The bridge ends in midair
Meanwhile, James Croft is struggling.
Obama was exercising his capacity for leadership at a time of extraordinary uncertainty, when the USA is wracked with debate about the reasons for those terrible events, and he drew heavily upon the reservoir of his Christian faith to do so. Repeatedly quoting scripture, enjoining Americans to kneel and pray, and movingly speaking of the heaven to which he believes Christina Taylor Green has gone, jumping in puddles. This is truly faith and leadership in a fragmented world.
Well, I would rather he didn’t enjoin us to kneel and pray. I don’t think there’s anyone to pray to, and if I did, I don’t think I would want to pray to it. What would be the point? To ask it not to do it again? To thank it? To ask it to make everyone feel better?
And the idea of Christina Taylor Green in heaven jumping in puddles isn’t really all that moving or comforting once you think about it. She was nine, not three; she wanted more than just jumping in puddles; she wanted worldly things, like politics and meeting her Congressional Representative. She wouldn’t have wanted some fluffy fantasy-life where she just jumped in puddles all day. Notice it doesn’t sound very moving to say Christina Taylor Green has gone to heaven where she is meeting a different, dead Congressional Representative. One wonders what they would talk about, and what the point would be. It doesn’t work. That’s because we’re human beings, not angels, and we want human things, things of this world. It’s childish to let ourselves be fobbed off with talk of bending the knee and a dead child frolicking in the sky.
The thing is, though, Croft realizes this. His problem is that he’s agonizing about it. I don’t think he needs to.
I can see that Obama’s faith provides him with both courage and hope – essential qualities in a leader facing dark times – and I am challenged by the thought that much atheist writing provides neither.
That’s one thought too many. Much writing of all kinds provides neither courage nor hope some of the time, but that doesn’t mean it never does. Much atheist writing is simply talking about other things; that is not a reason to conclude that atheism can’t possibly provide courage and hope. On the contrary: atheism dispenses with many sources of needless fear and despair.
Yet I recogniz[e], too, that I cannot join the ranks of Americans bending knee to pray while remaining true to my beliefs, to myself. I must express my shock and sadness in another way. I’m standing outside the church, my face pressed against the stained-glass windows, longing for solidarity with those inside, but unable to cross the threshold.
Wait until they come out. Join them somewhere else. Seriously. Church is not the only place we can find solidarity with people. It is a handy, ready-made, familiar one, but it’s not the only one.
I don’t see belief in God as “another way of understanding the world”, or as “a different route to truth”. I see it as wrong. Mistaken. Unsupported.This realization – that despite the positive connotations of the word I cannot consider myself a true religious pluralist (at least in Eck’s terms) – has troubled me. I strive for respect in my work and writing, and I want to make it clear the majority of those attending the workshop next week that I respect and value them as people. But Eck’s description has led me to the understanding that I cannot honestly say that I respect their faith. There truly is a gap between my worldview and a religious one, and despite the best efforts of Stedman and the Foundation Beyond Belief, I see no authentic way to bridge it. However much I respect an individual and work beside them, I cannot put the Sun of God in the center of my intellectual solar system. However grave the situation, however powerful the incitement, I cannot bend my knee to nothing. I am stuck outside the church, face pressed against the glass.
And it’s getting cold.
You don’t have to bridge the gap – and I would say you shouldn’t. You can’t expect to believe that all human beings are right about everything. Build solidarity independently of belief.
I’ve never quite understood the knock against atheism that implies that “Atheism doesn’t provide the good stuff—hope, etc.—that religion does.” Well, yes, and sobriety does not provide the late evenings of club dancing and anonymous sex that alcoholism does. Your point?
Come on, Andy, we all want the same things, we all want consensus, get with the program.
Man, this sounds maudlin even to my literary tin ear.
I think somebody needs to throw James a nice party.
I find it difficult to relate to Mr. Croft. One of the reasons I began to identify as atheist was the fact I didn’t follow any religious rituals. The reason being, I got nothing from it. My Sunday school teacher succeeded in bringing me to tears once but as the day went on it just felt more and more hollow. (Mind you I was 7) Do other’s really get that much from church?
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I wonder how much he is really agonizing over all this. It looks like the key statement is here:
He seems to be bending over backwards to use lots of warm and fuzzy metaphors in order to reassure the religious folk at the conference that he really does respect them, even though he thinks they are fundamentally wrong. He wants to make clear at the outset that he is not laughing at them. But I doubt if all the angst expressed in his writing is really a true measure of his feelings.
