John Haidt: Religion and Life

I've tagged this video because I think it emphasizes a point I've been trying to make. I am a nontheist (if you've read my blog at all you've figured this out).  However, I am not a evangelical nontheist.  Religion has been an important part of people's lives for over thousands of years.  I personally don't have any use for it, you know this.  However, I recognize that it does play a central role in the lives of others.  So long as that leads to, what one might call, a liberal Christian interpretation of the Bible and the rights that are due to others as members of the species homo sapiens, then I have no beef with religion.  It is when religion encroaches on democracy, when we can no longer talk to each other, do I get bothered.  I feel the same about militant atheism.  It is equally unproductive.  That being said, enjoy the video.  I feel we as atheists have a lot to learn from religion, and a duty to correct the mistakes made in the name of it.

The Religiosity of Music

“More than one hundred years before Beethoven, stone deaf, had heard the imaginary music of stringed instruments expressing his inmost thoughts and feelings. He had made signs with ink on ruled paper. A century later four Hungarians had reproduced from the printed reproduction of Beethoven’s scribble that music which Beethoven had never heard except in his imagination. Spiral grooves on a surface of shellac remembered their playing. The artificial memory revolved, a needle travelled in its grooves, and through a faint scraping and roaring that mimicked the noises of Beethoven’s own deafness, the audible symbols of Beethoven’s convictions and emotions quivered out into the air” (Huxley, 428)

I wrote a paper, it’ll be three years ago, about an ‘object’ that evokes a religious experience. Having never had a religious experience it was a difficult assignment. The class was advanced philosophy of religion and it was populated predominately by atheists and agnostics. There were a few religious people in the class, but interestingly enough none of the objects the religious chose to present on where actually affiliated with what someone might call established religion.

Many of us, well, nearly all of us, chose music. It was a trend the professor had noticed. Each year a greater percentage of his class would choose music as an object of religious experience. I would like to reflect on the why of those choices and possible motivating reasons.

I chose Rufus Wainwright’s version of the Agnus Dei. We were using Rudolf Otto’s book The Idea of the Holy as a model of dissecting what qualified as a religious object. The Wainwright song fit, at least to my mind, because of the emotions in invoked, its otherness, its darkness, the transition from minor and strange abruptly to a full and resounding major chorus. I was raised Catholic and so there is a very subjective reason why the song speaks to me. I used to sing the Agnus Dei, play it on trumpet and French horn. I used to be a musician in ensembles so I had a theoretical understanding of music. This personal experience led to the song being more meaningful for me than for others. Then again, this seems to be a hallmark of religious experience. It is deeply personal. It’s like jazz, “if you have to ask, you ain’t never gonna know”. There was something profound in its invocation, something that surely pointed to something other, something outside itself.

Music is problematic from a philosophical standpoint. On the one hand it is abstraction. The notes on the page stand for something, they’re at a remove from the immediate experience of hearing music. Moreover, there is not a principled reason (at least to my knowledge) why minor chords should sound sad or lonely. Why should certain frequencies (the one over period of oscillation) should have that quality when heard? At least, not unless there was something more to music than its playing and perception.

I’ve just finished Aldous Huxley’s Point Counterpoint. In the novel there is a passage where one character, Spandrell, is desperately trying to believe in or find God and his last argument, his last resource, is music. This argument is ruthlessly knocked down by Rampion, a man who has a very Nietzschean view of human nature, disagrees because he sees music as an attempt for man to be more than what man is. The argument becomes, and the same for religious experience, does it refer to something outside of itself. If I have a religious experience, does it mean anything outside of what I felt? Just because I had what could be called an otherworldly experience, does it refer in fact to something outside of the world?

The argument in music’s case, as far as Spandrell pushed it, was summed up in this question, “Did the music refer to nothing outside itself and the idiosyncrasies of its inventor?” (427). Rampion thinks that it does not. Music is music. It is personal, experiential, but just because it is does not mean that it points to anything beyond itself, anything beyond human experience.

Maybe the reason myself and so many of the nontheists in the class chose music as our religious object is because of this perceived disconnect. Spandrell I feel would agree with us. Choose music, it’s somehow holy even if we don’t believe in anything holy. It points to something other. Rampion would laugh at the whole class and our project. Good try students, but you’re looking for something that isn’t there. Music reduced is still just music. It doesn’t refer, nor should it. Even so, the immediate experience of it is powerful, even for us who really don’t believe much of anything in the way of religious reality.

