Thanks for giving me the opportunity to address this issue, Ampris!

Ah, where do I begin?

Let me start with two definitions of “hallowed” that I found online:

—– sacred; worthy of religious veneration; “the sacred name of Jesus”; “Jerusalem’s hallowed soil” (WordNet)

—– Hallow is a word usually used as a verb, meaning “to make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate”. The adjective form hallowed, as used in The Lord’s Prayer, means holy, consecrated, sacred, or revered. (Wikipedia)

As one who rejects theism, religion, and the premises that lie behind these concepts, I also reject those sub-concepts like hallowed, sacred, and holy that depend upon them.

Listening to people declare one thing or another hallowed, sacred, or holy is like listening to people declare a certain area haunted or another area the landing site of alien spacecraft. Until people detail the exact nature and logic of their supernatural and other bizarre hypotheses and/or until they provide me with good evidence in support of their extraordinary claims, I am not inclined to step into their apparent fantasy worlds or play along with the apparently delusional rules that govern those worlds. Indeed, to do so would seem to constitute a very serious breach of intellectual honesty and integrity (as well as of social responsibility).

As with so many of the rituals and dictates associated with religion, the concepts of hallowedness and holiness seem to me to be rude power plays rather than a respectful and genuine search for (or expression of) objective truth. Declaring a person, place, or thing “sacred” reminds me of two boys I knew growing up who one day went around rubbing various items against their cocks in a childish attempt to “girl-proof” them. Which, now that I think about it, reminds me of the way male dogs go around peeing on things in an attempt to mark their territory. Theists who shout “THIS is SACRED!” strike me as doing much the same thing. It’s not an attempt to convey objective truth – it’s an attempt to bluntly assert a kind of personal ownership of a person, place, or thing and to warn others to respect that ownership or suffer the consequences.

The wildly subjective nature of the act is made obvious if one pauses long enough to ask the question “What scientific test might one perform on a person, place, or thing to determine whether or not he, she, or it is in fact hallowed?” It’s a ludicrous question, of course – much like asking “What scientific test might one perform on a person, place, or thing to determine if it’s Ohio?” Hallowedness – like Ohio – is a human construct – not an objective part of natural reality. If enough people agree that Ohio is a certain stretch of land residing between Lake Erie and the Ohio River between such and such a latitude and longitude, and if there are no objections, fine – it can be a useful political, social, and/or economic concept, but still hardly a scientific one.

Unlike Ohio, however, religious abstractions like “hallowed” are rarely objection-free or particularly useful to those belonging to different tribes. Instead, they tend to divide us and lead to endless quarrels over exactly what is and isn’t “really” holy and sacred.

Those theists who object to a mosque being built near Ground Zero in NYC (not *on* Ground Zero, mind you – simply *near* it) would probably be hard pressed to say exactly where a mosque *should* be built since any such religious structure representing religious assumptions so contrary to their own seems, by its very nature, fraudulent, unholy, and – following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion – outright evil. And who tolerates outright evil but evil people?

(As a side note…. I think it was St. Augustine who asserted that *everything* was holy and hallowed – including shit – since everything came from gOd and necessarily reflected his creative energies and will. It’s not a view I hear expressed much by American Christians these days, but it seems just as valid a delusion as anything I *have* heard. I wonder how certain strident American Christians might deal with this ancient Christian point of view that so directly contradicts their own were they actually to be exposed to it….)

(And as another side note…. One of the things I’ve learned in recent years is that during the Revolutionary War the British kept American rebels imprisoned on ships docked in New York. Thousands of those Americans seem to have died in horrible conditions as a result. The sites of those deaths now seem to have been pretty much forgotten, as have those deaths themselves. I can only wonder how many of those prattling on now about the “hallowed” nature of Ground Zero have traveled to “pay their respects” at Ground Zero while blithely and unknowingly violating the “hallowed” ground where the bones of our ancestral, gOd-fearing freedom fighters might yet lie a-moldering…. [How many might unknowingly live in neighborhoods rendered "holy" in Indian eyes by massacres perpetuated by European invaders is a question I'll leave for another day.])

If there’s anything we as Americans might come together on and highly value in a pseudo-sacred sort of way it would seem to be the US Constitution, the First Amendment of which guarantees the right of Muslims to build their mosque. If that offends you, well – too bad. The atheist in me is deeply offended by the construction of *any* religious structure (including the new $12,000,000+ Catholic Church in my town that has just been capped off with a 20-foot-tall cross covered in gold). The American in me, however, recognizes the right of Catholics to offend me – just as I have the right to offend them in turn. Only intellectual fascists think they have the right not to be offend, the right to peremptorily curtail the activities of those who might offend them, and/or the right to themselves freely offend those they deem lesser beings.

That’s my two cents, anyway.

Or maybe my buck fifty-nine.

What do YOU think?

Hmmmm?

*Offering you a fresh cookie for your thoughts*

Related posts:

1. The Straw Man that Endures
2. Is God Just Another Name People Call Themselves?
3. Religion is not atheism

And just in case you’ve been wondering what exactly has been keeping me away….

It hasn’t been grief, nor has it been any sudden re-examination of my own beliefs in the face of death. Instead, it’s been the fact that my recently deceased relative left a huge house behind and very few relatives to take care of it or the 35 years of stuff she filled it with. It’s not quite as bad as the situation you might have seen on one of those TV shows about hoarders, but… suffice it to say that trying to figure out exactly why anyone would stash three defective electric juicers in three very different places has been just one of the questions that have thoroughly pre-empted those raised by religion during the last month.

Which now leads me to a question YOU might be able to help me answer.

My deceased relative wasn’t terribly religious, but she did accumulate a variety of religious artifacts during her very long life. Should I include these items in the estate sale I’m now planning or should I destroy them?

These items aren’t very valuable. We’re talking about framed copies of the Beatitudes and cloying images of Jesus, not diamond-studded gold crucifixes.

We’re also talking about Bibles written for children.

And Bible Dominoes – “An Inspirational and Educational Game for Ages 4 to 10″ – probably from the 1940s or 1950s. Instead of the usual dots, the tiles have churches, crosses, Bibles, mangers, etc. It’s the sort of thing that you really have to see to appreciate. I’ll probably keep it for myself, just because it’s so weird (and makes me wonder if the Soviets ever stooped to making sets of dominoes bearing depictions of the hammer and sickle flag, Che Guevara, and happy Communist farmers bringing in the crops).

Although I’m hardly a fan of censorship, I feel no obligation to put this kind of crap back into circulation where it might warp yet another generation of young minds.

