Perspectives

Monday afternoon, I was trying to go help my friend with a project when I hit a patch of ice on the way, skidded and flipped my car. It looks like it will probably be totaled.

I posted the picture to Facebook, since that's what you're supposed to do when you get in an accident (right?).

I am basically fine, no serious damage, except I bumped my head pretty hard when I undid my seatbelt upside down and fell loose. I'm really achy all over, I have some scratches on my wrist (I look so Emo) from broken glass, my wrist hurts from falling on it, and my thumbnail got ripped off below the quick (it really hurts when I type, but lucky you, I'm soldiering on like a little trooper!).

I thanked God and Jesus all the wonderful strangers who stopped and helped me when I was so shaken up; the truck driver who called 911 for me, the two guys who made sure cars didn't have a bigger accident by directing traffic for about 25 minutes, and all the fire and other guys. And even the cop, who was very nice, didn't grill me or make me nervous, and (most importantly) didn't cite me (since it was just an Act of God  unfortunate accident).

So I was standing there waiting for them to flip my car over and tow it, and for my friend to come pick me up so that I could help him with his project (yes, I still helped him out. But he bought me dinner with dessert, so it was all good, lol). And I realized, damn, this could have been so much worse and I took the time to count my blessings evaluate the good things.

I had my seatbelt on. If I hadn't, I might have gotten half thrown out of the window, or otherwise seriously battered or even killed. The seatbelt did a great job to keep that all from happening. So I was grateful to seatbelt designers and makers.

I flipped my car and I was able to sneak out the broken window unassisted. No one else hit my car or me. Thanks awesome strangers!

How the Other Side Thinks

I don't like the idea of 'taking sides', but the following five quotes from my cousin's Facebook status disturbed me to the point that I can't help but see that we are in different universes, never mind on a different page. When I talk to her I try to find the common ground, and I seek to understand where she's coming from and her worldview. And in person we really don't talk about religion. But her view of Christianity, God and Jesus is, well, tell me what you think.

Here are the five most recent quotes.

"God disciplines us because he loves us too much to let us continue down a destructive path." -- loving my God and Savior because he brought me back on a path that glorifies Him first.

"Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain." - Touche, 2 Corinthians 7.

"You will not find My peace by engaging in excessive planning; attempting to control what will happen to you in the future." ... (Proverbs 16:9)

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. -- Isaiah 26:3-4 ... taking comfort and rejoicing in knowing that God's plans for me are greater than any I have ever had for myself.

Praying constantly with the help of Galatians 5 today. 'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.' - Galatians 5:1

I didn't leave any comments to these. My cousin is 18 and has shown a lot of respect to me regarding my atheism. So we are mutually courteous. It's hard to read such things from such a smart, wonderful person. What do you think of what she is saying?

Morality and Ethics

Last night my friends and I were talking about ethics and morality and we sort of went in circles because we all seemed to have different ideas of what they were. Some expressed the idea that morals only come from religion so they avoided the word and used ethics instead.

Here is a concise explanation:

Morality is used to refer to what we would call moral standards and moral conduct while ethics is used to refer to the formal study of those standards and conduct. For this reason, the study of ethics is also often called "moral philosophy."

But in casual conversation the terms can be used interchangeably.

Morality:

(from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. Immorality is the active opposition to morality, while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles.

Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is the branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality.
The word 'ethics' is "commonly used interchangeably with 'morality' to mean the subject matter of this study; and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual."

Ethics:

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality — that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.

~

But on the subject of good and evil, I think they are definitely religious terms. I try to use words that describe what I'm expressing without the unhelpful loaded concepts. I use healthy and unhealthy, positive and negative, constructive and destructive.  This reflects my worldview as a naturalist where there is no supernatural or gods running the show.

How do you get your morality? We all learn from our parents, role models and peers, but have you reevaluated your code of ethics as you've matured?

Just a Thought

Awhile ago I did a post about Terror Management Theory and then a follow up to it. This led me to scribble a note late one night as I was about to fall asleep. I just found the note and it still made sense! So I wanted to share it with you.

