Try to relate your topic to the texts we're reading now, even if you're expanding on your midterm presentation theme.
Remember, the accompanying final blog post is due April 29 but you can post earlier drafts if you want potentially-helpful constructive feedback.
Also: Don't forget to read and comment on Grace and Adele's [and Meyer's?] midterm report posts.
APR 7 - Samer
APR 12 - Javan
APR 14 - Conor, Gary
APR 19 - John
APR 21 - Trevor, Meyer [& Grace, Adele, should they choose to present]
That was a crowded, exceptional, enlightening day.
Picked up the first of our two visiting faculty candidates at the airport, in from Portland ME, and proceeded to crawl the first half of the way to campus in what I honestly assured him was an atypically-congested commute on I-24. Honestly atypical, I mean, in that direction at that hour. I don't know how drivers coming into the city and out again tolerate that volume of traffic, morning after morning and night after night... (continues)As we study secularism, humanist, and atheism, we should be aware of the views of those who stand completely opposed to these things. I thought this opinion piece summed up these views very well:
The fatal fall of
religion in America will affect everything
As our society moves away from faith, there is
more loneliness and lack of community
By Don Feder - - Tuesday, March 29, 2022
OPINION:
A just-published survey of the decline of
religion in America should set off alarm bells in our heads. The growth of
secularism is one more cause for anxiety about the future of our republic.
The study by the prestigious American
Enterprise Institute — “Generation Z and the future of faith in America”
(released on March 24) — shows a steady erosion of religious affiliation and
the corresponding rise of atheism and agnosticism.
Generation Z (born 1997 to 2012) is the least
religious in our history, with 34% reporting that they aren’t affiliated with a
church, synagogue or another religious body. That’s nine points higher than for
Generation X and five points higher than millennials.
Alexis de Tocqueville, that astute observer of
early 19th-century America, said he found the genius of our young republic in
the moral voice of its churches. Today, that voice is increasingly silenced.
MAR 31 SL 5-6.
1. A secular society is one in which the state is what?
2. Why isn't the UK that secular?
3. Law suggests that people of religious faith should be treated no differently than supporters of what?
4. What letter was read from the pulpit of every Catholic church in Poland in 1936?
5. How many UK citizens are unwilling to express even a cultural connection to Christianity?
DQ
Ch6
1. Coming soon...
TheHumanist.com's latest edition includes:
On the Trail of Humanism’s Hidden Women. Madeleine Goodall, Humanist Heritage Coordinator at Humanists UK, explores the pioneering women of early humanism in an effort to honor their legacy and influence.
The Morality of Atheism. A recent survey revealed absolute belief in God is at an all-time low. But, argues academic and prominent humanist thinker Phil Zuckerman, nonbelief doesn't translate to a lack of morality. SL 3-4 (after we catch up with 1-2)
Time to select final report topics, presentations to follow same order as midterm reports. Try to relate your topic to the texts we're reading now, even if you're expanding on your midterm presentation theme.
Remember, the accompanying final blog post is due April 29 but you can post earlier drafts if you want potentially-helpful constructive feedback.
Also: Don't forget to read and comment on Grace and Adele's midterm report posts.
