. . . into a Doctor Who fan.
In my defence, however, the Doctor is clearly a humanist. I mean, he's not human himself, of course, but he likes human beings in a very humanist sort of way, and it's not as if he has any religious beliefs that might disqualify him.
At any rate, having made it to the end of Series 2 (which is very much an ending), I'm sort of hoping that I'll be able to stop watching every Doctor Who DVD I can get my hands on and start doing, you know, stuff. Like the Nonbelieving Literati, for example. Which reminds me, have I misread the pattern or is it my turn to choose the next book after this one?
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
Friday, 18 April 2008
With thanks to my atheist mother
It always interests me when the subject of 'atheist parenting' comes up in the blogosphere. I find it slightly strange the way it is sometimes approached as a new phenomenon. For many deconverts, of course, it is a new idea, one that they have to work out for themselves as they anticipate having children. If I ever have children, however, raising them as atheists will hardly be new territory. I've seen it done. I've been on the receiving end of it!
This post is for some of the things I owe my mother; specifically, for some atheist things I owe her. I say my 'mother' because, well, Dad has always been the one with the full time job. He's around, and very loving when he is around, but it's my mother who had the greatest effect on the crucial things. So, with apologies to Dad, he's only going to appear in this post in the form of various side notes.
Not all of these things are confined to atheists. In fact, now I think of it, nearly all of them could have at least some applicability to a religious upbringing, depending on your level of liberalism. Nonetheless, they relate strongly to values associated with freethought. I have three subheadings.
1. Science
One of my earliest memories is -- well, it's fragmentary these days, tied to a single picture and a dimly remembered feeling of fascination. The story goes like this.
You know how kids go through a stage where they're trying to distinguish between male and female? It takes a while to learn the little clues (Genuine memory that just flashed into my head: "Most of the time, long haired people are women. Some men have long hair, too, though." That's my mother, trying to explain some of the clues that might help. "Only men have beards" would have been a useful one; pity it's of such limited use. And so on.). Anyway, the way my mother tells it, I was about three and had developed an annoying habit of pointing to people in the supermarket saying "Mummy, mummy, that one there! Is that a man or a woman?"
Questions like that, spoken loudly in a public place, can be embarrassing. "Why, Mummy? Why is that a man?" I suspect the main reason my mother came up with this plan was as a way of shutting me up. "Wait until we get home and I'll explain," she told me, and I can't tell you if the impatience I remember is a real memory or a superimposed one; it was twenty years ago, after all. If it is a real memory, though, then I can tell you that it all sounded very mysterious and that I didn't like having to wait.
So we got home, and she went upstairs and got the book she'd used to tell me about where babies come from when she was expecting my little sister. It's a good book, full of actual scientific photographs. I know I have some memory of this book, because when I saw it, more than a decade later, I recognised the page that she had turned to for this explanation.
"These are chromosomes," she told me (I thought of them as 'krome-zomes' for years afterwards). "Boys have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. Girls have two X chromosomes. The egg always has an X chromosome from the mother, but the sperm can have an X chromosome or a Y chromosome . . . "
What's the moral of this story? Tell your kids stuff. Encourage them to ask questions by giving them answers -- "I'll tell you when we get home" is a much better response than "Just be quiet and don't be rude." If they're listening and not bored, don't be scared of overloading them with information -- it took me a while to realise my mother was only referring to one out of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, even though I'm sure she explained that at the time, but that was okay. I just filled in the details when I got older.
Oh, and if you're lucky, they'll make cute precocious statements. My father loves to tell the story of the man who came to visit when I was four who said to me "You're a very clever little girl, aren't you?" and received the response "That's because I have two X krome-zomes." My mother used to scoff at that story. "Of course she knew what chromosomes were. I told her."
2. Sexuality
Another one of my earliest memories is being given a small hand mirror by my mother so I could look at my vulva. As memories go, it pairs nicely with the previous one, both because I was about the same age and because I was at least as fascinated if not more so. If you're a girl, you can't necessarily see your genitals easily without a mirror. It's nice to know what's there.
When I mentioned this memory to my mother, she said she spent the whole time feeling terribly uncomfortable. If that's true, all I can say is that I owe her doubly for not communicating that to me at the time. This memory is only one small part of what it takes to build comfort with your own body, of course, but I'm sure it's crucial -- why else would I remember it so clearly?
Think about it. Generations of children were told at that age not to touch that part, and don't look at that part or think too much about it, and those are your secret parts, and whatever. And my mother? She gave me a mirror. I love her so much.
When I get into my teens, my mother also told me how to masturbate. Is that odd? It was a serviceable explanation, spoken in the rather factual but otherwise ordinary tone my mother usually retreats to when one of us brings up sexuality. My own feelings about sex are mixed and murky. (So are my mother's. Her early experiences of sex were rather unpleasant. Do I blame her? Yes and no.) I can't be ashamed of masturbation, though. It has no disadvantages. There's nothing for the shame to stick to.
Then there are the various books she supplied me with -- Our Bodies, Ourselves, and the one by Sheila Kitzinger with 'sex' in the title that I shelved spine-backwards at age sixteen when she gave it to me and then pulled out at age eighteen and read with fascination and occasional arousal. I quite like the idea of non-fiction as erotica, actually. I looked for that book when I was twenty-one and couldn't find it. I think my eldest little sister took it. The enlightenment goes on!
3. Rules and Morality
I like this one best of all. My mother is determinedly, thoughtfully moral. Indeed, her approach to teaching us morality was rather like her approach to teaching us science. Just as we were always allowed to ask questions of fact, so also we were always allowed to ask questions about the rules. "Because I said so" was a banned phrase; "argument from authority," she'd have called it. Maybe if she was really tired and exasperated she'd resort to "Oh, please, just behave, I don't have time to argue this right now." Most of the time she'd have the discussion and give us the explanation, though, because she believed in the principle of open debate, and she believed in not claiming to be infallible. If she was wrong, we should argue with her, and she'd change if we could make her see it. Basic principles like fairness and not hurting people were taken for granted, I admit; we never thought to question those. Perhaps they were partially built into us; more likely, I think, we learned what sorts of arguments were acceptable by example.
Interesting, isn't it? She taught us morality and critical thinking at the same time. If you're logical to begin with, having morality presented to you in the form of reasoned argument is a great way to embed it as deeply as it will go. I respect reasons.
There's more I could say on this subject. I'm particularly lucky in that I had educated parents -- my mother left school at sixteen, actually, but she still knew enough biology to tell me about chromosomes. I guess the most important thing was that she knew how to share her knowledge with a small child! Later, she went to university, studied philosophy, and ended up introducing me to all manner of theories of ethics. There's nothing like having a list of counterexamples to make the notion that you can't have a theory of morality without God seem particularly silly. As for my Dad, he's a forest scientist with a crazy love for astronomy -- when they taught me in school to say "my very elegant mother just sat upon nine porcupines" I couldn't help thinking that "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto" would be a more obvious way of listing those letters in that order. It took me a moment to realise that wasn't the point.
So, yeah, I'm lucky. I won't say there were no disadvantages to my parents' way of bringing me up. I have a long list of things I'd do differently. Atheism isn't one of them, though. In bringing me up as an atheist, my parents gave me an incredible head start.
This post is for some of the things I owe my mother; specifically, for some atheist things I owe her. I say my 'mother' because, well, Dad has always been the one with the full time job. He's around, and very loving when he is around, but it's my mother who had the greatest effect on the crucial things. So, with apologies to Dad, he's only going to appear in this post in the form of various side notes.
Not all of these things are confined to atheists. In fact, now I think of it, nearly all of them could have at least some applicability to a religious upbringing, depending on your level of liberalism. Nonetheless, they relate strongly to values associated with freethought. I have three subheadings.
1. Science
One of my earliest memories is -- well, it's fragmentary these days, tied to a single picture and a dimly remembered feeling of fascination. The story goes like this.
You know how kids go through a stage where they're trying to distinguish between male and female? It takes a while to learn the little clues (Genuine memory that just flashed into my head: "Most of the time, long haired people are women. Some men have long hair, too, though." That's my mother, trying to explain some of the clues that might help. "Only men have beards" would have been a useful one; pity it's of such limited use. And so on.). Anyway, the way my mother tells it, I was about three and had developed an annoying habit of pointing to people in the supermarket saying "Mummy, mummy, that one there! Is that a man or a woman?"
Questions like that, spoken loudly in a public place, can be embarrassing. "Why, Mummy? Why is that a man?" I suspect the main reason my mother came up with this plan was as a way of shutting me up. "Wait until we get home and I'll explain," she told me, and I can't tell you if the impatience I remember is a real memory or a superimposed one; it was twenty years ago, after all. If it is a real memory, though, then I can tell you that it all sounded very mysterious and that I didn't like having to wait.
So we got home, and she went upstairs and got the book she'd used to tell me about where babies come from when she was expecting my little sister. It's a good book, full of actual scientific photographs. I know I have some memory of this book, because when I saw it, more than a decade later, I recognised the page that she had turned to for this explanation.
"These are chromosomes," she told me (I thought of them as 'krome-zomes' for years afterwards). "Boys have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. Girls have two X chromosomes. The egg always has an X chromosome from the mother, but the sperm can have an X chromosome or a Y chromosome . . . "
What's the moral of this story? Tell your kids stuff. Encourage them to ask questions by giving them answers -- "I'll tell you when we get home" is a much better response than "Just be quiet and don't be rude." If they're listening and not bored, don't be scared of overloading them with information -- it took me a while to realise my mother was only referring to one out of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, even though I'm sure she explained that at the time, but that was okay. I just filled in the details when I got older.
Oh, and if you're lucky, they'll make cute precocious statements. My father loves to tell the story of the man who came to visit when I was four who said to me "You're a very clever little girl, aren't you?" and received the response "That's because I have two X krome-zomes." My mother used to scoff at that story. "Of course she knew what chromosomes were. I told her."
2. Sexuality
Another one of my earliest memories is being given a small hand mirror by my mother so I could look at my vulva. As memories go, it pairs nicely with the previous one, both because I was about the same age and because I was at least as fascinated if not more so. If you're a girl, you can't necessarily see your genitals easily without a mirror. It's nice to know what's there.
When I mentioned this memory to my mother, she said she spent the whole time feeling terribly uncomfortable. If that's true, all I can say is that I owe her doubly for not communicating that to me at the time. This memory is only one small part of what it takes to build comfort with your own body, of course, but I'm sure it's crucial -- why else would I remember it so clearly?
Think about it. Generations of children were told at that age not to touch that part, and don't look at that part or think too much about it, and those are your secret parts, and whatever. And my mother? She gave me a mirror. I love her so much.
When I get into my teens, my mother also told me how to masturbate. Is that odd? It was a serviceable explanation, spoken in the rather factual but otherwise ordinary tone my mother usually retreats to when one of us brings up sexuality. My own feelings about sex are mixed and murky. (So are my mother's. Her early experiences of sex were rather unpleasant. Do I blame her? Yes and no.) I can't be ashamed of masturbation, though. It has no disadvantages. There's nothing for the shame to stick to.
Then there are the various books she supplied me with -- Our Bodies, Ourselves, and the one by Sheila Kitzinger with 'sex' in the title that I shelved spine-backwards at age sixteen when she gave it to me and then pulled out at age eighteen and read with fascination and occasional arousal. I quite like the idea of non-fiction as erotica, actually. I looked for that book when I was twenty-one and couldn't find it. I think my eldest little sister took it. The enlightenment goes on!
3. Rules and Morality
I like this one best of all. My mother is determinedly, thoughtfully moral. Indeed, her approach to teaching us morality was rather like her approach to teaching us science. Just as we were always allowed to ask questions of fact, so also we were always allowed to ask questions about the rules. "Because I said so" was a banned phrase; "argument from authority," she'd have called it. Maybe if she was really tired and exasperated she'd resort to "Oh, please, just behave, I don't have time to argue this right now." Most of the time she'd have the discussion and give us the explanation, though, because she believed in the principle of open debate, and she believed in not claiming to be infallible. If she was wrong, we should argue with her, and she'd change if we could make her see it. Basic principles like fairness and not hurting people were taken for granted, I admit; we never thought to question those. Perhaps they were partially built into us; more likely, I think, we learned what sorts of arguments were acceptable by example.
Interesting, isn't it? She taught us morality and critical thinking at the same time. If you're logical to begin with, having morality presented to you in the form of reasoned argument is a great way to embed it as deeply as it will go. I respect reasons.
There's more I could say on this subject. I'm particularly lucky in that I had educated parents -- my mother left school at sixteen, actually, but she still knew enough biology to tell me about chromosomes. I guess the most important thing was that she knew how to share her knowledge with a small child! Later, she went to university, studied philosophy, and ended up introducing me to all manner of theories of ethics. There's nothing like having a list of counterexamples to make the notion that you can't have a theory of morality without God seem particularly silly. As for my Dad, he's a forest scientist with a crazy love for astronomy -- when they taught me in school to say "my very elegant mother just sat upon nine porcupines" I couldn't help thinking that "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto" would be a more obvious way of listing those letters in that order. It took me a moment to realise that wasn't the point.
So, yeah, I'm lucky. I won't say there were no disadvantages to my parents' way of bringing me up. I have a long list of things I'd do differently. Atheism isn't one of them, though. In bringing me up as an atheist, my parents gave me an incredible head start.
Saturday, 12 April 2008
My letter to Monique Davis
Rep. Monique Davis of the state legislature in Illinois caught the attention of the atheist blogosphere recently with her startling outburst (reported here) to atheist Rob Sherman, who was testifying against the allocation of state funds to rebuild a historic (but still operating) church:
Maybe I'm just being influenced by Alonzo Fyfe's take, but really, Davis' apology disturbs me more than the reports on her initial comment did. We don't know exactly what she said, because it wasn't a public apology, it was a personal one to the person she blew up at. It's nice to know that she understands that it's polite to apologise to someone you yell at, but does she even understand that what she said about atheists -- all atheists -- was wrong? What's with that reference to school shootings? Does she blame atheists for those?
I can't know for sure what Monique Davis believes or was trying to say. I have, however, sent her a letter asking for clarification. I have no idea what she'll think to receive a letter from New Zealand that won't reach her for a week on a subject that most closely concerns the atheist citizens in her own state, but I find I can't keep silent. The text of my letter is given below.
***
Flat _
_ _______ Street
Christchurch
New Zealand
11 April, 2008
Dear Ms Davis,
I am writing with regard to the remarks you made to Rob Sherman, stating that atheists ‘believe in destroying’ and that it is ‘dangerous for children to even know that [atheism] exists’. I wish to commend you for apologizing to Mr Sherman for your remarks. However, you do not merely owe an apology to Mr Sherman. You owe an apology to all atheists.
I myself am an atheist and secular humanist. My atheist mother, who is currently doing a PhD in ethics, brought me up to think as carefully about what is morally good as I do about what is objectively true. I believe in showing compassion to others. I believe in justice. I believe in being open to new evidence. I believe in not pre-judging people by their religion or lack thereof.
In stating that atheists ‘believe in destroying’, you have shown incredible bigotry to all people who, for whatever reason, come to believe that God probably does not exist. I urge you to consider your atheist constituents and apologize to them, too, as a lawmaker who publicly stated that they did not have a right to be heard by the state government. I realize your comments were spoken in the heat of the moment. Please take the opportunity to put them right!
I am also concerned to hear that, in your apology to Sherman, you explained that you were upset that day because you heard that two Chicago students had been shot to death. I hope this does not mean that you succumb to the bigotry that blames atheists for school shootings. No good reason for such blame exists. When we hear that children have died, we grieve, too. We cannot even comfort ourselves with the thought that the children will live on in heaven. I have nothing but contempt for the people who use such tragedies to try to inspire hatred of unrelated groups. I would be grateful for clarification of what you meant when you referred to school shootings in your apology to Mr Sherman.
I am a New Zealander, not an American. I do not have to face the anti-atheist sentiment that some unlucky American atheists put up with on a regular basis. However, as a member of the international atheist community, I hope that more Americans will come to understand that atheists generally do not believe in destroying. Indeed, atheism is all the more reason to try to do good in the world. Since there is no God, if we do not build the world we wish to see, no-one will.
Yours sincerely,
***
I even Americanized my spelling for her. I'd like to say it was politeness; I'm sorry to say it may have been an indication of my opinion of her openmindedness. Not that American spelling izn't uzually more sensible when you think about it.
Unbelievable stuff. Since then, the Council for Secular Humanism has called for Monique Davis to resign, and there have been several calls for an apology. Davis has responded by apologising to Sherman, as reported here.Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.
I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?
I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--
Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?
Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!
Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---
Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.
Maybe I'm just being influenced by Alonzo Fyfe's take, but really, Davis' apology disturbs me more than the reports on her initial comment did. We don't know exactly what she said, because it wasn't a public apology, it was a personal one to the person she blew up at. It's nice to know that she understands that it's polite to apologise to someone you yell at, but does she even understand that what she said about atheists -- all atheists -- was wrong? What's with that reference to school shootings? Does she blame atheists for those?
I can't know for sure what Monique Davis believes or was trying to say. I have, however, sent her a letter asking for clarification. I have no idea what she'll think to receive a letter from New Zealand that won't reach her for a week on a subject that most closely concerns the atheist citizens in her own state, but I find I can't keep silent. The text of my letter is given below.
***
Flat _
_ _______ Street
Christchurch
New Zealand
11 April, 2008
Dear Ms Davis,
I am writing with regard to the remarks you made to Rob Sherman, stating that atheists ‘believe in destroying’ and that it is ‘dangerous for children to even know that [atheism] exists’. I wish to commend you for apologizing to Mr Sherman for your remarks. However, you do not merely owe an apology to Mr Sherman. You owe an apology to all atheists.
I myself am an atheist and secular humanist. My atheist mother, who is currently doing a PhD in ethics, brought me up to think as carefully about what is morally good as I do about what is objectively true. I believe in showing compassion to others. I believe in justice. I believe in being open to new evidence. I believe in not pre-judging people by their religion or lack thereof.
In stating that atheists ‘believe in destroying’, you have shown incredible bigotry to all people who, for whatever reason, come to believe that God probably does not exist. I urge you to consider your atheist constituents and apologize to them, too, as a lawmaker who publicly stated that they did not have a right to be heard by the state government. I realize your comments were spoken in the heat of the moment. Please take the opportunity to put them right!
I am also concerned to hear that, in your apology to Sherman, you explained that you were upset that day because you heard that two Chicago students had been shot to death. I hope this does not mean that you succumb to the bigotry that blames atheists for school shootings. No good reason for such blame exists. When we hear that children have died, we grieve, too. We cannot even comfort ourselves with the thought that the children will live on in heaven. I have nothing but contempt for the people who use such tragedies to try to inspire hatred of unrelated groups. I would be grateful for clarification of what you meant when you referred to school shootings in your apology to Mr Sherman.
