. That’s détente.
Next time I’ll share my thoughts on how to do that.
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:
