Secular spirituality in the classroom

Data shows adolescents with a strong spirituality are far more protected against depression, substance abuse and risk-taking, author and professor Lisa Miller says. https://t.co/qVgy2X9InJ

— Here & Now (@hereandnow) January 27, 2020

CHRISTIANITY ALMOST FREED THE SLAVES

Our discussion Friday regarding African-Americans and Christianity brought to mind this little tidbit about slavery and Christianity. The Declaration of Independence reflects Enlightenment ideas of a universal human nature and social equality. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” How could slavery be justified if all men are created equal, and endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Also present at this time were the ideas of capitalism and property rights, and slave ownership was a property right.  The justification for denying these universal human rights to slaves became the idea, supported by race theories, that some were naturally inferior to others. This provided a basis for class distinctions, and a way to reconcile unequal treatment of some with the idea of universal rights. But that was not the first justification for unequal treatment; it was Christianity.

Africans were first brought to America in the early 1600’s, but as indentured servants, not slaves.  They were freed when their debts were paid.  The use of slavery grew as the need for agricultural labor grew.  Initially the justification for slavery in spite of Christian theology and the principle of universal rights was that the Africans were not Christian, and therefore it was permissible to deny them a natural right to social equality.  Slavery was a means for conversion.  But as Africans began to become Christians, this undermined the justification for slavery, and the institution of slavery itself, because the Christian slaves would be freed. We couldn’t have that, could we? So the justification shifted to the (asserted) natural inferiority of Africans, and studies by biologists and anthropologists were developed to show this. Even though science has debunked this idea, it still haunts us today in some quarters of society.

How William James encourages us to believe in the possible

by Temma Ehrenfeld (Thanks for the link, Ed!) (WJ on secular faith)

‘He was joyful, an eccentric dresser, great conversationalist, 

and a spontaneous teacher.’ William James in Brazil in 1865.

In college, I developed a mysterious illness. I experienced myself as happy, yet in the afternoons I would cry for two hours. Although the obvious interpretation was depression, to me it was all about lunch. Food exhausted me and made me sad. I tried skipping breakfast and lunch, and snacking on cottage cheese and milk chocolate bars. Then carrots.

After many afternoons like this, what philosophical 18-year-old would believe in free will? I was a digestive system, molecules. The next thought was that I would die, dissolve into molecules… while young.

Around this time, I discovered William James (1842-1910), the father of American psychology as a formal discipline. Was my problem ‘psychological’ or ‘physical’? James let me understand that it could be both. Mental phenomena, he explained, had physical roots. He created the first biology-based psychology lab at Harvard University, yet he trusted subjective experience and honoured our capacity for clear thought. I was my digestion and I had choices, too... (Aeon, continues)

Funny as hell

More A&P funnies (And btw, Why do people believe in hell?)

#atheist #secular #gods

8:00 PM - 30 Jan 2018

Too small

“We have a theology that is Earth-centered and involves a tiny piece of space, and when we step back, when we attain a broader cosmic perspective, some of it seems very small in scale. And in fact a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less of a universe.”

“Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”

“A new concept of god: “something not very different from the sum total of the physical laws of the universe; that is, gravitation plus quantum mechanics plus grand unified field theories plus a few other things equaled god. And by that all they meant was that here were a set of exquisitely powerful physical principles that seemed to explain a great deal that was otherwise inexplicable about the universe. Laws of nature…that apply not just locally, not just in Glasgow, but far beyond: Edinburgh, Moscow…Mars…the center of the Milky Way, and out by the most distant quarters known. That the same laws of physics apply everywhere is quite remarkable. Certainly that represents a power greater than any of us.”

“The number of external galaxies beyond the Milky Way is at least in the thousands of millions and perhaps in the hundreds of thousands of millions, each of which contains a number of stars more or less comparable to that in our own galaxy... And this vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion... 

― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

Quiz Jan 30

JB 5-7

1. "Anaxagoras is the earliest historical figure to have been indicted for atheism" (Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History... & see Tim Whitmarsh's Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World - "Disbelief in the supernatural is as old as the hills"), but the first "avowedly atheist work" was by whom? Who does Baggini name as some of his ancient precursors? (78)

2. Did original Marxist communism advocate religious oppression? (87)

3. Which of the traditional god arguments does Baggini find "philosophically interesting" but even weaker than the others? (97)

4. How do most believers justify their faith, according to Baggini? (98)

5. What methodological principle does Baggini invoke, to reject the imposition of stringent standards of evidence and truth? (104)

6. What's a humanist? (109)

Please post your alternate quiz questions.