On the other hand, any money Christians might pay me for this crap is money they won’t be donating to The 700 Club or Mike Huckabee’s next campaign.

So… what would you do?

Or what have you done when you’ve been in a similar situation in the past?

Hmmm?

All answers will be kept private and confidential, so feel free to answer as often and in as many different ways as you like!

(Side Note: I also found a Nazi rifle hidden away in the attic. I guess my deceased relative’s husband acquired it during the latter days of his military service in Europe in 1946. Should I try to sell it even though it might end up in the hands of current Nazi sympathizers? Should I destroy it? Or should I keep it for myself? What would YOU do? And if you think Bible Dominoes ought to be treated differently than a Nazi rifle, please tell me why.)

No related posts.

In the end, the Jesus she seems to have believed in for virtually all her long life gave her very little if any comfort.

In sharp contrast to this, morphine gave her a lot of comfort.

I’m told morphine was discovered by Friedrich Serturner back in 1804.

If you’re moved to sing the praises of anyone this Sunday, I hope you’ll choose to sing his.

Religion may indeed be the opium of the masses on a day to day basis, but I now have definitive proof several times over that it’s a piss poor substitute for doctor-prescribed narcotics when you’re on your deathbed.

Related posts:

1. Benny Hinn Update
2. Where I’ve Been
3. My Discussion With Chess83 (Part 2)

That’s never a good thing to have.

Given the details that have been released about Hitchens’s particular form of the disease, one blogger estimates that there’s only a 20% chance he’ll still be alive five years from now.

Needless to say, if I could wave a magic wand and cure him, I would.

Since I can’t do that, I’ll try now instead to inject some medicinal comments into cyberspace that might help keep the unhealthy thoughts and behaviors of some theists from infecting us all.

Perhaps you already know only too well the sort of thoughts and behaviors that I’m referring to.

If not, you can find some virulent examples here, here, and here.

I didn’t have to look very hard to find those examples, mind you. In fact, I hardly had to look at all. I shudder to think what I might find if I actually spent a significant amount of time trying to ferret out the very worst theist reactions to Hitchens’s plight.

The ones I found are bad enough, thank you very much. All three do a good job of conveying the terribly arrogant, casually nasty, and absurdly closed-minded nature of all too many religious adherents.

They also do a pretty good job of conveying how easily and often religious adherents perceive (or at least present) that arrogance, nastiness, and closed-mindedness as a form of wisdom, charity, or love.

Alas, I didn’t have the opportunity to spell it out at the time, but Fox News commentator Brit Hume provided us with a similar example half a year ago when he told Tiger Woods he ought to abandon Buddhism and embrace Christianity if he really wanted to overcome *his* well-publicized problems. (For details, go here or go here or go here.) Ugh.

But that was then, and this is now – and little seems to have changed in the interim.

Consider David Brog’s recent comments in an essay entitled Praying For Christopher Hitchens:

When I heard the sad news that Christopher Hitchens had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I did what I typically do upon learning of someone’s illness: I said a silent prayer for his recovery. Call it habit, hope, or faith — but this is what I do…. Later that same day, I spoke with an evangelical Christian friend in California who shares my disdain for Hitchens’ views. He started the conversation by informing me that he’s praying for Hitchens’ healing and hopes I’m doing likewise. The following day, I was a guest on a Catholic radio show. As I read the host’s web page, I noticed that he had posted the following to his twitter feed: ‘I know it will drive him crazy, but I’m praying for Christopher Hitchens.’ And so it went throughout the week…. Of course, these prayers for Hitchens are hardly coincidental. Both Christianity and Judaism teach that we’re supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves, and that this love must extend even to our enemies. More importantly, both faiths maintain that we must act on this love to help our neighbors — and our enemies — when they’re in need…. Our leading religious skeptics, on the other hand, are too blinded by intellectual vanity to recognize the limited value of their doubt to a hurting world. As Professor Charles Marsh has observed, ‘It is unlikely that anyone has ever read Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra or Jacques Derrida’s Disseminations and opened a soup kitchen.’ The same could be said for anything ever written by Christopher Hitchens…. Christopher Hitchens’ arguments have never persuaded me. But it is his behavior — especially when contrasted with that of believers — that has done the most to convince me of the limited value of his ideas. In a world with too little love and even less sacrifice, I’ll cast my lot with those who are both preaching love and acting on it. And, together with them, I will continue to pray for Mr. Hitchens’ full and speedy recovery.

Brog’s version of love is terribly hard for me to distinguish from cruel and insulting disdain.

It’s apparently the sort of love that thinks sacrificing a sheep is the best way to help a sick, animal loving vegetarian.

If theists like Brog really care about Hitchens, let’s see at least a few of them offer to pay his medical bills. Or even send him flowers.

If they really care about humanity, let them start donating at least as much to things like cancer research as they do to their churches.

As it is, their habit of using the misfortunes of others to do what they want and enjoy doing (e.g., preach and pray) even when it’s almost certainly going to annoy the alleged subject of their “charity” makes me want to throw up.

So does their continual slander against atheists that we don’t do anything for others – that compassion and charity are somehow exclusively theistic traits. As I’ve pointed out many times before, if this were true, the very Christian US would be much better off than more atheistic and secular places like Scandanavia – but it isn’t. And the US’s Bible Belt would be a social paradise instead of so much worse off than more secular areas of the country. (For more details, go here and here.)

And let’s not forget that the scientific method and secular medical researchers and practitioners have done a whole lot more to reduce pain and suffering in this world and increase health and longevity than prayer or religious “love” ever have.

Rev. Robert Barron serves up much the same load of crap in his recent essay, Why Christians Should Pray For Christopher Hitchens:

[W]what struck me with particular power as I surveyed the Catholic media was that the vast, vast majority of Catholics reported Hitchens’ disease and then, with transparent sincerity, urged people to pray for him.

In making that recommendation, of course, they were on very sure ground indeed. Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies; bless those who curse you; pray for those who maltreat you.’ Christopher Hitchens is undoubtedly the enemy of Christianity – even of Christians – but he is also a child of God, loved into being and destined for eternal life. Therefore, followers of Jesus must pray for him and want what is best for him.

Hitchens seeks by means of specious argument, insinuation, and sometimes plain smear-tactics to undermine religion. He ought to be opposed, vigorously, with counter-argument and clarification of fact. But all the while, he ought to be respected.

Like Brog, Barron manages to misrepresent and insult Hitchens even as he claims to be respecting him.

And like Brog, Barron utterly fails to recognize that praying for an atheist is about as respectful of that atheist as having hot lesbian sex with a nun in celebration of the Pope’s birthday is respectful of the Pope.

Unlike Brog, however, Barron adds to the sins of his essay by including these comments:

Hitchens’ disease is indeed ingredient in God’s providence, since at the very least it was permitted by the one whose wisdom “stretches from end to end mightily.”

But what it means and why it was allowed remain essentially opaque to us. Might it be an occasion for the famous atheist to reconsider his position? Perhaps. Might it be the means by which Hitchens comes to think more deeply about the ultimate meaning of things? Could be. Might it bring others to faith? Maybe. Might it have a significance that no one on the scene today could even in principle grasp? Probably.

In other words, what is happening to Hitchens is actually a good thing, otherwise gOd wouldn’t allow it. We’re just too stupid to figure out exactly *how* it’s good.

On the surface, of course, what Barron says can seem oh-so-openminded and humble. “Who knows why bad things happen even to good people? Certainly not me. I don’t pretend to be omniscient. I don’t judge. I simply trust in the lOrd….”

But blindly trusting in an absurd lOrd unsupported by any good evidence is neither appropriately open-minded nor humble.

And embracing a theology that can so easily see the profound personal tragedies of those we disagree with as some sort of divinely-ordained but hidden good is neither wise nor compassionate but delusional and a moral swampland in which great evil can flourish and spread….

If Barron were *truly* as open-minded as he pretends to be, he would have also raised and grappled with these questions: “Might Hitchens’s illness have been sent by Allah, the One True God whom my Catholicism keeps me from acknowledging? Might it have been payback for his sins in a previous life, as many Hindus and Buddhists believe? Might it have been the result of a voodoo curse or a witch’s spell? Might it have resulted from some poison slipped into his drink by a theist upset with his best-selling book? Or might it be the result of random genetic and environmental factors interacting in natural ways in a world completely free of all gOds, and angels, and demons, and other supernatural entities and forces?”

If theists like Barron were actually as rational as their ability to string words together implies, they would simply put all their pointless speculations and questions aside and approach Hitchens’s illness as the profound medical rather than metaphysical issue it is.

And lest anyone still think that Barron’s falacious approach and confusions are limited to him alone, consider these words from George Berkin’s recent essay, God Is Great To Christopher Hitchens:

Christopher Hitchens, the famous atheist and author of “God is Not Great,” abruptly cut short a book tour this week to begin chemotherapy treatments, and news outlets reported that he has cancer.

It seems against common sense to say this, but might I suggest that this turn of events shows that God is kind even to those who spend their lives fighting against him.

How does that make sense? And how does my suggestion show any compassion?…

[H]ow can cancer be an example of God’s grace to this suddenly stricken intellectual, who has made a career of arguing the case for atheism? A cancer which God didn’t “give,” but certainly permitted.

The short answer is this: if God really wanted to “get” Hitchens, God would just ignore the man, and let him go his blissful way, unchallenged, to a peaceful death.

At which point Hitchens would stand, face-to-face and unreconciled, with that very God….

To illustrate why Hitchens’ getting cancer is an example of God’s grace, let me point to an example from the movies, a mafia movie. The example is fiction, but well-known, and similar circumstances are played out in real life every day.

The aged Don Corleone, the godfather, is playing in the garden with his grandchild. After a life at the head of a criminal enterprise, he is a survivor, basking in the sun with family at the end of a long and happy life. Suddenly, he keels over, and the frolicking toddler is unaware that the grandfather has just died.

I’ll wager that the director was making a comment that this man’s life, wicked by some estimates, ended well. After all, the Don didn’t really “pay” for his alleged sins.

But from a biblical perspective, that quiet death is the very worst thing that could happen to the Don. He has slipped into eternity unreconciled to God.

It is a cliché that there are no atheists in foxholes — or in cancer wards. It is a cliché because, human nature being what it is, there is a lot of truth to it. People do tend to wait until they are in big trouble (foxholes) or until the last minute (cancer wards) before they get serious about spiritual, end-of-life, matters.

But better to suffer for a season now, as a prod to get serious, than to go the way of Don Corleone.

Atheism is a fun game (and profitable, too) when you’re healthy, because there are no really serious consequences. No so when you might be terminally ill, because then you’re about to make an eternal bet….

Yet again we see a terrible personal tragedy being twisted into something good by a delusional theist.

Yet again we see the object of that theist’s alleged love and concern being casually insulted along the way.

“Atheism is fun! And profitable! THAT’S why Hitchens and others embrace it! But the fun stops when we get sick and are dying, doesn’t it, boys and girls? That’s when those silly twits will FINALLY get serious and see the wisdom and righteousness of MY holy ways! And if they don’t, poor dears – oh, such a sad, sad fate awaits – why, it breaks my heart to think of it….”

Bah.

The fact is that when it comes to sickness and dying, it’s the Christians who seem less likely to go peacefully (as detailed in the entry I posted back on May 3, 2009).

And of course one can turn Berkin’s core assumption inside out and use it as easily against Christianity as for it.

Consider: The two relatives I’ve been helping through their terrible last illnesses this year were both Christians. Were those illnesses mercifully sent by Molloch or Osiris or Shiva to help them repent and embrace the One True Religion before it’s too late?

Consider: There was recently an obituary in my paper for a Catholic priest who died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 60 (about the same age as Hitchens). Was that a warning to Christians from Yehweh to reject their heretical religious beliefs and return to Judaism?

Consider: There was a heart-breaking story in yesterday’s Columbus Dispatch about an 11-year-old Christian girl who died recently from a brain tumor. Through it all, we are told, that poor little girl never lost her faith. Is she now writhing in torment in the flames of some Zoroastrian hell as a result? Theists like Berkin might vehemently insist “No!” but saying and insisting on something hardly makes it so. Unfortunately for them, saying and insisting on things is about all that theists have going for them. That’s a pretty piss-poor thing to base a life philosophy on, and it seems to me to be an even worse excuse for beating up on a very sick person like Hitchens….

I can’t recall atheists doing anything similar during John Paul II’s long, final illness.

Or after John Paul I’s sudden demise back in 1978.

(If they did, the mainstream media seems to have ignored their points rather than submit them to a mass audience for general consideration and debate.)

Theists are fond of pointing out what a minority position atheism is and how few atheists there really are.

Which, now that I think about it, is another way of saying that the vast majority of suffering and death in this world is experienced by *theists* – not atheists.

Indeed, since Christians greatly outnumber atheists in the US, it follows that the total amount of suffering of American Christians greatly outweighs that of American atheists (and of all other sub-groups of religious Americans, for that matter).

