PHIL 3310. Exploring the philosophical, ethical, spiritual, existential, social, and personal implications of a godless universe, and supporting their study at Middle Tennessee State University & beyond.
IN OUR HISTORICAL MOMENT, the fundamental questions of how we should organize our societies — how we should live and work together — are felt with a new urgency. As we find ourselves implicated in the accelerating destruction of our ecosystem, the environmental crisis has reanimated questions regarding the viability of capitalism even in mainstream political debates. Yet exactly what is meant by “capitalism” is far from clear in the diagnoses of our predicament. Inequality, exploitation, and commodification are regularly denounced, but their systematic relation to the capitalist mode of production is rarely taken into account. Likewise, the proposed solutions to our current crisis are increasingly gathered under the banner of “democratic socialism.” But in almost all cases, democratic socialism is a name for the reformation — rather than the overcoming — of capitalism. As a result, the critical injunctions are reduced to calls for the redistribution of wealth, which do not question how the wealth itself is generated by wage labor and how capital accumulation is required for there to be any wealth to distribute in the first place...
Martin Hagglund, What Is Democratic Socialism? Part I: Reclaiming Freedom - Los Angeles Review of Books https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/democratic-socialism-part-1-reclaiming-freedom/ What Is Democratic Socialism? Part I: Reclaiming Freedom
"Well I hope I never get it! It's like being hit by a hammer in the head!" John stood and took his tray to the kitchen. The rest looked at each other in silence. It must have been, Maya thought, a really bad confirmation class... Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
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Also:
“The intense thereness of it-haecceity Sax had called it once, when John had asked him something about his religious beliefs-I believe in haecceity, Sax had said, in thisness, in here-and-nowness, in the particular individuality of every moment. That's why I want to know what is this? what is this? what is this? Now, remembering Sax's odd word and his odd religion, John finally understood him; because he was feeling the thisness of the moment like a rock in his hand, and it felt as if his entire life had been lived only to get him to this moment.”
“And it came to her that the pleasure and stability of dining rooms had always occurred against such a backdrop, against the catastrophic background of universal chaos; such moments of calm were things as fragile and transitory as soap bubbles, destined to burst almost as soon as they blew into existence. Groups of friends, rooms, streets, years, none of them would last. The illusion of stability was created by a concerted effort to ignore the chaos they were imbedded in. And so they ate, and talked, and enjoyed each other’s company; this was the way it had been in the caves, on the savannah, in the tenements and the trenches and the cities huddling under bombardment.”
Tumor initiation, begun with just that typo in the book of the self. And years later, unless the victim's DNA luckily repaired itself, the tumor promotion that was a more or less unavoidable part of living would have its effect, and there would appear a bloom of Something Else inside: cancer. Leukemia, most likely; and, most likely, death.”
“It was a world of acts, and words had no more influence on acts than the sound of a waterfall has on the flow of the stream.” [What a thing for an author to say!]
On this day in 1831, Darwin boarded the Beagle, about to revolutionize now only how we understand life but how we live with death.
If, once, we could think of ourselves as (sinful) animals aspiring to be more God-like, now we can wonder what, as animals without sin (though more than capable of doing harm), we might aspire to.
...It has been said that philosophy is the study of how to die. Hägglund's work continues this tradition. In order to learn to live, we must first learn to die. It is only in accepting our transience that we can embrace it, only by recognizing that our spiritual freedom lies on the other side of our fear of death that we can truly engage with reality as it is here, now, on this planet — in this concrete life instead of an abstract afterlife.
In the end, Hägglund's most important contribution may be his insight that acknowledging death instead of denying it changes how we think about the value of our time, which in turn has normative implications not only for our individual lives but, more importantly, for our collective (political) lives.
Give Hägglund a read. It is time well spent in a life as short as ours.
Delighted that the Swedish version of *This Life* (*Vårt enda liv*) is selected as one of the best books of the year in Dagens Nyheter (@dagensnyheter): https://t.co/aSqMyCS6Ml
Some keep the Sabbath going to church — I keep it, staying at Home — With a Bobolink for a Chorister — And an Orchard, for a Dome — Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice — I just wear my Wings — And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton — sings. God preaches, a noted Clergyman — And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last — I'm going, all along.
"Some keep the Sabbath going to church" by Emily Dickinson.
I'm a #humanistbecause apart from the existence of J.S. Bach, there is no plausible evidence for God's existence, and plenty against there being anything but Spinoza's God. We might as well try and make the most of the cards we haven't been dealt but find ourselves holding. (https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1332270842961670144?s=02)
In 2016, the list of elected state legislators who publicly identified as atheists or humanists grew to 17, and after the 2018 election to 47. In 2021, there will be record-breaking 63 nontheist elected officials at the federal and state level.
The philosopher Todd May is an atheist who rejects the supernatural, but not the people who believe in it.
In five previous interviews in this series we've explored the Buddhist, Jain, Taoist, Jewish and Christian views on death and the afterlife. But what about those without any religious faith or belief in God? Why not, some readers have asked, interview an atheist? So we did.
Today's conversation is with Todd May, the author of 16 books of philosophy ranging from recent French thought to contemporary ethics. His books — including "A Significant Life," "A Fragile Life" and, most recently, "A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us" — investigate meaning, suffering and morality. His work has been featured in episodes of the television show "The Good Place," where he served behind the scenes as a "philosophical consultant." — George Yancy
George Yancy: In your book "Death," you very clearly state, "For the record, I am an atheist (which is why I don't believe in an afterlife)." Cornel West is fond of saying that we will eventually become "the culinary delight of terrestrial worms." So I assume you believe life ends right there, without any consciousness beyond the worms. Do all atheists subscribe to that belief?
Todd May: First, George, I owe you a debt of gratitude for this series. Confronting death is one of the most important and difficult tasks that we as humans face. It's been inspiring to see the ways different traditions grapple with that task.
In stating my own position, I don't speak as a representative of atheism. There can be different types of atheism, but they all have in common the denial of a supernatural deity. My own atheism involves a denial of the supernatural in all its forms, for instance the distinction of the soul from the body, the immortality of the soul, reincarnation and so on. However, I can imagine an atheism that believes, for instance, that there is a spiritual bond uniting all people or all living beings. A view like that would not require a deity, but might still be a form of atheism. It's just not my atheism.
My particular atheism commits me to thinking that those who believe in the supernatural are mistaken. It does not, however, commit me to thinking any less of them for their belief. This is an important distinction to make, one that often goes missing in discussions of atheism... (continues)
Even if we don’t believe that Jesus was the son of God, we tend to think he was a great moral teacher. But was he? And how closely do idealised values such as our love of the family, helping the needy, and the importance of kindness, match Jesus’s original tenets?
Julian Baggini challenges our assumptions about Christian values – and about Jesus – by focusing on Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels, stripping away the religious elements such as the accounts of miracles or the resurrection of Christ. Reading closely this new ‘godless’ Gospel, included as an appendix, Baggini asks how we should understand Jesus’s attitude to the renunciation of the self, to politics, or to sexuality, as expressed in Jesus’s often elusive words.
An atheist from a Catholic background, Baggini introduces us to a more radical Jesus than popular culture depicts. And as he journeys deeper into Jesus’s worldview, and grapples with Jesus’s sometimes contradictory messages, against his scepticism he finds that Jesus’s words amount to a purposeful and powerful philosophy, which has much to teach us today.
Secular Coalition for America (@seculardotorg) tweeted at 8:24 AM on Tue, Aug 18, 2020: Today on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which declared that the right to vote can not be denied on the basis of sex, we remember the long tradition of secularism in the fight for suffrage. #suffrage100 Thread. h/t @FFRF https://t.co/ZHvsFCzQuV (https://twitter.com/seculardotorg/status/1295713070715744259?s=02) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download?s=13
LISTEN. I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I choose to draw down the curtain on our short summer course with one last nod to my old landlord Winterton Curtis. I've already posted a small excerpt of his Dayton recollections below, but Tompkins' D-Days at Dayton (LSU Press,1965) includes a lengthier essay and his formal affidavit as submitted to the court... (continues) == "The best life in America"
LISTEN. Feeling nostalgic for ordinary campus life, as we used to know it, I recall the way my first landlord Winterton Curtis concluded his "Damned Yankee" autobiographical notes:
...IT WAS [Mizzou] PRESIDENT LAWS who admitted publicly that he settled the competition between the various Protestant denominations for representation on his faculty, by choosing his appointees in rotation. If he needed a chemist, he chose a chemist who was a Methodist, if it was the Methodists' turn. The Baptists had their chance for a place in the . sun when the next vacancy .occurred. Since the father of George Lefevre was a Presbyterian minister, he was razzed by his friends as being a Presbyterian appointee, even though he came to the University in 1899, and the administration of President Laws was only a memory. No such accusation was ever pinned on me, although my father was a Congregational minister, since Congregationalism was a denomination unfamiliar to most Columbians.
I MIGHT HAVE included here the story of how I built the house at 210 [later re-numbered 504] Westmount Avenue into which Mrs. Curtis and I moved in December 1906, but that account is reserved for another section of my autobiographical notes.
It is a thing to make life worthwhile to have lived so long in a home that one planned and built in part with his own hands on a street freshly cut from a cornfield , to have planted the trees and watched their growth until they arch the street, and above all to have lived in a university community. I think the best life in America is to be had in university and college towns such as Columbia.
And Murfreesboro, once upon a time... and someday again, maybe?
A big thematic resonance for me, in Curtis's writing and in our course, is this idea of making a home for ourselves on this earth. Carl Sagan also said that what drew him to appreciate William James's approach to questions of spirituality was the latter's emphasis on the feeling of being at home in the universe. That was also Sagan's understanding of the spiritual promise of science, that we would--through the steady application of scientific and rationalistic methods and insights--come to feel ourselves, as a species, at home in the universe. We would come to see ourselves as embodying what John Dewey would call "the continuous human community"...
“The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received, that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it.” John Dewey, A Common Faith
Survey shows how poorly we understand the beliefs of people who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. — https://getpocket.com/explore/item/atheists-are-sometimes-more-religious-than-christians?utm_source=emailsynd&utm_medium=social
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"America is a country so suffused with faith that religious attributes abound even among the secular. Consider the rise of “atheist churches,” which cater to Americans who have lost faith in supernatural deities but still crave community, enjoy singing with others, and want to think deeply about morality. It’s religion, minus all the God stuff."
As Wm James said, the deepest religious impulse is not for god but for life, "more life, a richer life..." etc.
The etymology of the word is telling: "religare" means to bind or connect, to nature and to other humans.
But...
“I hypothesize that being ‘spiritual’ may be a transitional position between being Christian and being non-religious,” said Linda Woodhead, a professor of politics, philosophy, and religion at Lancaster University in the U.K. “Spirituality provides an opportunity for people to maintain what they like about Christianity without the bits they don’t like.”
I don't think spirituality is a merely-transitional phenomenon. Etymology again: "espiritu" means breath. To breathe is to live, and to deliberately honor and gratify the life impulse is to serve the spirit. Check out Carl Sagan's posthumous "Varieties of Scientific Experience" for a lucid discussion of the spirituality implicit in science.
TPM Philosophy Quote (@tpmquote) tweeted at 6:00 PM on Tue, Jul 21, 2020: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).--George Orwell (https://twitter.com/tpmquote/status/1285711172461789184?s=02) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download?s=13
TPM Philosophy Quote (@tpmquote) tweeted at 6:00 PM on Tue, Jul 21, 2020: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).--George Orwell (https://twitter.com/tpmquote/status/1285711172461789184?s=02) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download?s=13
The great Douglas Adams died #onthisday in 2001. We will always remember him for his creativity, inventiveness, and his sense of humour - these things of his brightened so many lives. A great legacy to leave behind. #HumanismAtHomepic.twitter.com/iuZaT8ydFg
Human Evolution, and a Humanist Response to Crisis
Final Report by Jessica Carlan
The current epidemic has been on all of our minds, and I think it's worth investigating the human response to this crisis. In the light of evolutionary biology, we know that the human species has evolved to become social creatures: we feed on the knowledge of those who came before us, and we easily mimic one another's actions and beliefs, often unconsciously. Thus, when we see toilet paper disappear off store shelves, we receive signals such as Must Acquire Paper Products For Safety Purposes. As much as we differ as individuals , in some ways we are simply wired to be a member of the herd.
The herd mentality doesn't always work to our benefit. In the midst of a crisis, we desire to have a modicum of control over our lives. An invisible killer that can destroy our immune systems? We have very little control over such things. The best thing we can do is keep apart from people and wash our hands. But those measures don't seem drastic enough. Need Toilet Paper. Must Hoard Groceries. Five Hundred Cans of Lysol. And Gummy Bears, Just In Case, Because They Are By The Register. We respond to subtle suggestions, and much more so to not-so-subtle ones. When we began to see more people wearing masks, we bought them for ourselves. People who hadn't gotten the sewing machine out of the attic for years starting frantically sewing masks for themselves and everyone they knew. My grandmother even gave out extras at the doctor's office. We humans truly are social animals--there was no expectation that she should do something generous for those strangers. However, in times of crisis, we understand that mutual support is better than in-fighting. We play the long game to protect each other, and thus ourselves, like honeybees defending the hive. At the same time, we may do irrational things like load up on unnecessary supplies, even though it could be detrimental to our neighbors. It's as if our brains have evolved in multiple directions at once. We are both stingy and charitable; depending on the situation, either behavior may prove to be an advantage for the individual.
I overheard at the grocery store one night in March: a woman talking to her friend about another woman shopping: "Look at her with them gloves and mask, wiping down the cart, scared, but I'm sure she ain't got Jesus. How you think all that gonna help you without Jesus? Ain't none of that gonna help nobody if they ain't got Jesus."
This has been an interesting phenomenon to observe. We've seen churchgoers on TV ignoring calls to worship from home, and heading to big church services instead. On MSNBC one morning, watching with my roommates, I saw a woman leaving her megachurch parking lot, sans mask, and apparently unconcerned. "I'm covered in the blood of Jesus," she said to the news reporter.
"But what about other people you come into contact with?" the reporter asks her. "What if you get them sick after getting the virus in church?"
She didn't have a good response for that, just reiterated that she was covered. Presumably, the other people she's putting at risk should get their hearts right.
As recently as last week, a family member urged me to read the New Testament again. "It may help you see the truth," she said. She often forgets that in my younger days I attended Bible college.
My typical response is to remind her I know all the "right" things, according to her view. I have the theology down. What I don't have is an answer for the problem of evil.
"Why would God allow thousands of people to die from a virus?"
There's never a satisfactory answer. Still, some try.
If God, Why the Coronavirus? -Vince Vitale
In a YouTube search for atheism, Covid 19 and evolution, most of what I found was like the above: a theistic apologist attempting to explain the bizarre events of biological life with trite aphorisms. He says that God doesn't enjoy watching us suffer. The speaker uses the real-life analogy of taking his young son to get medical tests. The boy doesn't understand what's happening to him. All the father can do is say, "I'm here, I'm here," to reassure him.
This isn't an argument so much as a tug on the heartstrings. In this scenario, the boy's discomfort is not terminal, and serves an actual purpose. He has a heart problem and needs to be examined. Is a novel coronavirus God's way of checking on our lung health? It is highly unlikely that respiratory failures, lost jobs, recession and collective trauma will be better for us in the long run, as the boy's heart testing would benefit his health treatment. Besides, if the boy's father was the one who allowed him to become sick when it could have prevented, as God perhaps could have done, his reassurances would not be very reassuring.
from Why
Overreacting to the Threat of the Coronavirus May Be Rational by Belinda Luscombe
"Our guts are way ahead of our understanding,” [risk-communications
consultant Peter] Sandman tells TIME. “Emotionally, we rightly sense that life
as we know it has temporarily changed. But intellectually and behaviorally, the
change hasn’t sunk in yet.” And in an era of eroding trust in traditional
oracles—the media, the government, the medical profession—people are not sure
who to turn to. So they do what most creatures do when they’re afraid and
confused; they copy what everyone else like them is doing. At base, we are herd
animals; if all our fellow gazelles are running one way, we run that way too,
to insulate us from the hazard. When traditional institutions cease to seem
trustworthy, people rely on those they do trust, their neighbors and friends.As a species, humans have survived
by bullying their way to the top of the food chain, by outwitting predators and
by being ingenious enough to withstand disasters. Also, evolutionary
psychologists and sacred texts both say, we’ve thrived by communicating and
working together. The species looks likely to withstand this novel threat as
well, but perhaps at some cost to our common sense.
A mistrust of government institutions, a medical system with many flaws and inconsistencies, and the tendency to trust false information we hear from our neighbors can all contribute to poor decision-making. One of the "traditional oracles" not mentioned above is religious instruction. Luscombe kindly includes sacred texts as a way to build community and strengthen human bonds; however, as we see in some real life scenarios, religious teachings can encourage people not to be cautious. Thankfully most places of worship have remained closed, and switched to online meetings or other formats. My relatives, for example, were encouraged to "trust God but be smart." Thus, they hand out their extra masks, and go home to make more until they run out of elastic and fabric.
There are other community responses that offer a different perspective. For example, journalists and progressive politicians are using the crisis to point out the disparities in disease treatment and showing the flaws in our fractured healthcare system. A Medicare For All solution, they say, or a government plan to pay for all COVID 19 treatment, would go a long way in helping reduce the spread of the disease and mortality rates. Many people wait until the last possible minute to seek treatment, when it is more difficult and dangerous to try to save them. With fewer difficulties in accessing hospitals (such as in rural or impoverished areas) and getting treatment, there would be fewer virus fatalities.
from Why Some People Get Sicker Than Others:
COVID-19 is proving to be a disease of the immune system. This could, in theory, be controlled.
While America’s deepest health disparities absolutely would
require generations to undo, the country still could address many gaps right
now. Variation in immune responses between people is due to much more than age
or chronic disease. The immune system is a function of the communities that
brought us up and the environments with which we interact every day. Its
foundation is laid by genetics and early-life exposure to the world around
us—from the food we eat to the air we breathe. Its response varies on the basis
of income, housing, jobs, and access to health care.
The people who get the most severely sick from COVID-19 will
sometimes be unpredictable, but in many cases, they will not. They will be the
same people who get sick from most every other cause. Cytokines like IL-6 [proven to be connected with COVID-19 symptoms] can
be elevated by a single night of bad sleep. Over the course of a lifetime, the
effects of daily and hourly stressors accumulate. Ultimately, people who are
unable to take time off of work when sick—or who don’t have a comfortable and
quiet home, or who lack access to good food and clean air—are likely to bear
the burden of severe disease...
Often, it’s a matter of what societies choose to
tolerate. America has empty hotels while people sleep in parking lots. We are
destroying food while people go hungry. We are allowing individuals to endure
the physiological stresses of financial catastrophe while bailing out
corporations. With the coronavirus, we do not have vulnerable populations so
much as we have vulnerabilities as a population. Our immune system is not
strong.
Hamblin points out that our trouble is not individuals within the community, but our existing social structures which create problems with COVID treatment. We have "vulnerabilities as a population" that show us we still have much work to do to create a more equitable society. For many people, staying home and away from danger is impossible.
The current White House Administration has proven haphazard in its approach to the outbreak. Much more could have been done much earlier to help quell the rise of infections. However, some of the responses have been not only short-sighted, but alarming.
from Trump Administration to Redirect WHO Funding to Evangelist
Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, Putting Lives at Risk
Washington, D.C.—Today, the church/state separation watchdog
organization American Atheists denounced the Trump Administration’s alleged
plan to steer nearly $400 million in World Health Organization (WHO)
contributions to private organizations, including Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s
Purse.
“WHO conducts coronavirus vaccine trials, distributes test
kits, and advises countless governments. A divisive Christian organization
whose leader claims this pandemic is due to ‘man turn[ing] his back on God’ cannot
be trusted to replace WHO’s critical mission,” said Alison Gill, Vice President
for Legal and Policy, who wrote a scathing indictment of Samaritan’s Purse,
warning about discrimination against vulnerable groups, such as women, LGBTQ
Americans, religious minorities, and nonreligious people.
“Let’s be clear about Trump’s
motives,” said Nick Fish, President of American Atheists. “To improve his
reelection chances, he’s scapegoating WHO and is rewarding his most ardent
evangelical supporters, like Franklin Graham, for literally demonizing
opponents. This is a dangerous quid-pro-quo involving hundreds of millions of
dollars in government funding and, more importantly, thousands of American
lives.”
The American Atheists are a group dedicated to promoting the separation of church and state in the U.S. Often this line is blurred, particularly during conservative presidencies. Events such as the National Prayer Breakfast and the National Day of Prayer observed in schools, as well as tax breaks for religious institutions, can make for a strange landscape in our politics. However expected these inconsistencies may be, the act of withdrawing funding from the World Health Organization during a global pandemic to be funneled into a religious organization is not only hyper-partisan, but appalling and dangerous. The administration, perhaps, feels they have something to prove to their constituents. However, our immediate concerns are more pressing. This is a time for the nations of the world to be rallying together to fight a deadly disease.
I find myself wondering what the appropriate Humanist response would be to this crisis. Clearly, to protect the vulnerable is a moral imperative. I will stay home when possible, wear a mask, keep my distance, wash my hands, offer assistance wherever I can. But I also believe that when the worst of this is over, we will have a lot of soul-searching to do. What are our priorities as human beings?
The secular humanist believes in promoting the welfare of his fellow humans. This may look different among individuals, but on a large scale, at the very least we should be pushing for a society that can look after its citizens, and is also willing to do so. The American concept of individual liberty and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps only works if everyone has a pair of boots to begin with. The attitude shown by some, with cries of "Let the weak perish!" only serves to remind us of how calloused humanity can become to its own kind. We show our true quality when we are willing to sacrifice the old, the weak, and the immuno-compromised for the convenience of the capable. Our society has still to overcome to evils of racism, classism, and ableism to evolve into the kind of creatures we out to be. To be less like praying mantises, beheading our rivals, and more collaborative like the honeybee, will, I believe, be the next necessary step in human evolution if we wish to continue living fruitful and meaningful lives on our planet.
Thanks for a great semester, everyone.
Here is some housekeeping:
1 reply Crystal 3/31
1 reply Patricia 4/1
1 post (Wash. Post) 4/1
1 reply Patricia 4/2
1 reply Jamil 4/7
1 reply Phil 4/27 Neil Gaiman/long now
1 reply Ben 4/27 online community
1 reply Patricia 4/27 Covid thoughts
I believe I scored about 18 runs for the semester.
The book is based on lectures given by John Dewey as part of the 1933-1934 “Terry Lectures” at Yale University. The book is available for free on JSTOR if you login using your MTSU login info.