Discussion

• Comment: "In the case of ghosts, we not only lack a rational explanation of how ghosts can exist, we also lack any rational reasons to suppose that they do." 77 Does this apply equally to souls, spirits, and dualistic minds? Is there a way of conceiving naturalism broadly enough to admit their possibility?
• Do you agree that Enlightenment values (liberty, equality, tolerance etc.) remain triumphant, dominant foundations of the western world? Thinking of the European refugee crisis, the American election, are they at risk?
• "The main danger we need to guard against is not religion but fundamentalism" - agree? Are atheist fundamentalists equally dangerous?
• Are you hostile to (ir-)religion? Should "Friendly" Atheists confront militant atheism or ignore it? Should moderate theists confront or ignore religious extremists?
• If a "god of the gaps" is objectionable, what should we say about gaps in our natural understanding? Is it an article of scientific faith, to believe that the gaps will eventually be filled?
• If "evolution accounts for the appearance of design," and evolved minds are capable of discerning this, doesn't evolution (after all) contribute significantly to what it means to be human?
• Does Baggini give short shrift to the role of "inner conviction" in establishing personal belief? Isn't subjectivity or temperament an inevitable factor in philosophy (as James said), even though the official view is that it should not be? Or is inner conviction just a mirror of external, local contingencies of birth?
• Do you agree with Baggini's rejection of the the Nietzschean critique of religion as inherently life-denying? 105
• "Atheism is the throwing off of childish illusions and acceptance that we have to make our own way in the world. We have no divine parents who always protect us... [this is] the precondition for meaningful adult lives." Fair?
• (Suggest your DQs...)

Quiz Feb 1 AA Intro, 1

1. "A lot of women are turned off by" what perceived demographic imbalance in contemporary atheism?

2. What important link with "potentially damaging implications" has begun to be explored by "only a handful of studies"?

3. What 'ism are New Atheists commonly accused of committing?

4. How does Anthony Grayling define humanism?

5. What prominent 19th century African-American said he would "welcome atheism..."

6-10. [Post your alternate quiz questions] 

• Is atheism misrepresented by a minority of aggressive, militant men? What can or should be done to address this concern?
• Do you think people who believe in something transcendently supernatural have a health or happiness advantage?
• Is it possible to advocate a scientific and evidence-based approach to belief without courting scientism?
• Is Grayling's definition of humanism better than Baggini's?
• Post your DQs

Atheism’s shocking woman problem: What’s behind the misogyny of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris? - As a movement, New Atheism seems like it would be so compatible with feminism — and yet that hasn’t been the case... Salon

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Getting Beyond "New Atheism" - The atheist public intellectuals are all intolerable, but secularism can be saved… Current Affairs

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Another plaint about sexism-ridden New Atheism
Suppose you start with the assumption that the atheist community is riddled with misogyny and sexism, that this is the explanation for the paucity of women atheist “leaders” and participants, then ignore the prevalence of gender imbalance and misogyny in other areas, and mix in some postmodern jargon, some “research” that consists of anecdotes and citations of other people’s data that simply show that women are less atheistic than men—what do you get? You get a new paper in the book Sociology of Atheism... Jerry Coyne

Also of interest:

Book Review: The Illusion of God’s Presence

Summary: Not a new theory, but a new and strong case for an old theory, supplemented with up-to-date neurological evidence.

Jack Wathey is a neuroscientist and computational biologist and the founder of Wathey Research, a scientific firm that focusesafter on problems like protein folding. His new book, The Illusion of God’s Presence, presents an answer to a puzzling problem: Why do human beings believe so strongly in a supernatural deity, even in the face of ample contradictory evidence? (Full disclosure: Jack and I have been correspondents for several years, and I sent him feedback on an earlier draft of the manuscript. It also cites my writing as reference material in a few places.)

The book begins with a gutsy personal anecdote in which the author, with painful honesty, describes the worst mistake he ever made – a family hiking trip in the Sonoran desert of southern California, which almost turned deadly when midday temperatures soared and they hadn’t brought enough water. Although no one died, he was tormented by guilt and thoughts of what he should have done differently. It was while grappling with his guilt that night that he was unexpectedly visited by the overwhelming sensation of a loving, forgiving presence in the room with him – despite the fact that he was and still is an atheist. It was “a religious experience devoid of religious belief”, as he puts it.

Wathey reflected on this experience after the emergence of the New Atheist movement. He writes that he found the books of prominent atheist authors “rousing and delightful”, but that they neglected “the real reason that most believers believe: their personal experience of the presence of God” [p.16]. It’s this subjective and highly emotional sensation, the same one he experienced for himself, that he believes lies at the root of most religious belief, and that this book seeks to explain in scientific terms...