The next time you encounter a theist trying to use the suffering of an atheist as an excuse to promote his or her own brand of religious madness, you might attempt to gently begin to guide him or her back to objective reality by mentioning this.

(That probably won’t be as satisfying as just slapping them with a trout, but it just might prove to be more effective.)

Related posts:

1. Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Wolpe
2. Christopher Hitchens slams a Rabbi over circumcision
3. I Wish I Coulda Been There

Thanks to everyone who’s bothered to visit here and leave notes even in my absence.

I have no idea how long it might be before my life returns to anything close to normal. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. I’ll try to post if and when I can as the days go by.

In the meantime, remember that I’m wishing ya all the best.

And feel free to help yourself to all the cookies you care to take from my Carl Sagan-shaped cookie jar. (Go ahead and be piggy – it holds billions and billions!)

Related posts:

1. Hi Again

Here’s an essay I recently came across that describes what seems to be a third significant difference:

Protestants Tempt Fate, But Atheists Don’t! (Tom Rees/Epiphenom blog; May 28)

Apparently, some people think that talking or merely thinking about an event can actually bring it about. To me, that’s incomprehensible. When I was young, I assumed that the concept of “tempting fate’ was a poetic metaphor. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that some people take it literally!

Jonathan Abramowitz and colleagues, at the University of North Carolina, have done a nice little study into the differences between Protestants and nonbelievers in attitudes towards tempting fate. Technically, this is actually ‘thought-action fusion’ – a cognitive bias that occurs when people believe that thinking is equivalent to doing, and that thinking can make certain events more probable. It’s related to obsessive-compulsive disorder [a subject that's popped up in this diary before with regard to the nature and continued existence of religious rituals].

What they did is to sit people down and ask them to think about a close relative. Then they were presented with two sentences which they had to copy, inserting the name of said relative:

* “I hope ____________ has a car accident today”

* “I hope I have sex with ____________ “

Then they were asked about how the task made them feel, was the thought morally wrong, did it make them anxious, and did they think the event was more likely to happen as a result? All this was rated on a 1-100 scale.

The Protestants thought the sex thing was very wrong (giving it 98), the nonbelievers less so (only 81). But neither group thought it was going to happen, even though the thought had been seeded.

For the car accident, things were different. Here the Protestants felt twice as strongly that merely thinking about it made it more likely to happen.

After the test, the participants were told that they could do anything they wanted to reduce or cancel the effects of writing or thinking about the sentence. The results were fascinating.

As you can see in the graph, the Protestants were much more likely to try to neutralise the words – typically by doing things like tearing up the paper, scribbling over the words, or flipping the paper over.

The researchers think this is because Christian theology encourages thought-action fusion. It crops up in many popular bits of the bible – like the commandment against coveting, and Jesus’ warnings that lust is the same as adultery and that hating your brother is equivalent to being a murderer. What’s more, other studies have found that more religious people do indeed show more thought-action fusion.

But I’m not so sure. I suspect it’s the other way round. To me, it seems more likely that this is yet another of those cognitive predispositions that just make religion seem more plausible. I suspect that the reason I am an atheist is that this way of thinking about the world just seems downright alien to me.

What do you think?

Yes, what DO you think?

Why?

*Offering fresh-baked cookies to all who take the time to respond*

Related posts:

1. What kind of (atheist/theist) are YOU?
2. High School Atheist Club? One Response…
3. Theist Intelligence At Work

Although it might be tempting for us atheists to look at the data and boil it all down to “Theists are stupid and atheists aren’t!” I think that would be a mistake.

Does intelligence really matter?

Yes, I think it does.

But… I’m not at all convinced that it’s the thing that matters most.

Consider: The paper I cited two entries back quoted one study that allegedly revealed that the IQs of agnostics in the Netherlands were 4 points higher than that of believers. It cited another study that allegedly revealed that non-religious American adolescents had an average IQ of about 103 while very religious American adolescents had an average IQ of about 97. Now, really – can a difference of 4 or 6 IQ points really make that much of a difference? 103 is far from being a genius, and 97 is far from being developmentally disabled. And I would bet that the variation among atheists and among theists is far greater than the variation between atheists and theists. So… yeah, the findings I quoted are interesting and suggestive, but they hardly seem determinative. If they were determinative, knowing someone’s IQ would allow us to know with certainty what someone believed about gOd. As things stand, the religion of the people who raise us might be more important….

More fundamentally, it bears asking “What does IQ really measure?” Our ability to take IQ tests? Our interest in taking tests? Certain sorts of intelligence and talents rather than others or intelligence in the abstract?

Brief Digression: I have an elderly relative who seems to be losing her ability to think straight. In an attempt to understand this loss better, I recently went online and found a simple test. It involves having someone count from 1 to 20, then recite the alphabet, and then alternate between the two – i.e., 1A, 2B, 3C, etc. Your score is determined by how many correct number-letter combinations you can give in 30 seconds (without the aid of pencil and paper). My elderly relative did very poorly, but… I found that my own performance varied quite a bit. I find that I really have to be motivated to do well on these sorts of “monkey tests” and… usually I just don’t give a damn. It’s like asking me to recite the alphabet backwards. It’s a talent that seems so pointless to me, I don’t want to have it.

For what it’s worth, a somewhat similar point is made in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In that story, Watson refers to the fact that the earth circles the sun. Holmes is surprised to hear this. Watson is surprised that someone as smart as Holmes is so ignorant. Holmes says that as far as he’s concerned, it makes no difference which circles which. And if it ever does, he can look it up. As it is, the brain is like an attic and it behooves us to store in it only what we can’t find or store elsewhere. So, perhaps one key to being very intelligent (or at least thinking efficiently in your chosen line of work) is to know what areas it’s OK to be very stupid about. If that results in your scoring low on tests of general knowledge (or in your not developing certain mental skills that IQ tests measure), well, perhaps so much worse for the test and those who perhaps place too much value on them….

All of which is merely a prelude to that I really want to say, which is this: It’s long seemed to me that it’s not so much the ability to think that distinguishes atheists from theists but the way they think.

Raw, natural intelligence may be a factor, but even if it is, it seems to me to be swamped by something else.

Emotional maturity, maybe? The ability to live with uncertainty and unanswered questions? The ability to control one’s natural fear of death without resorting to comfortable myths? The ability to resist social pressure and/or to derive meaning and comfort from within yourself or from nature/ideas, etc., rather than from other people? The ability to tell the difference between the subjective and the objective – that is to say, the difference between General Reality and Personal Reality?