One of the biggest things that stood out to me in the first chapter/section was Dewey’s analysis of why religion doesn’t appeal as much as it did in the past and how many of those things have not changed since 1934. The faith written about in A Common Faith reminds me of the kind of faith that Dr. Oliver
spoke of in class when he referred to the William James’ mountain climber example.Dewey says that his goal is to “develop another conception of the religious phase of experience, one that separates it from the supernatural and the things that have grown up about it.” To me as someone who is not religious he is essentially trying to redefine or reclaim the word religious in “religious experience”. He says that “whatever introduces genuine perspective is religious, not that religion is something that introduces it.” (pg. 24) and “The actual religious quality in the experience described is the effect produced, the better adjustment in life and its conditions, not the manner and cause of its production.” (pg. 14) Dewey throughout this section is trying to lay out a common “religious experience” that can be had by anyone and is not exclusive to a select group of people who have to believe a certain thing to attain some form of special knowledge. Dewey says that “The determining factor in the interpretation of the experience is the particular doctrinal apparatus into which a person has been inducted.” (pg. 13) and he wants people to move away from interpreting experiences in this way. Dewey also talks about the view held in “Modern religious liberalism” that there is a gap between “scientific and religious experience” which implies that there is a limited sphere where scientific knowledge is supreme but that there is also “another region”...”of intimate personal experience wherein other methods and criteria hold sway.” This really just stood out to me because of the significant amount of people who seem to not only hold this view that there is a gap between “scientific and religious experience”, but also say that the gap is essentially permanent regardless of scientific advancement. Dewey went on to say “Yet the gap may only reflect, at most, a limitation now existing but in the future to be done away with.” Dewey then continues and says that it's an old and dangerous argument to say that “because some province or aspect of experience has not yet been ‘invaded’ by scientific methods, it is not subject to them”. (pg. 34-35) Dewey says things throughout this middle section of the book like “It is probably impossible to imagine the amount of intellectual energy that has been diverted from normal processes of arriving at intellectual conclusions because it has gone into rationalization of the doctrines entertained by historic religions.” (pg. 33) and “Interpretations of the experience have not grown from the experience itself with the aid of such scientific resources as may be available. They have been imported by borrowing without criticism from ideas that are current in the surrounding culture.” (pg. 36) Dewey throughout the book is very critical of people tying their religious doctrines to their “religious” experiences but acknowledges, “The experience is a fact to be inquired into.” (pg. 35) but that using your personal interpretation of this experience to explain it or its cause is misguided because of its “dependence upon a prior conception of the supernatural.” (pg. 35) which is essentially given to you by your “surrounding culture”. He continues on to defend science as “a method of changing beliefs by means of tested inquiry as well as of arriving at them.” (pg. 39) against the claim by many religious people that because so many things get disproven in science that it is unreliable as a “mode of knowledge.” Throughout this section I kept thinking of the parallels between this book and The End of Faith by Sam Harris primarily due to the theme of trying to emancipate religious doctrine from experiences that would be typically considered mystical. Dewey goes on later and says “An ideal is not an illusion because imagination is the organ through which it is apprehended. For all possibilities reach us through the imagination.” (pg. 43) This makes me wonder whether he would say that you cannot believe a religious doctrine and separate “religious experiences” from your personal religious interpretation or if it is possible through imagination, or that you must first not adhere to a religious doctrine and then you are better able to make use of “religious experiences”. He does say that “what I have tried to show is that the ideal itself has its root in natural conditions; it emerges when the imagination idealizes existence by laying hold of the possibilities offered to thought and action.” (pg. 48) Things like this is why I imagine Richard Rorty said in the video I posted that many philosophers thought he was a relativist because they would argue that people imagine the ideal differently. I believe Dewey is trying to say that the ideal is imagined differently because what can be imagined is dependent on “physical and social experience.” (pg. 49) and through the process of changing reality through action you can change what can be imagined.
This is the video I referred to about Rorty discussing Dewey.
Now more than ever, surviving (or trying to anyway) during a national pandemic has been hard as a person who lacks faith. I have realized in more ways than one that my previous life of faith was not something that I ever truly called on or genuinely lived by unless I was in times of distress and discomfort. And although this does solidify that my graceful exit from the Southern Baptist Church was the correct move for me, I have found myself looking back on it with a sense of nostalgia. It felt much easier to, "Let Go and Let God" - if you will.
Because of this I
decided to combine my midterm topic with my final topic. My midterm
presentation I will elaborate on in more depth, and in application, as I
have had to find purpose without faith much more than I ever have had
to in the past, due to current events. It can be seen here in presentation mode for reference.
This
statistical chart was in reference to a survey asking individuals where
they found their highest sense of purpose, and surprisingly only
23% of people reported that their highest sense of purpose stemmed from
their spiritual practices (the category that religion was classified
under. Remember, everyone, spirituality is not necessarily synonymous
with religion.)