His theory – the illusion of the title – is that belief in God is a misfire of the brain systems that evolved to promote parent-child bonding in infancy. A baby instinctively believes, without needing any prior experience, that its crying will summon a powerful, loving parental figure. Wathey calls this instinct “short-circuit certainty” and says:

“Even if she cannot be immediately seen, heard, tasted, or felt, the mother still exists. Even if she takes what seems an eternity to respond to the infant’s cries, she still exists. This knowledge would give an infant separated from its mother the persistence to keep crying for her, even if hunger and exhaustion would otherwise compel silence and rest to conserve energy. This hardwired, innate sense of certainty of the mother’s existence is, by definition, certainty in the absence of evidence. The infant is certain because certainty confers a survival advantage.” [p.63]

Wathey’s proposal is that in times of great despair, anguish or helplessness, this deeply buried neural network sometimes reactivates, giving a person the unshakable sense of a powerful and benevolent presence that’s willing to give aid or comfort. Effectively, belief in God is a supernormal stimulus for the innate parental image which all humans inherit.

This isn’t a new idea, of course. Sigmund Freud proposed something similar, that religious belief grows from an unconscious longing for a childhood father figure. But where Freud was groping in the dark, Wathey backs his argument up with modern neuroscientific evidence, identifying the specific brain regions and networks that he believes give rise to this phenomenon. If you, like me, have a geeky fascination with how the brain gives rise to the mind, there’s a lot of material here to mull over: the role of nucleus accumbens in mediating reward-seeking behavior, cholinergic signaling in the basal forebrain, the top-down role of the visual cortex in sensory perception, and more. He surveys comparably complex neural programming in other species, like newly-hatched sea turtles which have sophisticated instincts that govern when to emerge from their nest, how to seek out the ocean, and how to tell which direction they should swim. He also devotes considerable time to infant cognition and what patient, careful experimentation has shown us about the way babies perceive the world.

There are probably a few questions that come to mind when you consider this hypothesis. I had them myself on my first reading of the book: Given that the parental caregiver is usually the mother, why isn’t God more widely believed to be female? Isn’t it maladaptive for this brain network to confer the sense that the supplicant’s prayers have been answered, whereas an infant is only soothed by the actual presence of its parent and not merely the wish? Why do so many religions believe in a God who’s a cruel, punishing lawgiver rather than a comforting maternal figure?

Wathey addresses those objections and others in the book, and I’m not going to go into detail about his answers in this review. Instead, I want to touch on what I thought was a very clever and unexpectedly persuasive argument: in addition to the neurological evidence, he describes “infantile imagery” in a wide variety of religions and cults: texts and rituals that, implicitly or explicitly, tell believers to picture themselves in an infantile role and God as a loving parent.

Sometimes, this infantile imagery merely consists of stressing the believer’s total helplessness and dependence and God’s omniscient willingness to aid. But sometimes the connection is unambiguous, as in prayer manuals which compare believers in prayer to a helpless baby nursing at a breast, or doctrine which instructs believers that they must be “born again”. (One tidbit I learned is that Jim Jones demanded his followers address him as “Dad”.) He also points out that prayer often involves rhythmic rocking or swaying, which parents know has a calming effect on small children. The first time I read this, I thought of devout Jews rocking back and forth in fervent prayer at the Wailing Wall.

The other thing I liked about the book is that Wathey demonstrates the explanatory fruitfulness of his theory. He argues that it can explain a diversity of questions under the same banner: why nearly all religions are obsessed with sexual proscription and taboos, or why denial of God consistently attracts such anger, or why prayer so often involves kneeling and prostration, or even why churches and temples have common architectural motifs. He does venture into speculation that the greater religiosity of women is partly biological, which I suspect will attract some opposition. But overall, when it comes to secular works on the origins of religious belief, this is a thoughtful and worthwhile contribution and a persuasive case for atheism.

The Illusion of God’s Presence is published by Prometheus Books and available online through major retailers. You can also listen to an interview with the author on Point of Inquiry.

- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2016/01/book-review-the-illusion-of-gods-presence/#sthash.KHlyHB8c.dpuf

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...Birth and death are the bookends of our lives. Living towards death in time gives one's life a direction and framework within which to understand the changes that life brings. The world looks very differently to the young and the old. The young look forward. The old look back. What matters to us changes as we get older. The prospect of death informs these changes. The young have an intellectual understanding that death comes to us all, but their mortality has not become real to them. For the old, mortality starts to sink in.

For a long time, I have been puzzled by two famous philosophical ideas about death, one from Plato and one from Spinoza. The first is that a philosopher has a vital concern with death and constantly meditates upon it. The second is that the wise person thinks of nothing so little as death. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. Ignoring death leaves us with a false sense of life's permanence and perhaps encourages us to lose ourselves in the minutiae of daily of life. Obsessive rumination on death, on the other hand, can lead us away from life. Honestly coming to terms with one's death involves reflection on its significance in one's life, and thinking about the larger values that give life its meaning. In the end, it is useful to think about death only to the point that it frees us to live fully immersed in the life we have yet to live.