If anything this post has just been a series of musings and nothing very substantial. Oh well I guess. It’s a theme I’d like to explore given more time, more reading, and more musings. Perhaps the next book on my list to read should be Godel, Escher, Bach.

Either way, enjoy Rufus Wainwright’s Agnus Dei.

Meaningful Calendar Years: Dancing, Mostly

Given my recent reflections on secular life and its relation to religion, I began thinking about the parallels between dancing and religion. One of my earlier posts was Alain de Botton’s talk at TED Edinburgh on secular religion (watch it http://rethinkmundane.blogspot.com/2012/02/alain-de-botton-atheism-20.html) and certain aspects of religion that secular people can learn from. An idea I’ve been thinking about is a Secular ‘Liturgical’ calendar. The idea is that a secular ‘religion’ would have a calendar that directed thought towards various important topics or ideas at points throughout the year. What kinds of festivals would a secular religion that values inquiry, rational thought, and humanism have? I don’t have an answer, but I’d like to pursue this line of thought with someone.

But this brought me to dancing, specifically swing and blues dancing, and how our dance calendars can be like liturgical calendars. I have weekly meetings with my dance club, something like ‘worship’ where we all gather together to dance. We have weekly lessons that meet outside of the larger community togetherness time (sort of like Bible study). And we have pilgrimages. We travel; at least the more devout of us do, to other cities, sometimes other countries (Herrang Dance Camp is like our Mecca http://www.herrang.com/) to see other dancers in other dance halls, sometimes repeatedly, year after year. It becomes tradition to go certain places at certain times of year.

There are even orthodoxies and unorthodoxies in swing dance. For Lindy Hop, there are straight Lindy Hoppers…and then there are people like me who like their Lindy a little less fundamentalist and a little more playful. And with Charleston it can be the same thing. Even in blues there is a strict interpretation of what is acceptable practice and what is not.

Like a church, mosque, or synagogue, dancing fosters a community with similar, if not always the same, values and outlook. We differ in a lot of ways, us dancers, but we do share in basic loves of movement and music. And with our schedules we are oriented towards thinking about what we enjoy doing, where we enjoy dancing, and who we enjoy dancing with, whether they be Balboa or Blues, Lindy Hop or Charleston, or if we’re the Unitarian Universalists of swing, Fusion.

And we need this is the secular world, or at least I think we do. I have a framework like that in dancing, but it’s not true that every person who is nontheistic is a dancer, and every dancer doesn’t necessarily engage in the dance calendar (think Easter Catholics, and I can make that joke because I used to be Catholic). My musings on that will follow soon.

So if dancing can be a religion, I wonder if I can put that on the next census.

Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

Alain de Botton says what I've been thinking about religion and secular culture, only with more clarity and greater wit.

Secular Humanism: A Religion for Atheists?

http://business.in.com/article/ideas-to-change-the-world/alain-de-botton-a-religion-for-atheists/13532/1

I came across this article and was intrigued by the idea of a religion for atheists, written by Alain de Botton. He says a secular religion will do three things. One, it will put a person in context by making him/her feel small against the world. This would happen through art, architecture, landscaping, and so on. Second, the purpose of art would return to a kind of propaganda for virtues instead of shock and surprise. Art would elevate what we should aspire to be. And thirdly, it would remind us to be pessimistic and have feast days (analogous to Catholic feast days) to despair and disappointment.

I'm not sure if I agree with his picture of what a secular religion would look like, especially the third premise, or even if one could call it a religion. While interesting, I don't see why de Botton claims secular religion should be pessimistic. If anything, why not create motivation to improve one's self and the world? That, at least, is a facet of classical religion I wouldn't mind seeing kept.

I recommend looking into, as I have said before, secular humanism (http://www.secularhumanism.org/). I feel this gives us a framework for a secular religion that incorporates some of what de Botton recommends, but also is more hopeful and uplifting.

Secular Moral Motivation

How can we argue about the answer to a problem when we do not even agree on the basic elements?

Watching a fundamentalist preacher on a college campus is like watching a burning car wreck. I gain nothing useful from the experience, but I cannot look away. Engaging is often an empty and hollow gesture because even the most level discussions dissolve into shouting matches.

I have seen many of these instances. I’ve also been involved in a couple. Invariably one person will ask the preacher this question: “Who would get into Heaven? A good atheist (and by good atheist we mean a person who lived a moral, decent life) or a bad Christian (and by bad we mean a person who professes to believe in God but leads a life of ‘sin’)?” And always, many times without hesitation, the answer is the Christian goes to Heaven, the atheist to Hell.

Of course, the atheists in the crowd are generally pissed because, well, that does not seem fair.

One way the preachers justify their answer is that the atheist has committed the worst sin, and that is by denying God. By refusing to acknowledge God nothing else they do matches up, or ever could. The answer can be summed up as; it isn’t enough to be good, you have to believe. Our (atheist’s) reactions are often shouts, anger, consternation, or laughter because we knew this answer was coming.

But why? What about the belief itself is so important? Well, the Bible tells us so. Why is that important? Because the Bible is given to us by God and it contains His laws. How do you know? It was revealed by revelation. We still don’t see why this is important. Then you don’t get it and are not open to God’s love. Once this point has been reached, both sides are talking past each other. Most of the time, nontheistic people are ok with that answer.

At the heart of this discussion and argument is a belief in what is valuable. While this may seem obvious, it is a nuanced distinction that requires some reflection. Arbitrariness aside (and honestly, both atheists and theists have moments of dogmatism, it is not just on the theistic side) there is a serious disagreement over the rules of the game, or what matters anyway.

Action versus faith is an old argument in the Christian tradition. One way to consider this issue is the Catholic v Protestant stance. Protestant denominations typically emphasize a personal relationship with God. Faith and belief are the most important aspects. Historically, the Catholic Church placed an emphasis on good works in addition to faith. In the nontheistic view, the action (or work) is valued for what it was.

My personal take on this is as a virtue ethicist. There is a certain mix of action and intention, as well as impact that helps to define moral behavior. Positive and moral behavior is a practice to be fostered. People who engage in these behaviors are behaving morally (loosely speaking, if you want my nuanced view please don’t hesitate to ask). There is no single school of thought in the nontheistic community, but we do feel we have obligations and duties to each other often in virtue of just being human (Here is the Secular Humanism Manifesto http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_I ).

Theistic belief is an arbitrary second layer. To say that since atheists do not believe in God they are deficient regardless of behavior returns to the action versus faith debate, only this time with different players. If religious actions result in good works (ex. Catholic Charities, church run soup kitchens, all of these are good things) then we can say it was a good or ethical action. The same can be said of nontheistic people.

But without God, how do we assure that someone will behave without fear of punishment? If there is no Heaven or Hell why doesn’t everyone just do what they want? This is a slippery slope fallacy. The assumption is that people do terrible things without the threat of something afterlife. This can be addressed in two ways:

1) If belief in God is somehow supposed to solidify or assure moral action, then it often fails to do so. People will be good or bad regardless of religious affiliation (not to take cheap shots, but leaders of religious groups, those supposed to be the models for the members of the organization, have been seen committing transgressions they preach against). I, personally, fail to see how the giving of one’s self over to Christ or God in anyway helps in that regard.

2) Simply dismiss the claim. Obviously, there are individuals who do not believe that God exists. Many of these individuals are like Christians in behavior, look, demeanor, in their dedication to their families and loyalty to friends. Something other than God is responsible for moral and ethical action.

So God is not enough for moral action itself. Responsibility for the action lies on the individual. Sure, in some cases God may be a motivating factor. But for atheists that motivation has to, and does, come from somewhere else. I recommend reading “Free Inquiry”, the publication of secular humanism. It contains concerns and views that many atheists and agnostics share as well as articles from scientists, philosophers, and others. There is a many thousand-year-old literature on moral actions that have nothing to do with religious motivation. Even Kant, a Christian who was a philosopher, had ethics that could be construed as secular in principle, and did not require a supernatural being.

If we agree on what moral action is, and in a western country such as ours while we have differing views we tend to agree in the larger areas moral and ethical life, then why claim that one group is immoral when they act in accordance with the same moral code, just without the belief? And if the answer is still “because you have to believe full stop” then it is arbitrary in a way that doesn’t deserve endorsement.