I am a New Zealander, not an American. I do not have to face the anti-atheist sentiment that some unlucky American atheists put up with on a regular basis. However, as a member of the international atheist community, I hope that more Americans will come to understand that atheists generally do not believe in destroying. Indeed, atheism is all the more reason to try to do good in the world. Since there is no God, if we do not build the world we wish to see, no-one will.
Yours sincerely,
***
I even Americanized my spelling for her. I'd like to say it was politeness; I'm sorry to say it may have been an indication of my opinion of her openmindedness. Not that American spelling izn't uzually more sensible when you think about it.
Thursday, 3 April 2008
Introducing Odo Hirsch
I read children's books. A lot of children's books. I never really stopped, because there was no way I was going to give up my favourite authors just because I was entering my teens. I do not think I have ever had enough favourite authors.
My pseudonym is taken from a children's book -- specifically this children's book entitled The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf, by Gerald Morris; Lynet is the eponymous Savage Damsel. The series of which it is a part is delightful despite being shabby in places: sweet and good and humble and humourous. It's also written by a Christian minister. Not, perhaps, the most apt pseudonym for an atheist blogger, but then, I never expected to blog about atheism!
Sometimes you can pick the books written by authors who take their Christianity seriously. I don't mean the ones who throw it in your face, I mean the ones for whom it shows up naturally, because Christianity is such a large part of their lives that they can't leave it out of what they write. I'm thinking, for example, of Madeleine L'Engle, who makes love the central empowering force for the side of good in A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels. There's also Sherryl Jordan, a New Zealander like me, who pulled off a (halfway convincing!) World Peace ending in Time of the Eagle, achieved through the work of a character who survives by having faith in the purpose she believes has been laid down for her. You can see the Christian belief structure. Does it bother me? A little. Am I skeptical of it? Yes. Do I learn from it? Definitely. Do I like these authors? Oh, so much!
At the very least, I needn't be ashamed of liking Katherine Paterson -- she's another author who belongs in this category, perhaps the best writer of them all. She writes with such incredible sympathy for her characters (the same is true of Orson Scott Card). Moreover, we atheists owe her a vote of thanks. In Leslie (from Bridge to Terabithia) we have a sympathetic atheist character that we can be proud to be represented by: imaginative, intelligent, non-conforming, courageous. Paterson even goes so far as to take the cruelty of eternal damnation and slam it in the reader's face! Yet she herself is Christian. Her other Newbery-Award-winning book is Jacob Have I Loved, which deals with the problem of feeling that God might hate you. And yes, when I read her, or Card, or Gerald Morris, or Sherryl Jordan, or Madeleine L'Engle, sometimes I can't help thinking 'How can we duplicate this?' How can we duplicate that sympathy? How can we duplicate the good aspects that come (I assume) from having a community which encourages you to think about others and love them just as they are? More complicatedly, this emphasis on love, faith, God's plan and whatever isn't precisely the angle I would want to take! It has good aspects, and regular focus on those things as part of being actively religious can have a nice effect, but I wouldn't want to buy the whole thing. What do I want?
I have some answers. Daylight Atheism. A little familiarity with philosophy. Book clubs. Meditation without the surrounding mysticism? Humanist groups? Humanism, certainly. Philip Pullman, Terry Pratchett, various other authors who present a rich and complex worldview that deals with the atheist perspective . . .
. . . and one Odo Hirsch, who somehow captures the simple half.
I don't know that Hirsch is an atheist. He's notoriously shy with all personal data. This is an amusing example. This article is in fact the most detailed information I've been able to find about him on the internet (notably, he's worked as a doctor and as a business consultant, studied political thought at Cambridge, and did some work for Amnesty International). Let me say, then, that I would intuit that Hirsch is a non-believer in the same way that I might intuit that an author is Christian. Hirsch obviously has a deep philosophy, it permeates his work -- and God never shows up. Reading him is like reading one of my favourite Christian authors, except that I'm not looking at some fuzzy other-person's-worldview that I have to sift through, I'm looking at something that often hits me clear as day.
If I had to name some authors who can make me see simple goodness and light in the world when I'm tired and stressed and don't feel like reading something complicated, I'd name Gerald Morris and Odo Hirsch. Morris writes light Arthurian retellings that can laugh at themselves. Hirsch is something else entirely. When Hirsch writes one of his happy books, it's as if he's done the usual thing by writing a book for children in which all distress is minor and happiness prevails in the end -- but done it with an incredibly sophisticated notion of happiness. No pasted-on smiles, here. There are reasons why Hirsch's characters are happy. You can learn something about happiness by reading one of his simple little children's books. You can see the happiness in the world from having had it sketched out for you.
Frankel Mouse has perhaps the most obvious moral. I once read a review that described Frankel, his brother Berrell and the small, frightened mouse Michael that Frankel has taken in as a 'dysfunctional mouse family' and bridled. They're not dysfunctional! Berrell is dysfunctional. Frankel is about as functional as you can get. You might worry, I suppose, about the way Berrell stays at home all day and makes Frankel look for the cheese. Of the two, though, Frankel is much happier, and you can see that Berrell's unhappiness is entirely his own fault. Frankel's work gives him a purpose and an identity. "We are the cheese-stealers!" he explains to Michael. If Berrell is grumpy, it's because he sits in a corner all day and never does anything. No wonder he almost seems to welcome the arrival of daredevil Cousin Ruthie. Frankel, by contrast, dreads Cousin Ruthie's arrival -- but I think he does admit at one point that her fun-loving, adventurous ways do make life more exciting . . .
Other lighthearted works from Odo Hirsch include the ones about Bartlett the Explorer ("Inventiveness, Desperation, Perseverance!"), and the ones about Hazel Green, an inquisitive extrovert who has multiple friendships with the adults who run the various stores on the ground floor of the skyscraper in which she lives, and who is forever asking them questions about what they do. Hazel Green is in fact my favourite Odo Hirsch book -- central to the book is her developing friendship with the local math geek.
Hirsch can write characters whose lives are full of meaning, but he is also capable of writing characters who look for meaning. Antonio S and the Mystery of Theodore Guzman has a bittersweet tone, as does Pincus Corbett's Strange Adventure. The latter describes a simple, reliable tailor who is tired of making boring things and starts a project of his own -- a colourful coat that can give him a new identity. Does it make him happier? Well, yes, it's better than nothing, but somehow I remember the story as being a little sad, all the same.
Writing for young adults, Hirsch seems to go in the opposite direction: Yoss is remarkably dark, as is Slaughterboy according to all the reviews (though I haven't read the latter). They're both coming-of-age novels, and they both deal with finding independence in a harsh world. Yoss is deep, to be sure, but it wasn't an easy read. Still, it showed me a side of Odo Hirsch that I hadn't seen before. He's capable of more than just sweetness and light. I was thrilled to see that Will Buster and the Gelmet Helmet includes some of the stronger themes of Yoss in a less dark, livelier fashion. Still, I think he's capable of taking that further. I'm waiting for the next step, the next book that blends happiness and darkness. Right now, I think he's still on his way up.
My pseudonym is taken from a children's book -- specifically this children's book entitled The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf, by Gerald Morris; Lynet is the eponymous Savage Damsel. The series of which it is a part is delightful despite being shabby in places: sweet and good and humble and humourous. It's also written by a Christian minister. Not, perhaps, the most apt pseudonym for an atheist blogger, but then, I never expected to blog about atheism!
Sometimes you can pick the books written by authors who take their Christianity seriously. I don't mean the ones who throw it in your face, I mean the ones for whom it shows up naturally, because Christianity is such a large part of their lives that they can't leave it out of what they write. I'm thinking, for example, of Madeleine L'Engle, who makes love the central empowering force for the side of good in A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels. There's also Sherryl Jordan, a New Zealander like me, who pulled off a (halfway convincing!) World Peace ending in Time of the Eagle, achieved through the work of a character who survives by having faith in the purpose she believes has been laid down for her. You can see the Christian belief structure. Does it bother me? A little. Am I skeptical of it? Yes. Do I learn from it? Definitely. Do I like these authors? Oh, so much!
At the very least, I needn't be ashamed of liking Katherine Paterson -- she's another author who belongs in this category, perhaps the best writer of them all. She writes with such incredible sympathy for her characters (the same is true of Orson Scott Card). Moreover, we atheists owe her a vote of thanks. In Leslie (from Bridge to Terabithia) we have a sympathetic atheist character that we can be proud to be represented by: imaginative, intelligent, non-conforming, courageous. Paterson even goes so far as to take the cruelty of eternal damnation and slam it in the reader's face! Yet she herself is Christian. Her other Newbery-Award-winning book is Jacob Have I Loved, which deals with the problem of feeling that God might hate you. And yes, when I read her, or Card, or Gerald Morris, or Sherryl Jordan, or Madeleine L'Engle, sometimes I can't help thinking 'How can we duplicate this?' How can we duplicate that sympathy? How can we duplicate the good aspects that come (I assume) from having a community which encourages you to think about others and love them just as they are? More complicatedly, this emphasis on love, faith, God's plan and whatever isn't precisely the angle I would want to take! It has good aspects, and regular focus on those things as part of being actively religious can have a nice effect, but I wouldn't want to buy the whole thing. What do I want?
I have some answers. Daylight Atheism. A little familiarity with philosophy. Book clubs. Meditation without the surrounding mysticism? Humanist groups? Humanism, certainly. Philip Pullman, Terry Pratchett, various other authors who present a rich and complex worldview that deals with the atheist perspective . . .
. . . and one Odo Hirsch, who somehow captures the simple half.
I don't know that Hirsch is an atheist. He's notoriously shy with all personal data. This is an amusing example. This article is in fact the most detailed information I've been able to find about him on the internet (notably, he's worked as a doctor and as a business consultant, studied political thought at Cambridge, and did some work for Amnesty International). Let me say, then, that I would intuit that Hirsch is a non-believer in the same way that I might intuit that an author is Christian. Hirsch obviously has a deep philosophy, it permeates his work -- and God never shows up. Reading him is like reading one of my favourite Christian authors, except that I'm not looking at some fuzzy other-person's-worldview that I have to sift through, I'm looking at something that often hits me clear as day.
If I had to name some authors who can make me see simple goodness and light in the world when I'm tired and stressed and don't feel like reading something complicated, I'd name Gerald Morris and Odo Hirsch. Morris writes light Arthurian retellings that can laugh at themselves. Hirsch is something else entirely. When Hirsch writes one of his happy books, it's as if he's done the usual thing by writing a book for children in which all distress is minor and happiness prevails in the end -- but done it with an incredibly sophisticated notion of happiness. No pasted-on smiles, here. There are reasons why Hirsch's characters are happy. You can learn something about happiness by reading one of his simple little children's books. You can see the happiness in the world from having had it sketched out for you.
Frankel Mouse has perhaps the most obvious moral. I once read a review that described Frankel, his brother Berrell and the small, frightened mouse Michael that Frankel has taken in as a 'dysfunctional mouse family' and bridled. They're not dysfunctional! Berrell is dysfunctional. Frankel is about as functional as you can get. You might worry, I suppose, about the way Berrell stays at home all day and makes Frankel look for the cheese. Of the two, though, Frankel is much happier, and you can see that Berrell's unhappiness is entirely his own fault. Frankel's work gives him a purpose and an identity. "We are the cheese-stealers!" he explains to Michael. If Berrell is grumpy, it's because he sits in a corner all day and never does anything. No wonder he almost seems to welcome the arrival of daredevil Cousin Ruthie. Frankel, by contrast, dreads Cousin Ruthie's arrival -- but I think he does admit at one point that her fun-loving, adventurous ways do make life more exciting . . .
Other lighthearted works from Odo Hirsch include the ones about Bartlett the Explorer ("Inventiveness, Desperation, Perseverance!"), and the ones about Hazel Green, an inquisitive extrovert who has multiple friendships with the adults who run the various stores on the ground floor of the skyscraper in which she lives, and who is forever asking them questions about what they do. Hazel Green is in fact my favourite Odo Hirsch book -- central to the book is her developing friendship with the local math geek.
Hirsch can write characters whose lives are full of meaning, but he is also capable of writing characters who look for meaning. Antonio S and the Mystery of Theodore Guzman has a bittersweet tone, as does Pincus Corbett's Strange Adventure. The latter describes a simple, reliable tailor who is tired of making boring things and starts a project of his own -- a colourful coat that can give him a new identity. Does it make him happier? Well, yes, it's better than nothing, but somehow I remember the story as being a little sad, all the same.
Writing for young adults, Hirsch seems to go in the opposite direction: Yoss is remarkably dark, as is Slaughterboy according to all the reviews (though I haven't read the latter). They're both coming-of-age novels, and they both deal with finding independence in a harsh world. Yoss is deep, to be sure, but it wasn't an easy read. Still, it showed me a side of Odo Hirsch that I hadn't seen before. He's capable of more than just sweetness and light. I was thrilled to see that Will Buster and the Gelmet Helmet includes some of the stronger themes of Yoss in a less dark, livelier fashion. Still, I think he's capable of taking that further. I'm waiting for the next step, the next book that blends happiness and darkness. Right now, I think he's still on his way up.
Thursday, 20 March 2008
Against Preferring Fundamentalists
There are atheists who say they have more respect for fundamentalist believers than for liberals. At least the fundamentalists follow their own logic, even if it is horrible -- so the reasoning goes. Fundamentalists, supposedly, are consistent within their own worldview, they don't "pick and choose", they don't rely on fuzzy, feel-good reasoning. They have their picture and they stick with it, whereas the liberal Christian picture doesn't even make sense.
I want to speak up for the liberal Christians.
There's a sonnet by John Donne that begins "At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow / Your trumpets, angels . . . ". At the round Earth's imagin'd corners. You see, Revelations 7:1 says "I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth." The Earth has no corners, but we may imagine them, let our religion in this one aspect be an element only of the life of the mind, a flight of the imagination that makes sense on an emotional, poetic level.
I get that. And you'll note that it's hardly a new idea! Fred Clark the Slacktivist has a certain liking for John Donne. That quote below his blog title about "knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend" is from another of Donne's "Holy Sonnets". And yes, I like that poem, too. For me the whole thing is mere flight of the imagination -- a view which the author would not approve of, I'm sure! Worse still, I don't necessarily agree with the poem's stance, even as metaphor, for it views human nature as sinful and speaks of help only as coming from without, and its call to be completely overthown is too similar to calls made by Christians for their reason to be overthrown for me to be able to be comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it is such a powerful, visceral cry for goodness that I can't help but be caught by it. Thus I can understand religious humanists, and the others who do not liberalise themselves quite so far, who blend truth and tradition by means of metaphor, retaining the structure of belief as an aspect of their lives, and retaining the belief itself to various degrees.
Some Christians, of course, are afraid that they or others will go this far. They would read what I have written above and say "See? This is why we can't go around taking stuff metaphorically all the time." Many of them would then go on to explain that not taking the Bible literally might let you support abortion or (gasp) homosexuality. Of course, the abortion thing is ridiculous, because there isn't a single verse in the Bible that guarantees either that abortion is wrong or that the soul is implanted at conception. In fact, there's at least one passage (Exodus 21:22-23) that sort of implies otherwise. Moreover, if anyone's 'picking and choosing' with no obvious justification, it's the people who pick the invisible verse condemning abortion along with "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination" (Lev:20:13) and Paul's statement in 1 Romans referring to "women [who] exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural" and "men . . . [who] were consumed with passion for one another" as "errors" and "degrading passions", while completely ignoring some or all of the following:
Deut 22:5 A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.
How many of the people who speak against homosexuality also speak against women wearing trousers? I bet some of them are women wearing trousers.
Deut 22:11 You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.
Enough said. Nobody is demanding laws against wool/linen garments.
Lev 25:44 As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you [and not from the Israelites] that you may acquire male and female slaves.
Eph 6:5-6 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.
(and many more from both Old and New Testaments)
People used to care about those ones, but people who liked those verses usually preferred to ignore this verse:
Deut 23:15-16 Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back to them. They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose in any one of your towns, wherever they please; you shall not oppress them.
Small mitigation, I think.
I could go on until everybody is bored, but I won't (go to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible and you'll be able to pull out hundreds of verses that most of those who deride homosexuality don't follow, I'm sure). People over the centuries have used the Bible for their purposes and derided as "pickers and choosers" those who didn't come to the conclusions mandated by the verses they chose. Such people always ignore plenty of other verses. The reason those people -- whether railing against homosexuality, miscegenation, women's rights or the abolition of slavery -- seem to refer to the Bible more often than their opponents is very simple. It's because they don't have anything else to refer to. It doesn't mean that they actually take the Bible any more literally.
If you're going to pick and choose, by all means pick "love your neighbour as yourself"! Yes, to do so requires an extra-Biblical value judgement (oh, no!), but at least there is some justification! Unlike fundamentalists, people who pick "love your neighbour" aren't picking and choosing for no good reason. They have a reason. It's quite a good one. It's the common human sense of morality, not mandated by the universe, but felt by nearly all human beings in some form. To be sure, morality of this type can get fuzzy around the edges, but the Golden Rule has arisen independently in many, many cultures, and it's always considered crucial. It's not arbitrary, merely relative to humanity. Humanity in general, that is.
Don't feed the fundamentalists. Don't tell them they actually take the Bible more seriously. They'll just say "Yes, that's right, the Bible forbids abortion!" (It doesn't. Remember?)
I want to speak up for the liberal Christians.
There's a sonnet by John Donne that begins "At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow / Your trumpets, angels . . . ". At the round Earth's imagin'd corners. You see, Revelations 7:1 says "I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth." The Earth has no corners, but we may imagine them, let our religion in this one aspect be an element only of the life of the mind, a flight of the imagination that makes sense on an emotional, poetic level.
I get that. And you'll note that it's hardly a new idea! Fred Clark the Slacktivist has a certain liking for John Donne. That quote below his blog title about "knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend" is from another of Donne's "Holy Sonnets". And yes, I like that poem, too. For me the whole thing is mere flight of the imagination -- a view which the author would not approve of, I'm sure! Worse still, I don't necessarily agree with the poem's stance, even as metaphor, for it views human nature as sinful and speaks of help only as coming from without, and its call to be completely overthown is too similar to calls made by Christians for their reason to be overthrown for me to be able to be comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it is such a powerful, visceral cry for goodness that I can't help but be caught by it. Thus I can understand religious humanists, and the others who do not liberalise themselves quite so far, who blend truth and tradition by means of metaphor, retaining the structure of belief as an aspect of their lives, and retaining the belief itself to various degrees.