~

Often, atheists feel that religious people, new agers, etc., need to rid themselves of their religion completely. While I don't believe accommodationism is an appropriate goal, I think asking people to start over with nothing but a vacuum (not an accurate description, but how it would be perceived) is unrealistic and will almost always be rejected.

Instead, what about getting rid of just the worst influences? For instance, a recipe calls for lard and bacon fat. Get rid of the lard and replace it with something healthy and equally satisfying. Then later get rid of the bacon fat and replace it with something healthy and satisfying.

Let the people understand that it's a healthy replacement and that their worldview is not threatened, just improved.

This is how I did it, in stages.  Baby steps. Instead of threatening and attacking, perhaps use humor and thoughtful Socratic questioning . Maybe it could work?

Definitely add Critical Thinking to the recipe first! :)

~

What do you think? What would you take out first from the recipe? What would you replace it with?

Can't We All Just Get Along?

I found myself muttering this question to myself today. But I think the answer to it is "No." Sometimes we just can't get along. Sometimes fundamental beliefs and worldviews are so diametrically opposed that people just can't come together. At least not on that topic or in that area.

Religion and atheism are like oil and water, or liberals and conservatives. They just don't mix. Of course when the subject comes up, I've found that to change the subject to less volatile topics can lead to friendships budding between unlikely opposites. As long as you leave the hot-button topics off the table.

After all, just like my religious friends, I love, laugh, sleep, eat, have relationships, have pets, etc, just like they do. We can get along on these topics, even the ones where we don't match up all the way. For instance, I can understand my friends when they talk about their kids even though I'm (happily) childless. This is mainly due to my empathy (yes, atheists have empathy too. We're not sociopaths. [We do eat babies on special occasions, though. Of course.]).

But when it comes to talking about religion and atheism, things inevitably get tense, misunderstandings occur, and it generally ends up ugly at some point. Even when I have worked very very hard to be fair, gentle, kind, thoughtful and honest, it still ends up going sour eventually. After awhile, you hit nerves. Big ones. And it's not pretty.

And hitting a nerve can happen when you least expect it. On my other blog I simply said, "Reason trumps faith completely. Reason and faith are the antithesis of each other."

I think that's pretty straightforward, isn't it? In that forum I have defined faith at least once. Faith is strong or unshakeable belief without evidence or proof. So how is my statement condescending and offensive? It's just a fact. And yet that is how it is perceived.

I'm not saying that some people can't get along. But in my personal experience, and in listening to how others have done it, the only way seems to be to avoid the hot button issues and focus on what you have in common. When worldviews are diametrically opposed, people get passionate.

Remember we talked about Terror Management Theory? I'm going one step further and have just downloaded a copy of Michael Shermer's new book, The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. I think maybe that will help me to understand people, because right now I try, but religious thinking and faith are a complete mystery to me.

Do you interact with people who have diametrically opposed worldviews to your own? How do you get along with them? What works for you?

Do We Choose To Not Believe?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote Spot On!, which was about Alise Wright's list of assumptions for Christians not to make about Atheists. I thought they were excellent.

There was one little thing that she said though, that has spurred a follow up post on her own blog, about Free Will and Faith. She said,

Most atheists who have “deconverted” from a religious background have studied it and other religions thoroughly before choosing not to believe.

Mikespeir, in the comments, called attention to this:

If I have any reservations at all about this, it’s that “choosing not to believe” hung off the end there. I never chose not to believe. Once I realized I didn’t believe anymore I chose not to keep practicing the Christian religion. That was the choice involved.

I agree with Mike. I never chose not to believe.

Of course, I agree with Alise that we seem to have some say in our actions. We choose to read certain books/information (the bible¹ and/or Dawkins), attend different events (either church or TAM²), and we choose the people we associate with.

I have to throw in here, that this assumes that we have free will. I have learned in the past year that we most likely don't. We are determined by a myriad of previous factors. But I won't get into that here. 

Yet Another Experiment

Last December if you had asked me about my friends, I would have told you they were all nonbelievers of some persuasion or another. But back then I ran into a fellow blogger who is a devout Catholic. Roxane wrote about me and I felt obliged to write back. Instead of getting into a "blog war" we decided to take our conversation privately to email and have been writing each other back and forth ever since.