1. Many Theists respond to the logical problem of evil by asserting the possibility of a divinely-ordained what?
2. The quantity of evil in the world is relevant to which version of the problem?
3. What's an example of a second-order good alleged to require first-order evil?
4. The evil god hypothesis raises what problem?
5. The evidence of there being no evil god is also, Law suggests, evidence of what?
6. Why can't Adam & Eve's sin explain contemporary natural disasters?
7. No one insists that what is a faith position?
8. What is apophaticism?
DQ
Ch 4
1. God's commands, on Law's (Plato's) reading of the Euthyphro dilemma, are for what purpose?
2. Like it or not, what cannot be avoided? (HINT: What did Stewart Brand say?)
3. What does Law say about Arthur Brooks's book, and the link between religion and charitableness?
4. What's distinctive about humanist morality?
5. If what were true, there'd be no point in thinking critically about morality?
DQ
DQ
Humanism: A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Law (SL), intro, 1-2
1. Law says humanists oppose what forms of coercion?
2. The Carvaka school in India illustrates what point?
3. Why is Aristotle significant to humanists?
4 What did Seneca say about religion?
5. What did Averroes say about the interpretation of scripture?
6. Sapere aude means what?
7. What did Hume say about his finger?
8. In what sense were the new ethical societies of the 19th century religious?
9. What did the Minnesota study reveal about how atheists in America are commonly regarded?
[UPDATE, Wed 23d: Thanks for the ch2 questions, Gary. Do the rest of you want to propose some discussion questions?]
Discussion Questions
Here's Stephen Law on Zoom in August 2020. You might want to skip the first couple of minutes of "technical difficulties"...
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elon-musk-the-evening-rocket/id1591294233
...The textbook that John Scopes used in Tennessee was a 1914 edition of George William Hunter’s “A Civic Biology,” published by the American Book Company. More than a guide to life on earth, “Civic Biology” was a civics primer, a guide to living in a democracy.
“This book shows boys and girls living in an urban community how they may best live within their own environment and how they may cooperate with the civic authorities for the betterment of their environment,” the book’s foreword explained. “Civic Biology” promoted Progressive public-health campaigns, all the more urgent in the wake of the 1918 influenza pandemic, stressing the importance of hygiene, vaccination, and quarantine. “Civic biology symbolized the whole ideology behind education reform,” Adam Shapiro wrote in his 2013 book, “Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools.” It contained a section on evolution (“If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals”), but its discussion emphasized the science of eugenics. Hunter wrote, of alcoholics and the criminal and the mentally ill, “If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading.”
At bottom, “Civic Biology” rested on social Darwinism. “Society itself is founded upon the principles which biology teaches,” Hunter wrote. “Plants and animals are living things, taking what they can from their surroundings; they enter into competition with one another, and those which are the best fitted for life outstrip the others.” What did it feel like, for kids who were poor and hungry, living in want and cold and fear, to read those words?
When anti-evolutionists condemned “evolution,” they meant something as vague and confused as what people mean, today, when they condemn “critical race theory.” Anti-evolutionists weren’t simply objecting to Darwin, whose theory of evolution had been taught for more than half a century. They were objecting to the whole Progressive package, including its philosophy of human betterment, its model of democratic citizenship, and its insistence on the interest of the state in free and equal public education as a public good that prevails over the private interests of parents...
Philosophy and Souls
Baginni stated almost immediately in his book that Atheists don’t believe in souls, and as someone who is still exploring labels and beliefs, it stuck with me because souls are something that I do believe in. I couldn’t stop thinking about this statement and wish I was smart enough or had the proper knowledge to explain why I feel as though souls are real, at least for me.
What I do have, however, is a pretty good essay-- if I can say so for myself-- regarding Plato’s 5 types of souls and governments. I wrote this essay my freshman year, before Breonna Taylor was killed, before Covid, before the 2020 election, and I think that the points made in the essay stand true to today, as well as showcase an example of how souls are a natural phenomenon in a characteristic/personality kind of way. I can dig out the essay if you’d like to read it in full, but I’ll summarize it for now with additions for our sake.
Plato’s The Republic tells us about the 5 types of constitutions and the souls that correlate to them, that run them. It’s a devolution from an Aristocracy to a Despotism, and if you just read it blindly, it can seem a little frightening in a way. If you were full of nationalism, you would definitely not wish to see it compared to America as we know it, but I was able to point out examples to three of the constitutions in America’s history.
From the top, or the best, we have an Aristocracy, run by the wisdom lovers. They’re the best at war and in philosophy, but Plato says the only way to achieve it is through marriage by lottery. Now, I’m not sure I believe that, but in its entirety, it sounds like the picture of a utopian society of which I couldn’t and still cannot think of an example-- especially in America.