Some Christians, of course, are afraid that they or others will go this far. They would read what I have written above and say "See? This is why we can't go around taking stuff metaphorically all the time." Many of them would then go on to explain that not taking the Bible literally might let you support abortion or (gasp) homosexuality. Of course, the abortion thing is ridiculous, because there isn't a single verse in the Bible that guarantees either that abortion is wrong or that the soul is implanted at conception. In fact, there's at least one passage (Exodus 21:22-23) that sort of implies otherwise. Moreover, if anyone's 'picking and choosing' with no obvious justification, it's the people who pick the invisible verse condemning abortion along with "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination" (Lev:20:13) and Paul's statement in 1 Romans referring to "women [who] exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural" and "men . . . [who] were consumed with passion for one another" as "errors" and "degrading passions", while completely ignoring some or all of the following:
Deut 22:5 A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.
How many of the people who speak against homosexuality also speak against women wearing trousers? I bet some of them are women wearing trousers.
Deut 22:11 You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.
Enough said. Nobody is demanding laws against wool/linen garments.
Lev 25:44 As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you [and not from the Israelites] that you may acquire male and female slaves.
Eph 6:5-6 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.
(and many more from both Old and New Testaments)
People used to care about those ones, but people who liked those verses usually preferred to ignore this verse:
Deut 23:15-16 Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back to them. They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose in any one of your towns, wherever they please; you shall not oppress them.
Small mitigation, I think.
I could go on until everybody is bored, but I won't (go to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible and you'll be able to pull out hundreds of verses that most of those who deride homosexuality don't follow, I'm sure). People over the centuries have used the Bible for their purposes and derided as "pickers and choosers" those who didn't come to the conclusions mandated by the verses they chose. Such people always ignore plenty of other verses. The reason those people -- whether railing against homosexuality, miscegenation, women's rights or the abolition of slavery -- seem to refer to the Bible more often than their opponents is very simple. It's because they don't have anything else to refer to. It doesn't mean that they actually take the Bible any more literally.
If you're going to pick and choose, by all means pick "love your neighbour as yourself"! Yes, to do so requires an extra-Biblical value judgement (oh, no!), but at least there is some justification! Unlike fundamentalists, people who pick "love your neighbour" aren't picking and choosing for no good reason. They have a reason. It's quite a good one. It's the common human sense of morality, not mandated by the universe, but felt by nearly all human beings in some form. To be sure, morality of this type can get fuzzy around the edges, but the Golden Rule has arisen independently in many, many cultures, and it's always considered crucial. It's not arbitrary, merely relative to humanity. Humanity in general, that is.
Don't feed the fundamentalists. Don't tell them they actually take the Bible more seriously. They'll just say "Yes, that's right, the Bible forbids abortion!" (It doesn't. Remember?)
Sunday, 16 March 2008
Nonbelieving Literati: Not the End of the World
'I don't like affectation. That doesn't mean I try and make everyone look like they just got up in the morning -- that would be a form of affectation too. I like to try and get behind the screens folks put up, get an image of the person they are when they think no-one's looking. Far easier said than done, right enough. Soon as you point a camera at somebody, they perform. Some do it more subtly than others, but they all play a part.'
'Dave made your pictures sound like, I don't know, psychological X-rays.'
'Nah. Nothing quite so wanky and sophisticated. But you can usually tell what I think of the subject without much in the way of in-depth analysis.'
Steff got back to his plate, oddly relieved to have headed off the discussion.
Many of his pictures were psychological X-rays. Fortunately, most people didn't recognise who of.
Thus do we hear the photographer Steff Kennedy's view of his own art in Not the End of the World. I can't help but wonder if author Christopher Brookmyre's view of his own writing is similar: self-conscious, with a hint of self-congratulation for the self-deprecation he allows himself in thinking of this work, coupled with an insecure, and justified, fear of wankiness.
The book is very quotable in places, witty and sometimes even profound for brief moments that don't quite string together properly. I was touched by Larry Freeman's thought that there are orphans, and there are widows, but there's no word for a parent who loses a child. Quite why Larry Freeman has to have lost a child is less obvious. It's irrelevant to the story, and it's not an aspect of his character that actually develops; it seems to be a bauble that figuratively hangs around his character's neck, something to make him seem more interesting, I don't know.
Indeed, Christopher Brookmyre's ability to develop or even convincingly describe character is -- I can put this no more simply -- terrible. Nowhere is this more obvious than in his stereotyped view of fundamentalist Christians, who conveniently justify Steff Kennedy's oh-so-hip contempt for them in every way possible. I'm sorry, but I don't buy that final scene where evil preacher ("Lex") Luther St John isn't willing to die for what he says he believes in. One of the scary things about fundamentalists is that many of them would just love to be persecuted and die for what they believe, and, whatever else you can say about Luther's character, he is portrayed as a true believer, and a terribly messed up true believer at that. You're telling me he wouldn't play to a martyr's script if you strung him up on a cross? Don't be silly.
Ah, but the fundamentalists are nothing compared with Madeleine. So let me just warn you, I'm about to get frank about some of my views on sex -- and, ahem, somewhat impolite about our author's apparent opinions thereof.
Madeleine, Madeleine, Madeleine. Maddy. Magdalene. Where to start? Our dear Maddy used to be a porn actress. She's one of the good guys, naturally, not like those evil fundamentalists who oppose pornography for prurient reasons, or those odd Dworkinites who think pornography demeans women in some way. Indeed, Maddy watched some pornography for a psychology class at university and understood immediately what the ramifications were and were not:
As she had quickly come to learn, there is no such thing as an 'experiment' in academic psychology, because that would suggest the prof was in some doubt as to what the results would be. He knew all along that sustained exposure to this material would make the depicted behaviour seem more natural, commonplace and perfectly ordinary; the effect was 'demystification' rather than desensitization. So a blow-job neither elevated the recipient male to a position of dominance and supremacy any more than it made the woman a debased slattern deserving of all contempt: it was just a blow-job. A pussy wasn't any kind of mystic portal to the sexual dimension: it was a pussy. The men were neither perverts nor superstuds for doing what they were doing; the women neither whores nor goddesses. They were all just people fucking. And it was no big deal.
Alas! I am not in a position to comment directly on this. However, the wonderful Greta Christina, who is resolutely pro-porn and does know what she is talking about, has written this about people assuming that the stuff that happens in porn is normal sex (when in fact most of the time the details are dictated by what looks good, not by what feels good). She has also written this about the complexities involved in supporting porn:
I also think that pro-porn advocates -- myself included -- need to stop pretending that there isn't a problem. We need to recognize that the overwhelming majority of porn -- or rather, the overwhelming majority of video porn, which is the overwhelming majority of porn -- is sexist, is patriarchal, does perpetuate body fascism, does create unrealistic sexual expectations for both women and men, does depict sex in ways that are not only overwhelmingly focused on male pleasure, but are rigid and formulaic and mind-numbingly tedious to boot. And we need to be trying to do something about it.