I do like the black hole metaphor, though.
It should also be pointed out that there’s not uniform joy going on on the other side of the stained glass: there are untold numbers of people in the churches who envy us. Which is to say, there they sit in church, lying to themselves, to their families and friends, pretending to believe in the religion but in actuality they wish they could come out as atheists. (And according to Dennett and LaScola, some small number of these people are not in the pews, but at the pulpit.)
I didn’t watch any coverage of the Tucson funerals, so maybe I’m missing a big chunk of resonant meaning or whatever, but: When people start talking about the dear departed being in The Happy Place, I don’t wish I could join them in that belief; I just wish they’d stop boring me with this cloying fantasy story. Yes, I used to be on the inside, trying to partake of that comfort, so I understand why they tell it. But there was always this nagging feeling of Why? WTF were you up to, Lord, that this 8yo kid died of leukemia, or that nice old lady died in a house fire, or that new mother was killed (possibly suicide, we’re not sure) in a car crash, leaving her baby an orphan? (Those were actual memorial services I attended in my United Church days).
So in the long run, it’s more comforting, not less, to believe that shit happens and that’s the end, than that it’s all a part of some incomprehensible Grand Plan that God is working out. If it’s cold outside the stained glass window, it’s only because the shared fantasy acts to exclude those who decline to participate in the communal wishful thinking.
Religion wants you to feel you’ve been left outside, denied God’s grace. But we don’t feel cold because we have been denied Zeus’s grace, or Odin’s, or Ahura Mazda’s. We don’t feel left out because we don’t believe in delusions like homeopathy, or Reiki, or astrology, and we certainly have no reason to feel left out in the cold because we can’t experience the religious enthusiasms of the deluded.
Besides, Obama knows how to keep in mind his own political needs; he knows which side of his political bread is buttered. More than a bit too much for my taste.
Talk about purple prose. Good lord, didn’t anyone ever teach that man to have his pity parties in private (or at least drunk-dial a close friend who won’t tell)? That was downright embarrassing to read.
I’ve seen the comfort that the idea that death doesn’t send babies to limbo can bring.
Without wishing to be an overly kickable grief counsellor type, I think The Happy Place is just an expression of Stage One. But to borrow a theme from John FitzGerald, grace is there to be denied to those who need it unless they jump through the right institutional hoops. The comfort it may bring comes at a great psychic and social price.
I would suggest Mr Croft listen to Death Cab for Cutie’s beautiful song “I Will Follow You into the Dark”, which lays out an atheist’s consolations about death to his/her beloved.
It’s a comment of yours about Christina Taylor Green that grabbed me in particular Ophelia.
I’m not entirely sure how we get a statement that’s more affirmative of life and there’s the rub. Humanism and atheism give us reasons to be happy in the here and now; religion doesn’t without fairly tepid rationalisations. Maybe its just a quirk of my psychology, but I’ve always found that rationalisations leave a slightly sour taste in my mouth. Far better wouldn’t we say to believe what actually gives us reasons to act, and even that just assuming that the importance of belief is how it makes you act.
Children have invisible friends; great big grown up people know that they are on their own, shit happens and they need to deal by themselves. On this basis, doG (looking up from the food dish) tells me there are not very many grown ups around. But there’s about 4.5 billion years before the sun goes nova so maybe there’s hope…..
[…] at Butterflies and Wheels, Ophelia Bension is wondering why we should think that talking about a murdered 9-year-old girl […]
‘ I’m standing outside the church, my face pressed against the stained-glass windows, longing for solidarity with those inside, but unable to cross the threshold’
Like saying I can’t feel solidarity with scientists because I don’t dress up in a lab coat and visit CERN.
Wow, that’s a good intepretation of what atheism really means on an emotional level: realization.
We are the self-realized (or self-actualized) ones. And I don’t mean this in a spiritual or mystical sense, but in a psychological sense. The first realization for most of us is the nonsensical or senseless of things. The myths we follow simply don’t tally with reality. This leads to an awakening that firstly, the myths and stories we believed were a pack of lies, and secondly that reality is meaningless, and the only meaning to be gained is a self-directed one. This is essentially what has liberated individuals throughout history to turn away from authority and turn towards knowledge and wisdom.