Whatever the thing (or combination of things) may be, it seems more important than raw intelligence – just as it seems more important in separating alcoholics from non-alcoholics, say, or chauvinists from non-chauvinists, or gamblers from non-gamblers. High intelligence – far from leading us to the right course of action – can often be used to rationalize the wrong course of action instead….

So: Here are two items I recently came across that perhaps point the way towards a better understanding of what *really* separates the atheists from the theists. Imperfect though they are, I hope you enjoy the glimmers of insight and the food for thought that they provide as much as I enjoyed them.

People With Asperger’s Less Likely To See Purpose Behind The Events In Their Lives (Karen Schrock/Scientific American/May 29)

BOSTON: Why do we often attribute events in our lives to a higher power or supernatural force? Some psychologists believe this kind of thinking, called teleological thinking, is a by-product of social cognition. As our ancestors evolved, we developed the ability to understand one anothers’ ideas and intentions. As a result of this “theory of mind,” some experts figure, we also tend to see intention or purpose – a conscious mind – behind random or naturally occurring events. A new study presented here in a poster at the 22nd annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science supports this idea, showing that people who may have an impaired theory of mind are less likely to think in a teleological way.

Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the “Bering in Mind” blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American MIND), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened – for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response – for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.

In a second experiment, Heywood and Bering compared 27 people with Asperger’s with 34 neurotypical people who are atheists. The atheists, as expected, often invoked anti-teleological responses such as “there is no reason why; things just happen.” The people with Asperger’s were significantly less likely to offer such anti-teleological explanations than the atheists, indicating they were not engaged in teleological thinking at all. (The atheists, in contrast, revealed themselves to be reasoning teleologically, but then they rejected those thoughts.)

These results support the idea that seeing purpose behind life events is a result of our mind’s focus on social thinking. People whose social cognition is impaired – those with Asperger’s, in this case – are less likely to see the events in their lives as having happened for a reason. Heywood would like to test the hypothesis further by working with people who have schizophrenia or schizoid personalities. Some experts theorize that certain schizophrenia symptoms (for instance, paranoia) arise in part from a hyperactive sense of social reasoning. “I’d guess that they’d give lots of teleological answers; more than neurotypical people, and certainly far more than people with Asperger’s,” Heywood says.

What Atheism And Asperger’s Syndrome Share In Common And A Look At Purpose Driven Answers (Tucker Phelps/Examiner.com; June 3)

A recent post over at the Scientific American Mind and Brain blog [see above] has been getting a lot of attention in the past few days and not without reason. According to the column’s author a graduate student from Belfast has found a correlation between those diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of Autism known for poor sociality and narrow interests, and Atheism.

Specifically, this researcher asked participants to given open answers to questions regarding significant events in their lives and both groups – the atheists and those with Asperger’s – ranked high in non-teleological answers. What this suggests on the surface is a similarity in thinking, some sort of shared cognitive process. I for one, have my doubts.

First, definitions.

Teleology is the study of purpose, from the Greek telos. If I were to show you long handled object with a blunt head and two rounded hooks protruding from the tip and ask you what it did, you would probably infer that it was meant to hammer nails – this is teleology, deciphering purpose.

When anthropologists attempt to determine whether a stone they found is a Oldowan stone-axe or a irregularly shaped rock, they must engage in teleological reasoning to reach an informed conclusion. At the same time when you ask a child “Why are rocks pointy?” their answer will invariably be along the lines of “so they can cut things.”

Where things get interesting in psychology is where the developmental line between “Rocks are pointy so they can cut things” and “Rocks are pointy because, as mineral formations, they fracture along sharp divides, forming narrow ridges and points.” Generally speaking, children are more likely to give a teleological answer to a question than an adult.

Where this is not true or at least not as true is areas of personal experience or importance. Ask an adult why they were the sole survivor of that car accident and you will rarely find someone who says it was luck, or gives some other “mundane” answer. More often you’ll find them searching for purpose – telos. They were thrown clear of that accident because God has a plan for them, or they were supposed to survive because they had something left to accomplish, etc.

What this means for the study.

First of all, a warning: I write this based off my reading of a blog post which in turn was based off the memory of a talk delivered at a conference. Parity is not going to be high here. Hopefully we get some juicier details from the authors themselves in the near future, but in the meantime…

Finding that Asperger’s patients engage in far less teleological reasoning than their “neurotypical” counterparts is very interesting. Drawing the connection from that to Atheism is a stretch. While true that both groups responded to questions in similarly non-purpose driven manners, one detail shears this tenuous connection.

“The atheists, as expected, often invoked anti-teleological responses such as ‘there is no reason why; things just happen.’ The people with Asperger’s were significantly less likely to offer such anti-teleological explanations than the atheists, indicating they were not engaged in teleological thinking at all. (The atheists, in contrast, revealed themselves to be reasoning teleologically, but then they rejected those thoughts.)”

Those with Asperger’s may in some way simply not be conceiving of things teleologically (and a study between adult Asperger’s and children Asperger’s against neurotypical peers would be great to investigate this further) the Atheists in the study clearly do possess that function. Rather, they have made a conscious choice to disregard it in favor of more mechanical or naturalistic explanations.

To illustrate this with real events, consider two situations. Several months ago I was having a conversation with my sister while walking to the store. Just as we reach the corner of the street we need to cross, the light turned green and the walk sign lit up. Turning to me she said “Don’t you just love that? I always feel like the light turns green just for me when that happens.”

As a matter of fact I do love that, and I have often felt the same way. Now of course it isn’t true, the light simply happened to turn green at that moment. In some deep recess in our minds however, we both saw an action – the light changing color – and derived a purpose – it wanted to, so we wouldn’t have to slow our step. Not being idiots and having a basic understanding of how our local traffic lights work, we didn’t believe this teleological answer and instead favored the mechanical explanation. We’re traffic-light atheists you might say.

Religious people, along with other forms of magical thinking, are more often the ones who really do believe the traffic light changed for them – though not with quite such mundane events. (Which is why, I’m sure, the study this is all about asked people about significant events in their lives.)

Since we covered atheism with a real world example, we have another real world event that demonstrates precisely the opposite. In one of my earliest articles, Imagining Divinity, we looked at two very different cultures worlds apart, where two religious groups came to supernatural conclusions about the purpose of two natural events.

At the time the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) was struggling with whether or not to allow homosexual men to serve as pastors in their churches. During one of the days this debate was being had a tornado swept through the town damaging several buildings – including the conference center hosting the ELCA. One conservative pastor was quoted saying “The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.”

