Guest Post - Amanda on her agnostic theism

This entry is about my personal beliefs. I would never expect anyone to read it and change their own beliefs; it's simply an informative essay. If you have any questions, I'd love to answer them in the comment section.

In order to fully understand my religious beliefs, I need you to first strip away the title of “Jewish.” I will re-apply this title later in the post, and explain the part it plays. But first you need to understand my core religious beliefs, which are my own and not necessarily a part of Judaism (although they were developed because of the lessons the Torah has taught me).

In scientific pursuits, we first ask a question. Once we investigate this question, more often than not, we end up with more questions rather than finding a definite answer. Eventually, we end up with some answers, and a heightened understanding of the universe and its structure. But even then, there is often a gap in our understanding. In order to illustrate this, I like to picture a stone arch. Each piece in the arch is necessary for it to stand, but most important is the keystone at the top – the wedge-shaped piece that allows the two sides to support one another. Imagine that the stones in the arch are facts; knowledge derived through scientific endeavors. And now imagine that the keystone is invisible. We can’t see it, but we can see its outline, and we can use that information to inform our understanding of its structure and function. We know there must be something holding up the other pieces, and we know where it must sit, and its approximate shape. Moreover, we can even assume it’s made of the same material as the rest of the arch. But we still can’t see it or know its exact nature for certain.

It is my belief that the last unknown in each scientific field will all lead us to the same conclusion. We will eventually find a construct at the center of existence that affects all things, is a part of all things, and is necessary and essential to existence. I originally found this concept in the Hebrew name for God. It has four letters (which is unique because all other words in Hebrew have three-letter roots), which stand for “I Am Who Am,” and has been interpreted to mean that God is the source of existence. Not in the sense that he woke up one day, pointed his finger and created the universe, but in the sense that he is in everything, he is everywhere, he IS existence itself. Eventually, I realized that because science is the pursuit of studying the universe, and God is the universe, there is no reason why religion and science can’t both be right.

This is where I get to the core idea that makes my personal beliefs possible. I find that Christians often find this concept challenging because it so directly contradicts what they have been taught. Aside from that, however, it’s a fairly simple idea: the stories told in religious books are metaphors. Every component of the Bible, the Torah, the Koran and any other myth used to worship or explain our existence is metaphor meant to educate us about the nature of the universe, and moreover, to inspire us to explore it. This goes for God as well.

I don’t believe God is a bearded father figure in the sky, looking down on us and creating miracles. That version of God is a story, told with the intent of inspiring people to explore the world around them, and to ask questions of nature, and never be satisfied with just one answer. As such, no religious book is necessarily wrong or right. They are all attempting to describe the same thing.

I do believe, however, that it’s wrong to teach someone to ignore science. And it’s wrong to emotionally handicap someone by teaching them that God should be feared, life should be feared, and the afterlife is a giant test of their moral fiber. I believe it’s wrong to tell someone to shut their eyes and let the universe do the work for them. And I believe it’s wrong to tell someone that prayer provides results. All of these things make people weak and vulnerable, and blind them to the beauty of the universe. It’s healthy to embrace randomness and statistical probability. Nothing happens for a reason, unless you consider causal factors and other conditions surrounding the event to be a reason.

In my life, I use the ceremonies surrounding Jewish holidays to acknowledge that life is diverse, the universe is big and weird and full of randomness, and that there is something out there worth knowing. I pursue this something through my scientific pursuits, and celebrate it through Judaism.

Theists think too,

Amanda

Quiting Religion

Overcoming lifelong indoctrination, also known as losing your faith, doesn't happen overnight. It takes a lot of time and effort to brainwash someone into a religion, but once in place you are dependent upon it for your identity. Religious leaders understand this, and the most successful of religions invest a great deal to gain a captive audience where religious memes will go unchallenged taking root.

The religions that many Americans consider to be cult-like, Scientology, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, all attempt to cut off potential converts from outside influences. Before the brainwashing has taken root they are "vulnerable" to critically examining what the religion is telling them, and rejecting it, if those ideas are challenged by non-believers.

Mainstream Protestant and Catholic Christians may not take this approach with adults, but they have an easily captive audience in the form of their children. Pastor Gugger (formerly of Crossroad Christian Church in Farmington Hills, MI) frankly states, "We have to reprogram the children early." Reprogram them.

Without realizing it, he admits that knowing the Christian god and yearning for him is not the inherent human trait that they teach it to be. The children must be reprogrammed to accept it, and soon. Do not let them get old enough to question, do not let them become intellectually mature enough to critically evaluate what you are trying to teach them. Bring them to Sunday School every week, make sure to talk about god and the bible every day so that they remember that its words are inerrant. Send them to plenty of church retreats where they will be surrounded by hundreds of others who think exactly like we do. If we don't catch them early, if we don't reprogram them to accept Christianity before they learn to think for themselves, we might lose them forever.