I've had to ask myself this often over the last
month and a half. I've had most of the things that give me a purpose
stripped from me, with little to nothing I can do about it. I found daily
purpose in attending class on campus, surrounded by like-minded
individuals. Feeding my knowledge and solidifying my own belief systems
with each passing day and interaction. I lost the majority of my income
due to pandemic precautionary restrictions (not a good time to be a
bartender, ladies and gentlemen.) I never realized the security provided to me by having a steady, reliable income that alleviated me from ever questioning my purpose as a provider. I never realized how much I looked to my
job for purpose. Each shift I worked I knew what was expected of me. I
had a meaning in my position. I looked forward to the familiar faces I
saw each week that probably equivocally relied on the routine of seeing me
as much as I relied on the routine of seeing them. I looked forward to
still, slow mornings, waking up to a freshly brewed pot of coffee, and making my son's breakfast
and lunch before taking him to school. I found purpose in fulfilling my
daily responsibilities as a mother, which I find have rapidly
multiplied to the point that they now overwhelm me instead of satisfy me.
It felt incredibly
abrasive to have all of those things that gave me a sense of meaning
stripped from me at once - but in some ways I am now finding this
experience could be incredibly helpful if I let it. Because it is my right and authority to own my experience, as I have further learned in this text. It is one thing to make a
PowerPoint presentation on how an Atheist finds purpose, it is another to
be an Atheist that is now required to cultivate that purpose amidst the lack of the all the arbitrary things that may supply it for
you, even if you do not realize that they do. To practice what you preach, no pun intended.
~
Dan
Barker's book titled, "A Life Driven Purpose," starts by breaking down
some of the stigma surrounding atheism, but he ultimately spends most of
the book identifying that the answer to the transcendent question of
"What is the purpose of life" is simply this: to live it. There is no
other divine explanation, or metaphysical explanation. Life is
important, it is meaningful and intrinsically purposeful because
it is life. Human beings have an instinctive desire to find the cause of
any and every thing that happens. Though this is sometimes a good thing, as it is
often the motivator for scientific, technological, economic, and social
discovery and reform, we also have the strongest desire to find a cause
in times of depravity. "Who is to blame for this" or "Why did this
happen" are at the forefront of questions most people ask when something
goes undeniably wrong. The discomfort that derives from not being able
to answer those questions is why I believe religion has continued to be the most powerful
and influential conduit that exists. When we just don't know, isn't it nice to believe in an omnipotent God that always knows? If anything, it certainly gives a certain peace of mind
when an individual doesn't want to take responsibility for their,
perhaps, hindering personal choices.
My grandmother explains
every negative situation with a biblical reason. "Maybe you were late to
work because you would've been in a wreck if you had left on time, and
God knew it wasn't your time yet." That certainly alleviates the stress
on me to take responsibility for the probable fact that the reason I was late to work,
was because I stayed up until 2 o'clock in the morning. This is a
trivial example, but it checks out as a great defense mechanism in even
grander scheme scenarios.
But the problem that Barker
repetitively finds, is that living a life that has no personal purpose
often deflects not only the responsibility in doing the living, but the ownership
of one's own life. An individual's experience has to be inherently their
own. Decisions, accomplishments, short comings, all of it, has to
belong to the person living the life or else that would imply that life
is practically meaningless. He compares living entirely for the sake of
someone else, formidably a higher power in this text, is the admittance
that you are nothing more than a tool waiting around to be used. That
you would be comparable to that of a hammer, who's only purpose exists
in waiting for someone who needs to do some hammering. In and of
yourself, you would be useless without the hand that reaches for you.
This may be egotistical of me, but I am not inclined to believe that my
function in the world is defined by when, if, and how I can be useful to
a higher power. I am useful, because I am here. Because I exist.
I
have had to call on that often during current times. What am I if I am
not a great mother, an "essential worker," a participant student? What is my
value if I am not able to be of some use to the world around me? Well, a
large salutations to Mr. Barker, for reminding me that I am valuable to
myself because I have a life to participate in for me, and in so much,
my purpose is defined by the doing so. By the living.