In other words the purpose of the tornado of the tornado was to send a warning. Examples of this can be found everywhere in religion, so it comes as absolutely no surprise that those who consciously reject religion also consciously reject the forms of thinking religion exemplifies – with the vast majority of the worlds population some manner of theist, the average “amount” of teleological thinking is going to be skewed in that direction.

Another way to look at it is, perhaps I’m putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps I should be saying the “amount” of teleological thinking is responsible for the high percentage of religious persons.

Either way, atheism and Asperger’s may share an affinity for the mechanical and naturalistic, but an affinity is all it probably is.

Comments?

Related posts:

1. Atheism & Intelligence Revisited
2. Theist Minds & Atheist Minds: Another Difference
3. Theist Intelligence At Work

(More proof, too, that even members of the clergy often turn to secular government-run programs for assistance when the much ballyhooed charity and compassion of Christian congregants turns out to be a cruel illusion….)

Many Clergy Ill-Prepared For Retirement (Dave CarpenterThe Associated Press; June 3)

Clergy seem an unlikely group to be facing a retirement security crisis.

They generally are looked up to by their parishioners as wise and frugal. Their pay, although modest, is enough to get by on. And they typically are provided with housing during their careers.

Yet many find themselves in a financial quandary as they approach or reach retirement, squeezed by challenges that sometimes exceed those of other professionals. Often lacking home equity and a pension, some are struggling to get by and others are staying on the job longer.

The root of the problem is not just limited pay or retirement compensation, according to the Rev. Dr. Bert White, a retired Methodist clergyman and lecturer at Boston University. It’s a lack of financial literacy among people who really need to take control of their personal finances or risk ending up in dire straits.

“Clergy are so focused on the hereafter, but we should know more about planning for life after work,” White says.

The Rev. Richard Matthews, 72, a retired Methodist minister from Gilford, N.H., finds himself in a financial plight he never imagined possible.

After 46 years in the ministry, he receives just $1,200 a month in retirement income, most from Social Security. He is on food stamps and had to turn his thermostat down to 52 last winter so he could afford to pay his heating bill.

Matthews’ annual pay package was about $75,000 when he retired from full-time duty in 2005 – about half in salary and the rest for housing and other benefits. Yet his pension income is only about $300 a month.

Stock investments once worth $200,000 were eroded in the market meltdowns of 2000 and 2008, and he had to use most of what was left to pay off a mortgage after selling his home at a loss this year.

“I went into this profession not expecting to become a wealthy person,” he says. “I went into this expecting that I would be cared for by the church and the congregations that I served, only to find that when we get to the end of the road … I’m no longer cared for. That’s very difficult to swallow.”

Matthews admits to some bitterness at both the church for his meager pension and at “greedy” hedge funds that mismanaged his money. He is moving later this month to Sweden, where he founded and headed a church for 10 years, so he can afford health insurance.

A senior minister at a small to medium-sized U.S. church receives average pay of $70,300, according to a survey by the National Association of Church Business Administration. About 13 percent of respondents reported not receiving any retirement benefits at all, while churches are making very small contributions to the retirement plans of many others, according to the inter-denominational Christian organization .

“As ministers start approaching retirement, they all of a sudden say ‘Wow, I’m behind,’” says Simeon May, the group’s CEO. “Especially if they’re in an independent situation or a small church, they could find themselves in real trouble.”

The problem is particularly acute in New England, where the population is older and most churches are small and struggling financially as congregations shrink. Many are unable to fund pastors’ pensions just as many are nearing retirement.

The Rev. Peter Beckwith, 55, pastor at South Gorham Baptist Church in Gorham, Maine, considers himself an exception to the rule in that his thriving church has an excellent retirement plan. But he says many of his peers effectively receive less than the minimum wage, because their pay package includes money that they must pay out for expenses such as work-related travel and other professional expenses.

Retired clergy in the region and their spouses sometimes have trouble putting food on the table and are dealing with foreclosure and unaffordable medical bills – “some really sad situations,” according to Lisa O’Donoghue, director of clergy family services for the Preachers’ Aid Society of New England.

An aversion to financial matters coupled with a trust in God to take care of things can be counterproductive when it comes to planning for retirement, she notes.

The Rev. John Wimberly, pastor of the Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., is on track to retire in two years at 65 thanks to a good pension and diligent saving. He and his wife even have a second home in Mexico. But a lot of his peers are pushing back retirement or simply are in denial about retirement planning.

“Moderate to progressive clergy in particular tend to look at money like it’s going to tempt us, and become a big problem,” Wimberly says. “Then they get to retirement and they haven’t saved.”

A pervasive attitude toward retirement within the profession has long been that God will take care of it, ministers and others say.

When White was being ordained 40 years ago, his bishop told him “Bert, you won’t ever make any money as a clergyman but you’ll always have a great retirement plan.”

“I said, ‘Oh, really?’” the minister recalls. “He said, ‘Yeah, it’s eternal life after you die.’”

It’s important, though, for clergy to have their earthly affairs in order. White plans to deliver that message at a financial literacy and retirement planning seminar he is organizing on June 23 at the Boston University School of Management.

Their unpreparedness has a ripple effect that extends to the parishioners they counsel, from the pulpit or in private, and beyond the church.

“Clergy people have a profound multiplier effect,” says Zvi Bodie, professor of finance at Boston University, who will be speaking to the clergy about investing. “Everybody goes to them for advice about everything, including finances. So it’s particularly important to make sure that they have basic financial understanding.”

Much like they give counsel, he says, clergy shouldn’t be afraid to seek help with their own retirement security from a financial planner.

All of which reminded me of this odd ad that appeared in the Dec 7, 2005 edition of The Columbus Dispatch:

Here’s a key sentence from the website that the ad directs readers to: “By 2023, [Catholic] religious orders may face more than $20 billion in unfunded retirement liabilities.”

Well, gee, I’m sad whenever I hear about anyone ending up old and poor and having to struggle to get by.

But when it comes to Catholic clergy ending up old and struggling to get by, I’m not as sad as I would be if I wasn’t now seeing a multi-million dollar expansion at my local Catholic church.

And if I didn’t recall how Catholics spent $1.5 million dollars renovating Ohio’s Shrine of the Holy Relics seven years ago (as detailed here).

And if I didn’t recall how a new Catholic church (complete with a huge bronze Jesus) was built in my area a few years ago for about $10 million (as mentioned here).

And if I didn’t recall how Catholics are spending $13 million to build a new church in Visalia, California (as reported here).