And yet, to anyone who is familiar with this psychological awareness, you are immediately confronted with the fact that the vast majority around you are daydreaming zombies, and that there is no external meaning to anything.
This can lead to two possible reactions: you can optimistically laugh it off and continue living your life as a free individual, seeking self gratification or sympathetically attempting to wake other people up, or working with other self-realised humans for a common goal. Or you can be filled with horror and pessimism, as you feel severed from your former community, a sense of self-hatred and alienation or a complete bitterness toward the myths and lies that kept you daydreaming.
The pessimists, through self-pity or lacking in sympathy or passion, need to escape this existential pain and therefore, more often than not, go back to daydreaming by taking up a cause or ideal created by someone else. Therefore they are back on the opiate that makes them happy and relieves them of existential pain.
Given the above psychological analysis, I can only compare the psychology of humanists as back on the opiate. And once you’re onto the good opiate, don’t you want everyone to have a piece? Hence the drive for consensus, for togetherness and harmony. And once you’re daydreaming of a better utopia, anyone who disagrees is of course a threat and must be purged.
That’s what these humanists need: they’re constantly alienated from the daydreaming zombies and yet, because of emotional needs, want to go join them. They find likeminded humanists and masochistically seek out the company of believers. They’re both attracted to believers because of their social cohesion and repulsed because they’re not self-actualised.
All of this is very irritating for the rest of us. What motivates us is not emotional insecurity, but a passion to wake up the zombies or to at least stop their influence on creating more believers and thus mentally enslaving another generation. We’re also passionate about the injustices made by believers, because they’re based on ignorance and corruption of what humans are really capable of. We readily switch rolls between persecutor, victim and rescuer, because we’re using our own sense of judgement and context.
Perhaps such humanists have faced prejudice and persecution, especially if they’re gay, and so their emotional needs are compounded by the need for emotional stability, for respect (self-esteem). And so they externalise their own pain by fixing the drama triangle, making the believers as only victims and atheists as only persecutors, while they readily take up the role as only rescuers. This then gives them a meaningful story from which to sermonize.
So what is our identity? Our identity is our own individual identities, we’re not identifying as holding common values, but only as our mutual awareness that we are self-actualised individuals. The term ‘atheist’ captures this in part, because it does not describe what we are but what we are not.
And that is why we could be forgiven for questioning the identity of accommodationists, because they seem to have one leg in a daydream and the other leg in reality. We want to half pull them into reality or half berate them for being a zombie. And when one of these types begins to criticise us, it’s the same language of a believer, and so we’re almost sure they’re a zombie, but they’re half a zombie. It is their psychological pessimism that leads them back to their opiate, and it’s why they’ll never be fully self-actualised. They pose only a problem because their confusion causes more harm than good.
@Chris Lawson: Thank you for that. Being well over 50 I was only dimly aware of Death Cab for Cutie. Being recently widowed I found the song deeply moving. Someday I will indeed follow her into the dark.
I don’t know who James Croft is, but I remember feeling exactly the sentiment he expresses, shortly after I first began to see myself as an atheist. I had been active in church all my life, and the comforts it provided — both social and existential — were essential pieces of my life. My initial experience of atheism was that my belief in God had been ripped away from me, against my will and rather cruelly. It was a very painful experience, and that image of standing pressed up against church windows, longing to go in but unable to, resonates deeply with me.
In time, of course, I found comforts in my atheist, skeptical, humanist belief system that were stronger and more real than the ones that had been provided for me by religion. But it did take time and it was not an easy transition. I think atheists who have never seen the value of religion, or never gotten joy or comfort from it themselves, have a hard time seeing this. But please be compassionate to young atheists who are still struggling to find consolations for the things they feel they’ve lost.
My own experience was that religious langauge was simply unhelpful. I can’t see what comfort it brings to suppose that our loved ones have been taken by God. How is this supposed to help? My wife Elizabeth once said in her journal that sometimes she thought that it would be nice to think that we would be together again after death, but then she realised that that would mean that all her sufferings had a purpose. The were intentional. And that she could not accept. She had known so many people who had not suffered as she had. Did she really need all that suffering, all the disability and the pain, more than, say, her grandmother, who died at 96 with a heart attack, and was as mean and nasty as you can imagine. And then she went off to the hospital crying: “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” “At 96!” Elizabeth used to say with some contempt. The whole thing is a sick joke, if you look at it this way. And how can you not? How can you overlook the fact that little Christina will never get the chance to live as fully as Obama has? And he thinks we should kneel and pray! There is something just a bit cynical about this.