JEFF MASON WAS A LECTURER IN PHILOSOPHY AT MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY. HE WROTE THIS PIECE IN 2011 SIX MONTHS BEFORE A DIAGNOSIS OF TERMINAL LUNG CANCER.

Related Article: Close Encounters of the Cancer Kind (written by Jeff Mason two months before his death in August 2012).http://www.philosophersmag.com/index.php/reflections/17-death-and-its-concept

Quiz Jan 28

jesusandmo.net... spiritual not religious...

Let's not forget also to go over last time's posted comments, and finish discussing ch's 1-2 before moving on to 3-4.

1. The Euthyphro Dilemma implies what about the properties of goodness? (39)

2. What is Kierkegaard's (and Woody Allen's) existentialist point about Abraham and morality? (42)

3. Morality is about acting in whose best interests? (44)

4. What's the "first step in moral thinking"? (49)

5. Does Baggini think it matters whether judgments like "pain is bad" are factual? (52)

6. Did Sartre deny that human life lacks purpose or meaning? (58)

7. What's problematic about seeking meaning in life by serving somebody else's purposes? (59) [And see Rick & Morty on passing the butter, below]

8. What "vital point" do we miss, if we focus too much on goals? (65)

9. What dilemma arises from reflections on eternal bliss or nirvana? (70)

Discussion Questions

• Can you admit the truth of cultural relativism without admitting the ultimate arbitrariness of moral judgments? If you insist on objectivity in morals, must you reject cultural relativism? 
• Which is the more important choice, Abraham's (to follow what he perceives as a divine command) or his peers' (to follow the rule of law and humane ethics)?
• What do you think David Hume meant when he said reason is and should be the slave of the passions? Do you agree? Must reason and feeling be antagonistic or hierarchical?
• Do you agree with Aristotle's characterization of a good person? 48
• Do you agree that the mere fact of consequences is enough to "get morality going"? 49 If you were stranded on an island alone, would you still (in principle at least) be subject to ethical evaluation and accountability?
• What do you think of the "nihilistic mantra"? 57 What's your answer to the question "why do you bother to get up in the mornings"? (See RD's reply...)
• Do you believe your life has an externally-imposed and objective purpose? If not, do you regret that?
• Is it possible to live meaningfully without goals?
• Does evolution confer meaning?
• Do you think most people lead meaningful-enough lives? Could they, if they appreciated life's simple goods?
• Do you know any stereotypically-shallow atheists? (68) Or theists?
• Do you want to live longer, or forever? Would your life mean more to you, if you did?
• Who's your favorite celeb atheist?
• Have you traveled in a place like the Czech Republic? Was it unpleasantly devoid of meaning? 
• Post your DQs, comments, etc.

U@d 1.26.16:
In Atheism & Philosophy, we look (with Julian Baggini) at godless ethics and meaning. The main takeaway: being good is a challenge for us all, with or without a heavenly host and role-model; and so is the quest for significance. You can't simply assign goodness or meaning to an external law-and-purpose-Giver and be done with it, we must each appropriate and perpetually re-appropriate the point and integrity of our lives. That goes for gods and humans alike, who must (Euthyphro should have learned from Socrates) all acknowledge the reasonableness of independent standards.

William James: "The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing,— the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man's or woman 's pains.—And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place."

Also of note:

Way More Americans May Be Atheists Than We Thought ...

https://fivethirtyeight.com/.../way-more-americans-may-be-atheists-than-we-thought/

May 18, 2017 - The number of atheists in the U.S. is still a matter of considerable debate. Recent surveys have found that only about one in 10 Americans report that they do not believe in God, and only about 3 percent identify as atheist. But a new study suggests that the true number of atheists could be much larger, ...

10 facts about atheists | Pew Research Center

www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/01/10-facts-about-atheists/

Jun 1, 2016 - But one thing is for sure: Along with the rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans (many of whom believe in God), there has been a corresponding increase in the number of atheists. As nonbelievers and others gather in Washington, D.C., for the “Reason Rally,” here are key facts aboutatheists and their ...

Atheism in America: Why won't the U.S. accept its atheists?

www.slate.com/.../atheism_in_america_why_won_t_the_u_s_accept_its_atheists_.html

Feb 5, 2012 - But neither her sexuality nor her unwed parenthood are enough to make Renee Johnson anAmerican conservative's worst nightmare. As she explained to me when I met her at Rains County Library, “I'd rather have a big 'L' or 'lesbian' written across my shirt than a big 'A' or 'atheist', because people are ...