Now I would call her a friend. Do I understand her worldview? Does it make sense to me? No, it really doesn't. But she seems like a good person, kind and compassionate. With Roxane, I've been learning to see that there are religious people who aren't like the media stereotypes that make me apoplectic with impotent indignation.

Interestingly, in this same time period I've also come to see several family members that are also moderately religious to seriously devout in a new light. I've engaged them as well, and it has really expanded my perspective of people who are so diametrically opposed to how I view the world. It's been eye-0pening to say the least.

Last week Roxane got a crazy idea that she and I should co-write a blog. Nothing intense, just a weekly joint post. She thought I'd say no, but I surprised her and said yes immediately. So we started AtheistCatholic.com and today was our first post.

In the past couple of days I've told a few of my friends about what I'm doing. I've gotten mixed responses. Some people said I'm wasting my time. Others thought it was a good idea. First I should probably explain the goal of this new experiment. Because that is most definitely what it is. It might not work out, but I'm willing to give it a good ol' college try.

We want to share some of our discussion publicly, and have people join our conversation, mainly about our worldviews. It's not a place for debate or attacking the opposing team. It's more about coming to hopefully understand each other, and maybe even learn more about ourselves in the process. I've done that with Roxane already so I want to share that insight and hopefully get even more from the interactions we have over there.

One more thing. I am not being an accommodationist here. This isn't about compromising and bending over backward to the religious worldview. As you know, I have very strong opinions about naturalism/atheism and religion. But, this is about people getting along, being friends despite opposite viewpoints, and learning about others and ourselves.

If you're interested in joining the conversation, head over there and say hi. Just please be courteous. This is about building bridges, not isolating ourselves.

Soul Searching For Godless Heathens

I was recently asked about my worldview. Specifically I was asked what I find lacking in it. What do I see as flawed with it?

I've thought about this. I think by its very nature, my worldview is ideal for me. I don't see any flaws at all. But first, let's define it.

Worldview: 1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world. 2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

So,  it's a very comprehensive set of beliefs about the world. And I'm very happy with the worldview I've thoughtfully developed. I will say it was a process, though, which is ongoing and, like all critical thinking, open to new information that can alter it.

Mine is based on Naturalism - a scientific account of the world in terms of causes and natural forces that rejects all spiritual, supernatural, or teleological explanations; Humanism - a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity; and Nature - nature is awesome and humans are responsible for taking care of the world to the best of our ability, and to be humane to other living creatures.

In those respects, science is very important to me because it's how we understand and progress. Through science the Universe gets to know itself (rough paraphrase from my hero, Carl Sagan), and we get to know our world and everything in it, including ourselves.

Science isn't everything though. There's also humanity and what we have developed*, such as consciousness and cognition, justice, beauty, love, humaneness, compassion, morality, genius, and on and on. (*note that there are animals that have some consciousness and self awareness, which is amazing and awesome. It shows that we are on the far end of the continuum, but still connected and an integral part of the animal kingdom!)

My worldview has been cultivated and formed over my life, but especially in the last 10 years since I've become an atheist. In other words, I've really thought about this, it isn't something told to me by anyone. And I think that's important for finding that it's complete and comfortable for me.

I thought I'd turn the question over to you. What is your worldview and do you feel yours has any flaws in it that bother you, that you find missing or less than fulfilling?

Videos to Show Your Christian Friends

Here are two videos that I found recently. They would be perfect to show your christian friends and family. They use the technique I've heard of for confronting someone's worldview. Basically you talk about something you agree on, or say something positive about the person, then appeal to that commonality or positive aspect to show the flaws in their thinking.

Why does every intelligent Christian disobey Jesus?



10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer

A Disconnect

I noticed something a few minutes ago that I'd like to share with you. Now I know this might seem extremely obvious, but I just got a real glimpse of the cavernous disconnect between how atheists and believers see God and the universe.

As you know, I am a skeptical atheist. I feel that science is the best way for us to understand the universe. It's not perfect but it's the best tool we have. And it's self-correcting, which is quite necessary since humans do science and we make mistakes and have biases, etc. One of the main reasons I am an atheist is that there is no evidence of any gods. In fact, there is zero evidence in all the universe of anything supernatural. It's that simple.