But for as much effort and control of the social environment as is required to indoctrinate the laity, once a religion is successful in getting its talons in, it is an incredibly difficult process for you to shake its grip. You've been convinced that you need it, that it is an essential part of your existence and identity. You are trained to feel guilt for questioning or doubting it, and to fear what a bad person you would be without it. You're trained to see unusual events as confirmation of your faith, and trained to ignore or rationalize anything that might challenge that faith. It is easy to see the flaws and inconsistencies in all other religions, but the blind spot that has been cultivated through your reprogramming prevents you from applying the same criticisms to your own religion.

The deck is stacked against the individual, and so if that programming can fall away at all it will only do so gradually. The first things to fall away for me were the political and social agendas disguised as religion. The fear mongering of people that are different than me was incompatible with my values, whether those values originated from religious or secular sources in my life doesn't really matter. It was only much later and after great emotional turmoil that the rest of the superstitions of Christianity also dissolved from me.

Last week author Anne Rice posted via Twitter that she was quitting Christianity. Some in the secular community I follow have reacted with indifference, because she asserts that she still believes in God and Jesus, "What is the difference between a 'Christian' and a 'Follower of Christ?'" Not much, I do agree with that. But she has given up the anti-intellectual and intolerant aspects of her religion, and that is a difficult first step.

Will she ever give up faith and superstition entirely? Maybe she will, maybe she won't. For her sake I hope she will, with the scales shed from my eyes I can appreciate the wonderful diversity and complexity of our universe more than I ever could when I believed it was placed here intentionally. But even if she doesn't, at least she's condemned the Christian Reconstructionist agenda, and that makes her another voice of secularism, and a friend to atheists.

“I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of ...Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”
-Anne Rice (Author) Via Twitter 7-28-10

In search of reason,

Mike

Ethics Part 2: Moral Compasses

As I explained in the previous post, morality is an individual's personal impulses and impressions about what is right and what is wrong.  One idea recent proposed in the field of psychology is that our morality can be broken down into one of five moral compasses.  I'm going to explain each of these moral compasses, and give my opinion on their value to a secular morality.  (I've listed the moral compasses in the order they were presented to me, rather than in any value based order).

Follow Up to A Secular Nation

An interesting story popped up on my radar this week, and relates directly to my stance on the importance of secular government:

A Hispanic Catholic woman in Chicago has found herself under court order to live like a Hasidic Jew on the weekends including restrictive observation of the Sabbath. The full story is here, the short version is that she recently married a man who shares joint custody of his son with his ex-wife, who switched to Orthodox Judaism after their divorce. The mother of the boy is insisting that he be raised Orthodox as well, leading to the divorce court's decision to force the father and Catholic step-mother to provide a complete Hasidic Jewish environment every weekend when they have him.

The article has all of the details about the restrictions the courts have placed on the family, so I'm not going to get into that here. The point is that a father with partial custody of his son should have the same right to share his culture and the culture of his wife as the mother does to raise the child Jewish.

The argument for secularism goes beyond just Separation of Church and State and the issue of establishment of a State religion. The argument for secularism also addresses cases just like this. The main principle of secularism is that religious considerations should not have influence in the concerns of the law and government. This means that the court should have no authority to dictate a family's religious observations.

By ruling that the father has to obey Orthodox Jewish regulations (which include what can be cooked, when, and how, what you can do with your day, whether or not you can drive your car, and so on) they have squashed any possibility of freely enjoying the time he does get with his son. If he doesn't follow those rules, I imagine that he risks losing any visitation rights to his son. The courts should have no authority to issue custody that is contingent on observing a particular religion.

This is why we fight for secularism, for the freedom of and from religion.

In search of reason,

Mike

A Secular Nation

Watching this video made me feel a bit ill. As far as I know Newt Gingrich is a pretty intelligent fellow, so I can't tell if his ideologies simply leave him with a blind spot, or if he is being intentionally dishonest. Either way, there are so many things wrong with what he is saying in this clip that I couldn't address them all. What I want to focus on is his attack on secularism and his attempt at revising our history.



Secularism is not a campaign to eliminate Christianity or any religion. It is a concept that the government and other public institutions should exist separate from, independent of, and indifferent to religions and religious beliefs.

Learning to Clutch... The Definitions

Since the topics we’re going to be writing about are often misunderstood or unclear, I thought it would be good to explain the lexicon we’re using. After all, you can’t hold a constructive conversation if people aren't using the same definitions.

I want to start by dispelling common misconceptions about “Agnostic” and “Atheist.”

An Atheist by definition is simply someone that doesn’t hold a belief in a god or gods. Theists propose god concepts, and those that aren’t convinced by any of them are Atheists.

An Agnostic by definition is someone who simply claims that they lack knowledge or certainty about a topic. You can claim to be Gnostic or Agnostic about any topic, we’re just most familiar with it in regards to religion.

This means that rather than a continuum from Christianity/Islam/etc. to Deism, to Agnosticism to Atheism we have two axis overlapping.