Christopher Brookmyre is having Maddy say a load of rubbish here. Pornography is fine. Fine! Nothing wrong with it at all! No possible objections! Any fool can see that!
So why, oh please, why was our dear former porn actress only doing it because her Daddy abused her when she was little? How does that fit into Brookmyre's script? Sure, porn is fine -- but nice girls only do it because they were abused as children. Madeleine is a nice girl, you know. Not one of those -- sluts!
You think it couldn't get worse, don't you? It gets worse. Having created this slimy contradiction in values, Brookmyre can think of nothing better to do than to have sex with it in the form of his Mary Sue, Steff Kennedy. Steff Kennedy is interestingly tall and blond. Steff Kennedy takes no bullshit and commits heresy on a regular basis (coool . . .). Steff Kennedy has watched one of Madeleine's porn videos, but it is only when he sees the real her that he becomes suddenly transported to the daft world of the desperately in love, where he feels cutely awkward and humbly oblivious to the obvious fact that -- of course -- she likes him too.
His stomach was churning. His bloody stomach was churning. He hadn't felt like this since he was about fifteen, and the worst of it was that it was for all the same reasons as back then. Thinking about what she looked like, what she smelt like, her smile, the sound of her voice. Excited by the very thought of seeing her, worried by the thought that she wouldn't show, nervousness multiplied with every unfeasibly long minute that passed.
There's more like that. A whole lot more. Remembering the patronising way the author had endowed the object of this stereotypical worship with a pity-inducing excuse for being a porn star, I wanted to spew. But I'd have settled for the author taking his hand off his you-know-what for long enough to write something that didn't reek of sugar and semen.
Instead, I had to watch as the evil fundamentalist Christians tried to use Maddy as a pawn, a tool to promote their ideology by forcing her to repent. Luckily, Steff comes up with the idea that saves the day! Then he head-butts her evil, abusing father so hard that the father is thrown to the wall, all while making cute sarcastic remarks with his hard-to-fathom (but very coool) sense of humour. It was nice to see Maddy take the stage and turn the tables on the moralising pundits who believed her dead, but I wished I could have seen her turn the tables on her author. He, too, is using her to promote his ideology, and he, too, does not respect her.
I know it can be hard for the best of liberals to entirely shake off the complex, powerful memes that surround sex for long enough to perceive the best way for people to enjoy their lives. Heck, I, for one, have had to concede with regard to my own feelings that sexual repression is not just a weird disease they had in the fifties. Finding the best way to view a sexual issue can take time and thought, and even then you won't always be sure you're right. I'd be more inclined to cut Christopher Brookmyre some slack if he wasn't so obviously wanking to the messed-up ideas that he blithely subscribes to.
Monday, 10 March 2008
What if I didn't find Meaning meaningful?
How do we find meaning in life? Theists -- even open-minded ones -- often speak of a sort of meaning that I really don't understand. Here's Quixote, who is ever-thoughtful in both senses of the word, opining quite honestly on the subject of meaning:
"Atheists have purpose in their lives. They find meaning. They stare at the heavens just like theists. If purpose and meaning are illusions, they are darn good ones. We are all fools. Atheists themselves are only slightly less deluded than theists in this area...."Again, we do not seem to get meaning from matter. Meaning is more consistent with an intelligence behind the universe."
It's not just theists, either. I met an atheist guy at a party once who said that as far as he was concerned, the meaning of life was looking for it -- not creating it, but looking for it. "Maybe there's meaning out there," he said.
How the heck can there be meaning out there? The only meaning I've ever seen was very definitely in here. In my mind!
Seriously, I don't get this. When I say 'meaning', I'm not talking about a property of the universe. I'm talking about my mental state, or perhaps another person's mental state. When I say something means something, I mean that it means something to me, or to you, or to us as part of a shared understanding. There is no echo of some bigger concept. There is no sense in which I am using 'meaning' as a flawed substitute for Meaning with a capital M. This is the only meaning I know and as far as I can tell in my youthful state it is the only meaning I'll ever need.
Apparently, not all atheists agree. John Evo speaks of "trying to play that via rationality I can create meaning". Evidently, for him, (human-)created meaning is not quite enough. I note this with all sympathy and have no desire to pathologise it. It fascinates me. Why do I not feel this way? Authors Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett both surely have to take some credit. The fact that I adopted this notion of meaning prior to my teens may also contribute to my inability to conceive of other possibilities. Whatever the reason, for me 'meaning' is the easy question. Before reading John Evo's post I honestly thought theists just brought that one up because they were deluded and brainwashed.
So I have some questions. If you do believe in, or wish for, or are able to imagine some idea of Meaning beyond the ordinary meaning which simply refers to a state of mind, how would it interact with little-m meaning? What if I didn't find Meaning meaningful? Would that be possible, in your opinion?
Is Meaning just an extra thing that some people find meaningful?
How the heck can there be meaning out there? The only meaning I've ever seen was very definitely in here. In my mind!
Seriously, I don't get this. When I say 'meaning', I'm not talking about a property of the universe. I'm talking about my mental state, or perhaps another person's mental state. When I say something means something, I mean that it means something to me, or to you, or to us as part of a shared understanding. There is no echo of some bigger concept. There is no sense in which I am using 'meaning' as a flawed substitute for Meaning with a capital M. This is the only meaning I know and as far as I can tell in my youthful state it is the only meaning I'll ever need.
Apparently, not all atheists agree. John Evo speaks of "trying to play that via rationality I can create meaning". Evidently, for him, (human-)created meaning is not quite enough. I note this with all sympathy and have no desire to pathologise it. It fascinates me. Why do I not feel this way? Authors Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett both surely have to take some credit. The fact that I adopted this notion of meaning prior to my teens may also contribute to my inability to conceive of other possibilities. Whatever the reason, for me 'meaning' is the easy question. Before reading John Evo's post I honestly thought theists just brought that one up because they were deluded and brainwashed.
So I have some questions. If you do believe in, or wish for, or are able to imagine some idea of Meaning beyond the ordinary meaning which simply refers to a state of mind, how would it interact with little-m meaning? What if I didn't find Meaning meaningful? Would that be possible, in your opinion?
Is Meaning just an extra thing that some people find meaningful?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)