Exactly. I didn’t notice that aspect until after I’d posted and gone off to do other things yesterday, but exactly. Obama created that feeling of being shut out by invoking the stained glass windows in the first place. That’s why he and all other politicians really shouldn’t do that. He doesn’t have to; it’s not his job; he’s the pres, not a minister; it excludes a substantial chunk of the citizenry for no good reason; plus it’s horseshit anyway.
I think the anger behind your description of what Christina Taylor Green wanted in this world is beautiful and I would much rather hear a eulogy acknowledging at least some of that anger and frustration than sentimental pieties.
Thanks.
I was moved by the jumping in puddles thing for a second myself…but then I thought about it.
I suppose the one thing to be grateful for is that she’s not aware of what she’s lost. She’s not stuck in some awful heaven longing for the lovely reality of home and school and McDonalds and…Safeway.
God, Safeway. I hadn’t even thought of that before.
Thanks all for the comments – it is extremely gratifying to see people reading and considering one’s writing, even when they don’t like it. I recognize my penchant for slightly dramatic metaphors and understand that not everyone will appreciate them.
I think most of the comments here are right on the mark actually. I wrote the piece to provoke discussion, and not necessarily to portray my precise feelings on the matter. I should clarify, though, that I used the metaphor of the church to mean something akin to the American political scene, from which the nonreligious, as you folks know, are currently ruthlessly excluded. I do not seek community within churches, and indeed have never been religious -I find it warmer in the embrace of my Humanist friends and colleagues! – but I would like real political representation for the nonreligious, and as Ophelia suggests Obama shuts the doors on us when he talks about “all Americans” kneeling in prayer. The challenge for me is how to articulate discomfort with that fact when it is seemingly such a minor issue in the face of a great atrocity.
One more thing – Ophelia says
I want to make it clear that I ENTIRELY agree with this. Much atheist writing DOES provide sources of courage and hope, and I want to talk about that more in future posts. The only question in my mind about this is whether atheists are comfortable using all the symbolic resources they might have at their disposal to express courage and hope – music, art, dance etc. As a singer myself these are important to me, and I’d like to see atheists making more use of symbolic media other than the written and spoken word. After all, we are already masters of the blog, as Ophelia demonstrates regularly ;).
In any case it would be exciting to see some of you comment on future posts. I always find discussions on here thought-provoking and challenging.
Oh, and I should rephrase something – when I said “I recognize my penchant for slightly dramatic metaphors and understand that not everyone will appreciate them”, I did not mean to insinuate that it was others’ appreciation that is at fault. It may well be my own writing. I’m trying hard to improve my writing and I welcome the criticism.
James, as the one who accused you of purple prose, well, now I wish I’d been a little kinder. I do think this piece of yours is a bit. . .overwrought, but that may be just my taste. I know from experience that it’s hard to write about personal, emotional issues without going a bit too far – it happens to every writer. I certainly didn’t mean to dismiss your feelings or the importance of this quandary for you.
This seems to be mostly a blog for people who already agree with what is written here so please delete if you find this troll-ish but I must say that I am a little shocked by how sure everyone is here that you all are so right and that religious folk are so deluded/wrong/not self actualized etc. I find (and somehow imagine that you all find) that sort of self-assuredness – “I think others are wrong” there are not multiple ways to understand things but only my own – take on things problematic with religious people. But it seems to me that for both practical and philosophical reasons it is problematic for humanists/athiests as well. Anyway, interesting post and discussion. Perhaps you are interested in an outsider’s take.. Then again perhaps not and that is fine too of course.
If you don’t want to be perceived as trolling, it’s best not to come in and make unsupported, snarky remarks about how the blog is “for” people who only agree with each other. That’s just plain rude, and it’s inaccurate.
Your “take” seems to be that you’re “shocked by how sure everyone is here…” Well, I am interested in such a point-of-view. Mildly. I’d be even more interested if, instead of merely registering your shock at our supposed arrogance, you demonstrated how a specific viewpoint expressed on this thread is either factually inaccurate or logically inconsistent. Or, you could have educated us by providing useful links to information relevant to the discussion. Either of those would be a substantive contribution to the debate, and therefore not trolling. But (as Josh told you) to barge in, insult the blogger and her regular commenters with rude generalizations, and then attempt to mask your rudeness in false modesty and phony-baloney civility, is a masterstroke of trolling. If it were an Olympic event, you’d get the gold. (You even stuck the landing with that obnoxious, passive-aggressive final sentence.)