Which of course is just a fraction of the $200 million they spent on their new cathedral in Los Angeles (as detailed here).

It seems Christians always have enough money for new churches and statues and pipe organs and such, but never enough money to keep their elderly clergy from having to rely upon food stamps to survive….

All of which reminded me of the entry I posted on July 7, 2008. The focus of that entry was a study that detailed how conservative Protestants’s religious beliefs serve to keep them relatively poor.

It also reminded me of the entry I posted on Nov 15, 2007 which detailed the negative correlation between religion and wealth (both in the US and all around the world).

Of course some ministers and preachers do *very* well for themselves, thanks to the show they put on and the gullibility of their followers. I doubt that we’ll ever be seeing video of Pat Robertson applying for welfare – but you never know. Things change – sometimes quite dramatically and unexpectedly.

And when they do, sound reasoning skills and a firm handle on reality seem to be far more important to a successful outcome than blind faith in gOd or those who worship him.

Related posts:

1. Atheism & Intelligence Revisited
2. Theist Minds & Atheist Minds: Another Difference
3. More Examples Of How Christians Spend Their Time

“brain research reveals that the moment we perceive to be our moment of choice is actually (and apparently always) preceded by unconscious brain activity of the sort that apparently reveals our “choice” to be an effect rather than a cause” I’d be interested to know where you mentioned or found this research. – Just.Enough (6/1/2010 3:11:32 AM)

Dear Just.Enough:

Thank you for this note and for giving me an excuse to detail some of the background information that underpins what I said in my last entry.

On April 10, 2004 I posted an entry entitled The Question Of Free Will. That entry included the following passages:

I recently read Dr. Daniel Goleman’s book Vital Lies, Simple Truths (Simon & Schuster: 1985). Like many books on psychology before and since, this one emphasizes the fact that consciousness is just a very small part of what goes on in our brains. The sense data that we’re conscious of is just a very small part of the data our bodies collect. Unconscious brain processes tend to select what gets noticed and what does not. What we “choose” to do with that data is highly dependent upon our imperfect memories of past experiences and our imperfect calculations of what a particular choice is likely to lead to in the future. Just as much of what we do is in effect pre-determined by our needs to eat, sleep, protect ourselves from the elements, reproduce, etc., much of our thinking is pre-determined by instinct, cultural conditioning, and other mental templates and programs we didn’t freely pick. (Just think how hard recently acquired habits can be to get rid of, let alone deeply-ingrained cultural assumptions!)

Dr. Richard Restak goes even further in his book The Brain Has A Mind Of Its Own (Harmony Books: 1991; pp. 45-50) Restak writes “At the moment of decision we all feel we are acting freely, selecting at will from an infinity of choices. Yet recent research suggests this sense of freedom may be merely an illusory by-product of the way the human brain operates.” He goes on to describe the experiments of neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet. Libet attached electrodes that measure brain activity to the scalps of people, then asked them to flex their forefingers whenever they wanted to. He found that there’s a flurry of brain activity immediately before people are conscious of the decision to flex their fingers. “The brain ‘decides’ to initiate or at least to prepare to initiate the act before there is any reportable subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place,” Libet says. “Cerebral initiation even of a spontaneous voluntary act of the kind studied here can and usually does begin unconsciously.” Restak goes on to say that researchers discovered as far back as the 1960s that sudden, significant brain activity precedes voluntary acts by about a second. Libet’s more recent research has revealed that this activity also precedes the instant of conscious intent. If true, it would seem that conscious intent and decision making is the result of unconscious brain activity – not of free will….

[A]n episode of NOVA entitled Secrets of the Mind: The Electric Brain… included these comments of neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás: “Some people believe we are something beyond neurons, but of course we are not. We are just the sum total of the activity of neurons. We assume that we have free will and that we make decisions, but we don’t. Neurons do. We decide that this sum total driving us is a decision we have made for ourselves. But it is not.”

You and others can learn much more about my research and conclusions on these issues in the entries entitled Free Will Vs. The Geography Of Religion (Aug 16, 2006) and Faith And Free Will (July 29, 2007).

To learn more about the relationship between brain chemistry and religious beliefs and attitudes in specific individuals, see the two-part entry entitled Newton’s Madness (May 9, 2001).

It’s worth noting that a few years ago I quite unexpectedly had my conclusions confirmed when I turned on my radio and heard part of an NPR program that covered some of these very issues.

Here’s how one website summarizes that program:

A Radio Lab production with science reporter Robert Krulwich called Against Time, the section on “No Special Now,” explores the somewhat discomfiting implications of the Einsteinian 4-dimensional “block universe” for free will. Courtesy of physicist Brian Greene, who questions the idea that the future is open, and neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, who discusses the famous Libet experiments on the timing of readiness potentials, Krulwich discovers that he isn’t perhaps quite “in charge” the way he thought he was. Greene is sympathetic to Krulwich’s concerns, but can’t honestly reassure him about free will, and tries to distract him with multi-verse cosmology. But Krulwich doesn’t buy it; he wants his free will back. Ramachandran is trenchantly definitive: the unconscious readiness potential precedes the conscious choice to move one’s finger by .5 seconds, so consciousness can’t be in control the way we thought. No solace for Krulwich.

Finally, a quick web search just now to see what else might be out there on this subject led me to this:

Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them (Brandon Keim/Wired; April 13, 2008)

You may think you decided to read this story — but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people’s decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied — whether to hit a button with one’s left or right hand — may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

“Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done,” said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.

Haynes updated a classic experiment by the late Benjamin Libet, who showed that a brain region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a second before test subjects chose to push a button. Later studies supported Libet’s theory that subconscious activity preceded and determined conscious choice — but none found such a vast gap between a decision and the experience of making it as Haynes’ study has.

In the seven seconds before Haynes’ test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes’ team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand — a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions.

Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will. For instance, the experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions.

“Real-life decisions — am I going to buy this house or that one, take this job or that — aren’t decisions that we can implement very well in our brain scanners,” said Haynes.

Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.

“We can’t rule out that there’s a free will that kicks in at this late point,” said Haynes, who intends to study this phenomenon next. “But I don’t think it’s plausible.”

That implausibility doesn’t disturb Haynes.

“It’s not like you’re a machine. Your brain activity is the physiological substance in which your personality and wishes and desires operate,” he said.

The unease people feel at the potential unreality of free will, said National Institutes of Health neuroscientist Mark Hallett, originates in a misconception of self as separate from the brain.