I have noticed in talking to religious people that they come at things from a very different perspective, worlds apart from where atheists are. From what I gather, they see God as Love. They rely heavily on Confirmation Bias so that everything that is good goes in the God column and everything that is bad goes into the Free Will/God works in mysterious ways column. It's very simplistic. And the system reinforces itself all the time. And it's based on emotions and feelings and faith, not on reason. So it feels good.

People who are religious and/or superstitious come from the worldview that there is a supernatural component to the world. Using confirmation bias as well as not understanding that improbable things happen every day all over the world (it's just statistics - not my strong point, so feel free to comment with more information on this), they believe they see evidence of the supernatural in their lives. Somehow they even extrapolate this to include something that there is also no evidence for, an afterlife, the continuation of consciousness after death. (at this point, we can't prove or disprove the afterlife since we can't test for it, but so far there's no good evidence for it) (edit: the burden of proof is on the believers to prove that there is an afterlife, since you can't prove a negative.)

Of course, this is faulty reasoning, but it's understandable how most people would fall into this trap.

Atheists read holy books in their entirety and see the god of these books as hateful, cruel, jealous and very much made in man's image.

Religious people read the parts of their holy books that give them the message they are looking for, then carefully interpret that into what they want it to say. This is classic Cherry-Picking.

When atheists and scientists don't understand something, we try to find a way to figure it out. We investigate, explore, observe, experiment. We understand our perceptions and memories are faulty so we look for answers to our questions through these methods.

When believers don't understand something they cop out and just say, "well then God did it." They aren't curious in this area. This is devastatingly limiting to the advancement of our species, science and our understanding of the world.

These are just a few glaring examples. What other ways do religious people and atheists have wildly opposing worldviews?

Starting To See Moral Relativism As Clearly Flawed

Most people don't think much about morality, in my observation. They are given their morals from their parents, pastors, teachers, and peers, etc. They don't need to know terms like "moral relativism". I have done just fine for 41 years without ever thinking about the definition of the term.

I think even once you eschew God and the bible, unless someone challenges you, you'll still rely on your basic moral code which you got when you were younger (and probably indoctrinated). A lot of that might evolve into what "feels" like the right thing to do, more than what the bible said.

Then there are those who think about this sort of thing all the time. I'm not one of those people, normally. I don't like philosophy very much. I prefer science and testable claims to pontificating about things that can't really ever be known. But as I venture on my Quest for Knowledge, lately I've run into philosophy more often.

I've even subjected you to it, such as the whole Free Will vs Determinism argument (which I still have plans to continue).

I think we are best served with examining our ethical code and reevaluating what's in there and why. I did that some time ago with my personal Principles. It was a challenging but rewarding exercise.

Side Note: The Rationally Speaking podcast recently interviewed Joshua Knobe about his new field of Experimental Philosophy (x-phi), which was fascinating. Joshua even made them (and me) gasp with the results of one study that was very surprising! Here's a link to the episode.

The book club I'm in, as I've mentioned, is going to be reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. I lost interest in our current book, so I've started in on this one and so far Sam Harris is speaking my language, that science can determine values for conscious beings.

The following excerpt from the book shows what moral relativism basically is (the woman in it is definitely a moral relativist), and why it's clearly flawed. This is an anecdotal story from Sam. But I think it's quite important to share:

Excerpt from The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris. - Highlight Location 765-83 (chapter 1)

We already have good reason to believe that certain cultures are less suited to maximizing well-being than others. I cited the ruthless misogyny and religious bamboozlement of the Taliban as an example of a worldview that seems less than perfectly conducive to human flourishing.

Thoughts on Arguing

I have been wondering about arguing lately. How we argue, how we get set in our world view and dig in like a donkey sits back on its hind legs and won't budge. The reason this has been in my mind is because I've been trying to learn about determinism. When I first heard about it in a podcast by the Reasonable Doubts guys, I resisted and thought, this is ridiculous! Of course I have free will! I feel like I do!