Speaking for myself only, atheists have the weight of the evidence on their side. When religious people act self-assured, what do they have to support their claims about reality? Nothing much except feelings and culture, and those are just not good enough bases for claims about impersonal reality. Atheists, on the other hand, are not resorting to fictions based on culture and feelings when it comes to claims about reality. So, while both may come off as self assured to you, that self assuredness is only problematic for one side: theists.
Elizabeth:
I think I’m with Aratina here. My problem isn’t that religious people have the gall to think that one philosophical position (theism of whatever kind they choose) is correct, and that a range of other positions, which are clearly incompatible with theirs, are mistaken. My problem is that I think they’re just wrong about which is correct.
Look, if you want to make an argument, you have to tell us what those reasons are. Otherwise you’re just making noise.
Just to echo the comments of fellow commentators a little, I’ve always found it strange when atheists get attacked for robustness or trying to convince other people. I certainly don’t criticise the religious for trying to convince people. If someone believes they have a direct line to God and his wishes well of course they’re going to try to convince people; if they really had a direct line to God they’d be damn well right to try to show people the error of their ways. Given that there a lot of very simple and obvious ways in which it’s obvious that the religious don’t have a short cut to God then for exactly the same reason we Atheists have a duty to convince them of that fact.
According to http://www.theologicalstudies.org/classicalreligionlist.html, Christianity is the world’s biggest religion in terms of adherents, followed by Islam. In alphabetical order of religions, the cited figures are:
Baha’I (7 million adherents);
Buddhism (360 million);
Christianity (2 billion);
Confucianism (6 million);
Hinduism (900 million);
Islam (1.3 billion);
Jainism (4 million);
Judaism (14 million);
Shinto (4 million);
Sikhism (23 million);
Daoism (2.7 million);
Zoroastrianism (150,000)
I’ll take the site’s word for it (but am disappointed to find that us polytheistic animists hardly get a look in). The important fact however, is that according to any devotee of any of those religions, the adherents of all the others are at best in error, and at worst damned to an eternity in Hell’s fire. By their own definitions they can’t all be right. In fact only one can be right. Otherwise, why have the various god-bothering compartments?
James talks of standing outside the church, face against the windows, longing to be one with those inside, and unable to be so.
I used to identify as a Christian and go to church regularly, but by the time I was 20 years old I found that the inconsistencies and hypocrisies were all too much. Heaven was always a vague notion, and nowhere in the Bible did it give a traveller’s tale of someone who had been there and come back again. At best, eternity would be spent in the company of billions of other accumulated immortal souls up there in the clouds or the ether singing praises to God: who would thus have to qualify as the supreme and infinite egotist of all time. Having the odd puddle to jump would be welcome relief.
So James, when you are on the outside looking in, just remember that whatever the church, the majority of humankind is there on the outside with you. Most of us will only be at best curious about what’s going on in there; tolerant (and praise God for that!) but at the same time indifferent. Including me. Except that sometimes as a non-believer I go back in and sing the hymns for old times sake. Our lives are a series of transitions from state to state, and being religious is a common one to pass through.
But religious or not, we each only get one time around.
(Reincarnationists excepted.)
(In their own belief, that is.)
I’m out of step here, I’d be quite happy to hear more from Elizabeth! I don’t call that trollish, not really. If it went on and on or were repeated over and over, I would, but just saying it once – nah. Maybe that’s because I encountered a real troll yesterday, so my bar has been raised.
[…] commenter on Ophelia Benson’s blog made it clear to me. These accusations come from people who think religion’s chief offense is […]
Elizabeth,
There is a very real difference between ‘facts’ and ‘opinions’. Atheists (accept a minority) accept facts, which is why they’re so happy to embrace things like science and critical thinking. Atheists are not flogging opinions, but flogging critical thinking, moral judgements, based on facts. When atheists begin delving into opinions and the spirit, fellow atheists come down hard upon them like a shower of bricks.
What? My bookshelf (which includes Sagan’s Varieties of Scientific Experience and Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow) say otherwise.
Quite – and there’s no need even to limit it to explicitly atheist books, either.
True- I was just limiting it to the books I could see from where I was sitting :D