Subsequently, Barker also
makes a solid counter-argument on the systemic belief that we as a
society need religion and faith based doctrines in order to know how to
be "good." "How does an anti-theist know how to be a good person?" This,
he concludes, is learned by the ownership of our existence and
participation in the world. He uses an example in the text of a personal
situation he was in, where he saved a small infant in a car seat
carrier that was atop a stack of luggage from falling to the floor in an
airport. "Why did I do it?" he reflects on. He concludes by saying,
"It was instinctive and automatic, with no conscious deliberation, as
if I were watching someone else. It was immediate emotion. As I was
holding onto that carrier, I felt a huge relief, as if I had just saved
my own child. My body was on full alert; my breathing and heart rate
sped up. Why did I do it? I didn’t know those people. We might not have
liked each other. Should it matter to me if someone else’s child gets
hurt? Was it reciprocal altruism? Did I say to the mother, “Okay, lady, I
did you a favor, now you owe me one”?" This example speaks on
the nature of morality and ethics being biologically inherent as a
human being. He did not catch the baby because of an ancient code of
morality that has been passed down from generation to generation that
has taught human beings how to be good or bad. He caught the baby out of
pure natural reaction, to reduce harm to the species as a whole,
however large or small the act may be. We are a collective, communal
species. We define morality by acting in accordance with our genetic
affinity for reducing harm to ourselves and others around us, not
because it has been dictated to us by an overseer. There are people who
will never be exposed to the word of God, that still have an innate
ability to conclude, through simply living, when an action is good or
bad, or harmful or helpful. This again re-affirms Barker's position that
you learn what he calls, "Mere Morality" through the living, and through
the doing. The lessons you learn in life should belong to you as well.
God didn't act through him and use his arm as nothing more than a mere tool to catch that
falling baby, he caught the falling baby. Why did he do it? Because why would you let a baby fall? You don't need a god to interpret the answer.
*cue lighthearted humorous comic strip*
But,
in all actuality, I do find that my biggest critique and disconnect towards
religion, that Barker also showcases wonderfully in his text, is the
consistent obsession with meaning and purpose gravitating entirely
around an afterlife and evaluation from a God that can never logically
be proven or dis-proven. That nothing that we do in our lives, A)
Belongs to us, or B) Matters in this physical, earthy realm. Everything
is woven together by the concept that all occurrences in an individual's
life is really just a waste of time until you die and then get to see
how you did. I wonder how many runs it would take to get into heaven?
Any commentary on that, Dr. Oliver? 😏 I will conclude with some
key takeaways that will probably stick with me for the rest of my life,
that I may have never considered without taking this class - or going
through this pandemic as a secular human being existing in a largely religious
society. 1. Is is about you. As Dan Barker states, "Purpose is personal. It can’t be right or wrong. It can’t be true or false. It can’t not be about you. It’s how you decide to live your own life. If someone
else tells you how to live, you are not free." If you've read any of the
bible, many passages and versus are directly referenced in the text,
there are countless examples of the disciples rejecting their autonomy, and
claiming to be nothing more than a mere shell and vessel for God to do
with what he will. That, in theory, the more I evaluate it, seems
awfully unrewarding. Before anyone gets carried away here, this does not
mean you define your own morality. Please reference above about mere
morality being the product of a communal human experience. Right and
wrong still exist - you can't just start making up your own rules.
Atheist still abide by constructs of morality and ethics. Speaking from
personal experience, I've actually met more atheist than I have
religious people who are more concerned with the greater good of society
as a whole and not so centered on individualistic experience and
rewards in the afterlife. Are you doing good to be good, or to buy a ticket into heaven? The answer does matter! 2. This is your life. That is what purpose means. Life is purpose, and purpose is life.
There is no amount of comfort in that realization that has come close to what religion provided for me in the past. Simply knowing that my being is
reason enough to continue, to meet (even though I've not been so great
at it during these turbulent times) standards and deadlines, to be present, to
participate and value myself is my purpose and that I deserve to do those
things in order to have a meaningful life - for myself alone. Putting good into the world, also makes me feel good. I realize this sounds similiar to hedonism, but that would require a longer discussion differentiating between goodness and pleasure. However, I do not
worry about the threat of eternal damnation, I do not worry about
factors beyond explanation or my control. I know what I can do given my
situation, I am aware of what I cannot do, and in the living through my experience is where
purpose is found. 3. If I am wrong, I suppose the logical explanation is simply that I was not right.
And I really give it no more a thought that than. I do not believe that
the boogeyman lives under my bed. However, if he does, and I am scooped
up in the middle of the night and consumed by this boogeyman, I believe
it is safe to say there is nothing that I could do about it. If I die,
and I arrive at heaven's gates, I surmise that there will be nothing for me to
say other than, "Aw, Sh*t." This does not mean that I will not continue
to do my best each day to be a good person because I should be a good
person. I will be good to thy neighbor, because my neighbor is deserving
of kindness. Taking possession of my purpose and understanding exactly what it means to do so, has been one of
the most freeing, satisfying experiences of my life. And I encourage
even my most religious friends to do the same. I also have no intention
of degrading those who make the conscious choice to be religious. I
think religion can be a glorious metaphorical whipped cream on top of a
life sundae, even if I don't prefer sweets myself. However, I find it incredibly imperative to the human experience to define and recognize that your own purpose cannot be
owned, auctioned, or judged by anyone but yourself. You have earned that right.
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