But after 4 hours of them explaining it, I felt like I was getting it. Then we had our Morgantown Atheists group have a meeting on determinism and free will. A professor from WVU came and talked about it and I got it even more. Now I've tried to explain it to my husband Butch and my friend Jeff, who are both extremely resistant and argue against it. Part of that is probably because I don't understand it enough to explain it well. But part of it is because the idea of determinism is huge. It rocks your world when you hear about it.

What I'm really trying to get at, though, is how we, as humans, seem to always fight for what is most comfortable and familiar to us. We always seem to resist new ideas. And something else, we always seem to pick the other side of an argument if we're up in the air. For instance, when I was explaining determinism to my friend Jeff, he objected heartily.

But then we were talking about this topic, about how people stick to their comfort zones, and he told me that he ended up explaining determinism to his son, and found himself defending it, while his son objected.

Isn't that interesting? Why do we do this? I'd love to see some research on this. I've heard of a few studies that might apply to this, but I can't recall them clearly enough to find them for you. If I can think of how to search for them, I'll add them here. If you know of any studies please let me know!

Also, do you find this is true for you and your friends and family? Or do you see it differently?

Is Being A Martyr A Good Thing?

I love my husband's cousin. She's 18, bright, full of life and has the whole world in front of her. We'll call her Leah. She wrote the following on Facebook yesterday:
'The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.'
I felt I had to keep my mouth shut. She's very religious, idealistic and young. Her mother is religious but in a quiet way. Her mother accepts Butch and I as atheists without open judgment and we never talk about religion out of respect for each other. The relationship is more important than fighting over differing world views. By default we have the same relationship with Leah, but lately she has started putting uncomfortable, self-sacrificing, mindless bible verses on Facebook. This is really hard to take. I want to say something but I want to be courteous of my relationship with her.

So on Heaving Dead Cats' Facebook page I put the following:
‎'The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.' (someone I know wrote that as their status update. What does it mean to you? If you were a religious person, would YOU find comfort in that?)
I got several responses. No one liked it. Barbara was kind enough to Google it, though, and commented with the quote in context:
"And then there is the love for the enemy- love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.’”

Leah eventually told me she read the quote in a book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan. "Crazy, relentless all-powerful, radical love." Eek. I feel queasy now. A self help book about how to fall in love with God.  I won't even go there with how insane it is to fall in love with an invisible, intangible nothingness. My love of coffee is more meaningful.

The Science of Persuasion

The other day I gave you a transcript from a lecture. The article was titled Why People Defend Their Dogma. At the end I promised a follow-up with some practical advice. And here it is. They did another episode of Reasonable Doubts, Episode 70, where they talked about how to persuade people, especially about science. They talked about a professor who has done some studies. I have written up a transcript of the salient parts of the conversation.

Partial Transcript:

37:18 If the goal is not to score points, if the goal is actually to persuade people, if the morally superior goal is to win minds rather than just make people look stupid, then tone really does matter. Psychology has some things to say about how we should best go about trying to persuade people to really, any position, but even more specifically to a scientific position that they may otherwise feel threatened by,  or may conflict with their worldview.

38:07 It's an empirical issue. What is likely to be persuasive or off-putting or not is a testable question. There are people right now researching how you package factual issues and seeing if that affects the rate at which people believe, disbelieve or deny them.

One of the examples of this, there is a researcher who's name is Geoffrey Monroe from Towson University who has done some studies on peoples' willingness to agree with belief consisting information as opposed to information that's inconsistent with beliefs as a function of things like how the information is presented to them.

So he had a piece on Science and Religion Today where he folded this into the debate about, do you alienate people by using blunt language that offends them. The theory behind this that people don't, as most people probably realize, they don't simply make up their mind on the basis of factual, cognitive, cold type calculations. This is one aspect that frustrates us, is that when we are debating with somebody, it quickly becomes apparent that the facts of evolution in some cases won't make a difference, if the person has an emotional investment.

So people hold attitudes because they are linked to aspects of your self-identity. As stated in Terror Management Theory, if you have a worldview that can be threatened, you get defensive. You circle your wagons as if attacked. In the same way, with factual issues like scientific-type things, religious people hold these as part of their broader self-identity.