Next we devolve into a Timocracy, run by those with the need to achieve honor and is therefore dominated by the motives of ambition. Plato uses Sparta as an example as a Timocracy prefers war over peace as a way to achieve honor. Looking back at this moment, I think we could see bits and pieces of Timocracy in America, or maybe simply those with a timocratical point of view rather. It does seem as though America has a bit of a superiority complex with its military and we do from time to time see more people choosing war over peace; however, I think these are just anomalies in the system. Every single individual isn’t born with the same thought processes or opinions, so Plato’s insinuation that everyone falls within these guidelines is a little crazy.
However, this is where I began drawing more specific examples from America. The middle of the list is an Oligarchy, which comes to an end when the poverty stricken band together to end the rich. My parallel to America with this rule is technically pre-America. This parallel is the reason the pilgrims fled Europe for America. They were being taxed on nearly everything imaginable which was bleeding them dry and in turn caused them to flee to create what is the next and second worst form on the list-- the Democracy.
A democracy is said to be achieved by force or fear. It is driven by people who have a love and desire for freedom. The parallel here might seem obvious, but the murder of Native Americans and forced moving of them from thier native lands to then occupy the space and call it their own. I find that this parallel is the most obvious because it is the most striking. If you look at the things Plato said about the democracy and the freedom-loving souls that rule it, it practically spells out The United States of America.
To humbly quote myself, from my essay, “Plato refers to a Democracy as an agreeable form of anarchy, and I think he does that because it is ruled by the freedom lovers. A child, who is a lover of money, grows up to father a child who loves his freedom by raising him in his ways of fear of poverty. When the freedom-loving son grows up, he realizes there is no need to fear, and a constitution ripe with liberty is born. In a democracy, people are taught and believe that liberty is the noblest possession which makes it the only constitution fit to live in; yet, the constant strive for the good of liberty will cause them to neglect everything else and lead them to despotism- the worst and fifth form of government.”
Now, in my essay, at that point in time of the world and in my life and opinions, I used this despotic government, ruled by those enslaved to their own appetites, without harsh discipline, and compared it to “how sensitive our generation is getting” and “how parents don’t discipline their kids anymore.” These are things that could still be seen as true from certain perspectives, sure; however, I’d like to make some amendments on those thoughts as I’ve grown a lot in the years since I wrote this essay, and I think this is where we can see the most evidence in a natural soul phenomenon.
I’ll start with this: Plato says that despotism inevitably springs from the democratic commonwealth “...putting forth a single champion of their interests, whom they nurse to greatness.” The footnote tied to the statement makes the claim that Aristotle observed many despots rose from demagogues, which many people would tag former president Trump as being. Which seems almost inevitable that, if one was taking Plato’s 5 to heart, America is in the 5th and worst form of government.
Furthermore, to brush up on my previous statements in the essay and tie them into more “accurate” statements regarding a naturalistic soul, maybe I took Plato at face value and didn’t think into his quote enough. I used his quote “the citizens are so sensitive that they resent the slightest application of control as intolerable tyranny, and in their resolve to have no master they end by disregarding the law...” to mean that our generation is too sensitive; however, maybe it’s pointing to the citizens coming to realize that their government is the master with a tyrannical power over them, and not liking it. Maybe it’s pointing to people realizing some laws don’t make sense, some laws aren’t for the good of every single person, or just maybe it could be pointing to the rise of evidence in police brutality. Maybe Plato wasn’t discussing sensitivity in a negative/emotional connotation but using the word to mean “more aware.” Similarly, maybe the spiel he made on being infected with anarchy and saying children were acting as parents and vice versa was simply a different take on how rabies affects animals-- in the sense of how anarchy would change an individual.
Without rambling on further, I simply think that a natural soul phenomenon is something that maybe could be discussed more, delved into farther. Maybe it’s science and chemicals that make Plato’s distinctions accurate and evident years later-- to be generous-- or maybe it is something else, more mystical, that hasn’t been discussed or thought about yet.
Discussion Questions:
Are there any other examples that you could think of pertaining to the 5 and America as we know it? Or examples to go against the 5?
If asked to choose which of the 5 governments you think America is in currently, what would you say?