“That’s the same notion as the mind being separate from the body — and I don’t think anyone really believes that,” said Hallett. “A different way of thinking about it is that your consciousness is only aware of some of the things your brain is doing.”

Hallett doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force.

“If it is, we haven’t put our finger on it,” he said. “But we’re happy to keep looking.”

Thanks again for your note.

I hope you find at least some of the material in this entry as fascinating as I do! :-)

Related posts:

1. Dr. Susan Biali Revisited
2. Religion & Happiness Revisited
3. Free Will & Sin

Here now are a few thoughts of my own…

As you might recall, Dr. Biali began her essay by saying this:

“First, this isn’t about slamming atheists, as I believe that every human being has a right to believe (or not believe) whatever they choose, and it’s not my place to judge anyone.”

I have several objections to this.

First (and perhaps most trivially), I’m bothered by the use of the word “right” in this context. “Right” seems to me to be a legal concept that only makes sense when applied to the observable behavior of a member of a society. It seems silly to say that someone all alone on an island has the right to free speech or the right to keep and bear arms or that someone has the right to pick his or her nose while all alone in the privacy of their own home. Saying that someone has the right to believe or not believe whatever they want seems equally weird since virtually nobody knows but us what’s going on inside our heads (the private residence of our beliefs). Being able/permitted to believe whatever we believe isn’t a right bestowed or agreed upon by a culture or a society (or asserted by an individual) but an inescapable fact of life. (And those who claim the ability to deny us this “right” might as well claim the ability to deny a dog the “right” to feel hungry or the sun the “right” to shine.)

Second (and perhaps somewhat less trivially), I’m bothered by the assumption/assertion that people “choose” whatever they believe. As I’ve noted before, brain research reveals that the moment we perceive to be our moment of choice is actually (and apparently always) preceded by unconscious brain activity of the sort that apparently reveals our “choice” to be an effect rather than a cause – the result of factors that have nothing to do with consciousness or volition rather than a self-created impulse. Free will thus appears to be little more than a cognitive illusion.

This brain research merely supports earlier philosophical lines of thinking that go something like this: “It has been proposed that I choose my beliefs. But on what basis am I alleged to make this choice? If pure whim, my choice is reduced to little more than a coin toss or a leaf blowing in the wind and of no more significance. If, on the other hand, I have reasons for my choice – well, did I in turn choose those reasons? Did I will into being the facts and the laws of logic that form the basis of ‘my’ reasoning? No – I am little more than an adding machine that takes whatever data is typed on my keys and then spits out whatever is dictated by internal mechanisms I am scarcely aware of let alone in any position to choose. One may as well speak of a piece of paper choosing to burst into flame when thrust into a candle, or of a bullet choosing to fly through and air and kill someone when the trigger is pulled. Between whim and determinancy, there is simply no room for choice to squeeze in. ‘Choice’ is nothing more than a sophisticated reflex that the unsophisticated mistake for something else – the brother of magic, perhaps, or the cousin of telepathy, ghosts, or perpetual motion.”

Of course even if one cannot resist assuming that such reasoning is wrong and insists that humans must have free will, it is clear that there are severe restrictions and limits to that free will. Just as we cannot choose to be invisible, or fly by flapping our arms, or be in two places at the same time, neither can we choose to believe in a religion that we’ve never heard of or follow saviors yet unborn. Even a cursory examination of the obvious patterns of belief among humans, however, reveals that the “choices” of most people are in practice far more limited than this. As I detailed in an entry I posted way back on Oct 4, 2002, religious beliefs strongly correlate with who your parents happen to have been, what gender and race you may be, how much education you’ve received, and what your socio-economic status is. (One key passage from that entry: “Detailed studies spanning many decades indicate that if you’re a young adult and your parents are Catholic, there’s an 85% chance you are, too. Are your parents Protestant or Jewish? There’s about a 65% chance your beliefs match that of Mom and Dad.”) There’s a reason the overwhelming majority of people born in Saudi Arabia grow up to be Muslims while Hinduism is the predominate religion in India and virtually no place else – and it has little if anything to do with millions of people coincidentally exercising their free will in a way that just happens to correspond with national or cultural or tribal borders.

The fact that Dr. Biali herself allegedly just happened to have a real and true revelatory experience that basically confirmed the religion of her culture, her childhood, and her missionary sister similarly strains credulity. Consider how much more startling and worthy of attention it would be had she had a revelation which confirmed the truth of an existing religion she’d never, ever heard of before! Why have I never heard of such a thing ever happening to anybody? Certainly an all-powerful Biblical gOd could just as easily send visions of Jesus to remote Chinese Taoists and Iranian Islamic clerics and Tibetan Buddhist mystics just as easily as he could send them to those raised Baptist in oh-so-Christian America. The fact that he never does – that he instead seems severely limited to sending these revelations to precisely those places on this earth in least need of them – does little to support the extravagant claims Christians make regarding his mercy, wisdom, and omnipotence but much to support psycho-social explanations for the nature and dissemination of religious belief.

Third (and perhaps least trivially of all), I am bothered by Dr. Bialti’s assertion that “it’s not my place to judge anyone.” As with many Unitarians I’ve met, she seems to be confusing beliefs and people and then assuming that any attempt to judge a belief boils down to an improper attempt to judge the human being who just happens to hold it. IMHO, that’s sloppy and bullshit. And it’s bullshit that I doubt Bialti can really embrace because it would seem to render her equally accepting of Gandhi and Hitler, Einstein and Charles Manson, Leonardo da Vinci and the Unibomber, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Osama bin Laden, and so on without end.

As I’ve said here many times before, beliefs matter. Among other things, they guide behavior. And beliefs that are based on fact and derived from logic (and are therefore more firmly rooted in reality) are more likely to result in appropriate behavior than beliefs divorced from reality and instead based on fantasy, delusion, or wishful thinking. People who fail to recognize this, people who promote the idea that all beliefs are equally true and valid and acceptable are playing with fire. Even if they don’t end up burning themselves, there’s always the very real risk that they’ll end up burn others (intentionally or not).

That’s the way I see things, anyway – given the facts as I’ve received them and the particular neuronal processing mechanisms I happen to have in my head.

If your internal neuronal processing mechanisms are now coming to a different conclusion, my mechanisms hope you’ll take the time to share it with them to the extent that time and your mechanisms allow.

(If you can also share your understanding of the causes that prompted that alternate conclusion, I have reason to believe that my mechanisms would appreciate that, too.)

Related posts:

1. Dr. Susan Biali Explains Her Theism
2. Free Will Revisited
3. Susan Jacoby’s Interesting Question