Do you have any thoughts regarding Plato’s idea that I might have missed?
Exam 1 will be drawn from the even-numbered questions (2,4,6...) in January and February. Wording will be adjusted to fit the exam format, which will include an answer bank. Best way to prepare: revisit the texts. Recorded review:
https://mtsu.zoom.us/rec/share/RhvUht89aFHkSpfobgKh7iGtTEkL4jkdvJ9T5Ez87ILXJMDZDVnhvQr5ZA1z7iCS.Osx4mFc-u6uG5Hw9?startTime=1647452668000 (Passcode: ^X4F7?BB)
JB 1-2
The varieties of experience. WJ, Varieties of Religious Experience Preface, Lectures I-II (and whatever else you'd care to read) ; Carl Sagan, Varieties of Scientific Experience, editor's intro & whatever else you'd care to read. (You'll want to get hold of the book when you can, it features stunning astronomical photos missing from the excerpt below.) Also recommended: Pale Blue Dot, PBD text, PBD video, Who Speaks For Earth video, Cosmos, Cosmic Connection...and Carl's & Ann's daughter Sasha's For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World*
1. What was to have been the second part of these lectures, ultimately postponed (but "suggested" in the postscript)?
2. What precedent does WJ hope his lectures will set?
3. What result does WJ say is "alien to my intention"?
4. What "method of discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy" does WJ say we're all familiar with, which he calls medical ___?
5. Does WJ think religious emotions are more "organically conditioned" than scientific theories? Why does he think we find some states of mind superior to others?
6. What's WJ's definition of religion? And what do you think of it?
7. "At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is ___."
8. "We are in the end absolutely dependent on ___."
9. What did Carl Sagan find tragic about the Genesis creation story, and why did he find Darwinian science more spiritually satisfying? Do you?
10. Carl agreed with Bertrand Russell that what we need is ___. (Russell was targeting WJ with this barb, but do you Carl and WJ ultimately disagreed about this?)
11. Carl wanted us to see ourselves "not as the failed clay of a disappointed Creator but as ___."
12. What did Carl admire about WJ's definition of religion? Do you think science, religion, philosophy are in some important sense an attempt to come home? Or to have the experience of feeling at home, in our experience and our lives?
RR foreword, preface, 1
1. The ultimate goal and aim of pragmatism is what, according to Rorty?
2. How is Rorty at one with Kant?
3. Rorty says for James and Dewey the only goal was what?
4. What does Rorty want to teach us, according to Robert Brandom? And who do you think he means by "us"? Do you think WJ wanted to teach us the same thing?
5. What are norms, for Rorty, and how do they relate to reality (and Reality)? Do you understand and accept Rorty's upper/lower case distinction?
6. What of the original Enlightenment did Rorty applaud? Do you?
7. What in Plato and Christianity does Rorty call morally ambiguous?
8. What does Rorty say Dewey and Nietzsche simultaneously turned their backs on, and why? But what difference sharply distinguishes them?
9. What does Rorty say his version of pragmatism mediates and replaces?
10. Dewey, like James, hoped each new generation would try to do what? Is that a worthy and reasonable hope? What did Peirce, James, and Dewey "combine"? What was James more interested in than either of the other two?
11. James approvingly cited Papini's description of what, in making what point?
12. What did Dewey say was the proper task of future philosophy?
13. What do his biographers agree was central to the formation of Dewey's mature thought? To what need related to his father does Rorty think we owe the pragmatist theory of truth? What is that theory's underlying motive?
14. Dewey's stories are always stories of what kind of progress?
15. James rejects what Clifford-like view?
Polytheism, Universality and Truth. RR 2-4
1. Berthelot found an affinity between James and who? And traced the bifurcated roots of pragmatism to who?
2. Abrams says poetry can be a substitute for what? What definition "covers" Nietzsche and James?
3. Echoing Mill, James said what about demands and desires? Agree?
4. Nietzsche mistakenly thought what, about happiness? Do you agree that he was mistaken? How do James and Dewey differ from Nietzsche with regard to religious belief generally?
5. What text of James or Dewey does Rorty think "coheres best" with their shared view? What do you think of WJ's statement about "the end of religion"? (36)
6. In a democratic society everybody gets to worship what? What was "Dewey's god"?
7. In what way does Rorty see Clifford as religious?
8. RR thinks the universal desire for truth (or unconditionality) is better described as what? Why is the yearning for unconditionality unhealthy?
9. What makes us special, for Dewey? Why might that sound suspicious to Habermas and Apel?
10. What project "is democratic politics?
11. What do "we American college teachers do" when encountering religious fundamentalists?
Pan-Relationalism, Depth. RR 5-6 [I realize now, btw, that I was ahead of myself this afternoon when I said we were officially reading these lectures today.]
1. Rorty says "we bourgeois liberal have Dewey" and no longer need who to fend off anti-Enlightenment irrationalism? Agree? How would you characterize the difference between their respective conceptions of enlightened philosophizing?
2. How should we not answer "what purpose is this description supposed to serve"?
3. Why are numbers a good model of the universe?
4. What do pragmatists think is the aim of inquiry? Do you think their aim is true? (Elvis Costello pun only partly intended.)
5. What's pointless about things-in-themselves?
6. What did Darwin make hard for essentialists and Kantians?
7. Why must pan-relationalists (& pragmatists) not accept the making/finding distinction their critics would like to impose on them?
8. Socrates/Plato said knowledge of something deep would let us escape from what?
9. In what sense, for a pragmatist, are philosophy's traditional problems verbal?
Ethics, obligations, justice. RR 7-8. PRESENTATION: Gary, "My Two Weeks With the Atheists of Prague"
1. What practical question do pragmatists prefer to what traditional question?
2. What may be "the best single mark of our progress toward a full-fledged human rights culture"?
3. RR asks if we could replace "justice" with what?
4. The problematic dichotomy of reason vs. feeling would begin to fade away, says RR, if we thought of reason as what?
Empiricism. RR 9-10, epilogue. PRESENTATION: Javan, Pragmatism as humanism
1. What statement of Wittgenstein's does RR think applies to terms like "sentience" and "consciousness"?
2. What does RR say Brandom "flirts with"?
3. What cultural achievements do Anglophone and non-Anglophone philosophers first think of?
4. When RR says he sees nothing worth saving in empiricism, he means he doesn't want to save what as a non-human authority due our respect?
5. In the Epilogue RR is quoted as saying what about his faithfulness to the thoughts of James and Dewey?
Defeating fascism’s ‘loneliness and alienation’ has a simple solution: author
https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/how-to-defeat-fascism-solution/
By
John
Stoehr
March 14, 2022
Interview with author Nathan Crick who
has written a new book focused on John Dewey entitled: “Dewey and the New Age of Fascism”
The
former president held another of his tiresome rallies last night. I say
“tiresome” because it was more of the same spleen and bile.
But
he did say something useful to my purposes, which is talking about John Dewey
in a world gripped by tyranny. Below is a long interview with Nathan Crick.
He wrote Dewey and
the New Age of Fascism.
Amid
Donald Trump’s laundry list of grievances, including reiterations of the Big
Lie, he said: “Getting critical
race theory out of our schools is not just a matter of values, it’s also a
matter of national survival.”
“We
have no choice,” he said:
The fate of any
nation depends upon the willingness of its citizens to lay down – and they must
do this – lay down their very lives to defend their country. If we allow the
Marxists and communists and socialists to teach our children to hate America,
there will be no one left to defend our flag or to protect our great country or
its freedom.
That’s
boilerplate fascism.
Just
ask Jason Stanley. In 2018, he told Vox:
The story is
typically that a once-great society has been destroyed by liberalism or
feminism or cultural Marxism or whatever, and you make the dominant group feel
angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power. Almost every
manifestation of fascism mirrors this general narrative.
Per
usual, the crowd was so rapt with attention, so immersed in the grume and gall,
you wonder if it’s possible to reason with fascists.
Yes
and no.
“You
can’t argue a person out of a cult by walking into it,” Nathan told me. “There
is hope only when they step outside of that experience.”
One does not
‘reason’ with fascists. It is more that you get outside the fascist vocabulary
and talk about something different. The hope is by connecting with ordinary
experience, perhaps they find life is more valuable than Donald Trump’s talking
points.
What
would that “outside life” look like? For Dewey, it meant more than protecting
and advancing democracy. It meant protecting and advancing the capacity all
humans have to be more fully human.
But
first, get them out and back into ordinary experience.
As
Nathan said:
Propaganda is totalitarian when it encircles a person. It creates an entire identity for them that tolerates no gods before it. It is a lifestyle and gives you an identity that you can share with other like-minded people.
(Continues with interview at link above)
1. Name one of Kitcher's assumptions he says "refined religion" abandons.
1. The Cosmological ArgumentArguments analyzed here
2. The Ontological Argument
3. The Argument from Design A. The Classical Teleological Argument B. The Argument from Irreducible Complexity C. The Argument from the Paucity of Benign Mutations D. The Argument from the Original Replicator
4. The Argument from the Big Bang
5. The Argument from the Fine-Tuning of Physical Constants
6. The Argument from the Beauty of Physical Laws
7. The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences
8. The Argument from Personal Coincidences
9. The Argument from Answered Prayers
10. The Argument from a Wonderful Life
11. The Argument from Miracles
12. The Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness
13. The Argument from the Improbable Self
14. The Argument from Survival After Death
15. The Argument from the Inconceivability of Personal Annihilation
16. The Argument from Moral Truth
17. The Argument from Altruism
18. The Argument from Free Will
19. The Argument from Personal Purpose
20. The Argument from the Intolerability of Insignificance
21. The Argument from the Consensus of Humanity
22. The Argument from the Consensus of Mystics
23. The Argument from Holy Books Gold
24. The Argument from Perfect Justice
25. The Argument from Suffering
26. The Argument from the Survival of the Jews
27. The Argument from the Upward Curve of History
28. The Argument from Prodigious Genius
29. The Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity
30. The Argument from Mathematical Reality
31. The Argument from Decision Theory (Pascal’s Wager)
32. The Argument from Pragmatism (William James’s Leap of Faith)
33. The Argument from the Unreasonableness of Reason
34. The Argument from Sublimity
35. The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Spinoza’s God)
36. The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments
Study: Atheists who are women, Republicans, or Southerners more likely to hide beliefs
In groups that statistically have the fewest
number of atheists, the atheists among them are less vocal.
March 10, 2022
(RNS) — Atheists in the U.S. are more likely to hide their beliefs
if they are women, Republicans, if they live in the South or if they’ve
previously been religious, according to new research by Rice and West Virginia
universities.
“If someone is already in a marginalized group — like women — or
are members of a group that is heavily religious — such as Republicans or
Southern Americans — it stands to reason they are less likely to take on the
additional stigma of being an ‘out’ atheist,” said Jacqui Frost, a postdoctoral
research fellow in sociology and the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice
University.
With this new study, “Patterns of Perceived Hostility and
Identity Concealment among Self-Identified Atheists,” Frost said researchers
wanted to explore whether people who affirm atheist labels are more comfortable
than other nonreligious people about sharing their atheism
with others.
The research showed that atheists are the most likely nonreligious
group to perceive stigma, yet among people who identify as atheist, agnostic or
simply nonreligious, atheists are the most open about their beliefs, which
Frost found surprising.
“The people that are being
most discriminated against are also the people that are least likely to hide
their identities,” Frost, one of the report’s authors, told Religion News
Service.
(Continues at link above)
You could win a $100 gift card at the SSA national student meeting.
Join us this Thursday, Mar 10, 5-8 pm central time. Info about scholarships and Ask An Atheist Day. Speaker on SCOTUS, abortion, religious right. Everyone invited. RSVP at https://secularstudents.org/webinars/
