So, what are you now?
What do you mean, what am I? I’m me.
No, I mean, your beliefs. You’re a…
Oh, what box do I fit into. Come on, -isms are inherently limited. I also hate saying, “Oh, I’m a whatever“, as if that’s all there is to me. I wish we could just get rid of all the simplified boxes and accept our complexity.
Oh, so you’re an iconoclast.
Please.
No, really. Are you an atheist?
Well, for me, the case for God’s existence became less and less compelling the more I understood about critical thinking. So you could say I’m an atheist. But I also don’t believe in UFOs and fairies, and I wouldn’t go around describing myself as a non-UFO-fairy believer.
You’re a skeptic, then.
Skeptical, yes. But see, these labels are all reactions against something. I’d like to describe myself in positive terms.
Sounds like you need a new -ism, then.
What’s the rush?
Well, a vacuum is hard to sustain. You’ll need something to adhere to, unless you want to be some kind of contrarian for your whole life. What looks good?
I find myself settling on two major ideas: science and people.
Science is a way of finding out what’s really happening. You can use scientific principles to separate fact from fantasy, and build good theories about what’s going on.
People. I used to live according to a religion because a) I thought it would help me to be happy, and b) I thought it would make God happy, which, if I got to live in Heaven, would make me happy. And if there was a conflict between the two, go for b), make God happy.
For the most part, I was not unhappy in my religion until the gap between my beliefs and reality became too great (see ‘Science’, above). Having now learned a little bit about critical thinking, and with the case for God’s existence looking increasingly teetery and man-made, I have abandoned b) trying to make God happy. Instead, I’ll go with trying to make people happy (including myself) — after all, the case for the existence of other people is pretty strong. So an idea or philosophy is good if it’s good for people. Being happy and healthy is good. Helping my sons grow to be good men is good. Beating yourself up for not making God happy: not good.
I guess if you put those two values together, you get scientific humanism, which is probably what I’d identify most closely with at this stage.
Julia Sweeney is a scientific humanist, you know.
Oh, that’s good. I didn’t realise you were still here.
8 May 2006 at 8:45 am
Exactly. I don’t want to be what a theist isn’t.
8 May 2006 at 1:04 pm
After I unpacked that sentence, I agreed.
But wait, I don’t want to be a theist. I want to be what a non-theist… is.
Was that right?
8 May 2006 at 3:23 pm
You said
“So an idea or philosophy is good if it’s good for people. Being happy and healthy is good. Helping my sons grow to be good men is good. Beating yourself up for not making God happy: not good.”
Amen Brother!!!!
I had about 5 years of the beating myself up stuff.
8 May 2006 at 9:08 pm
For many years I practiced Buddhism. My teacher once said in response to the question ‘what does it mean, to be a buddhist?’ from another student: ‘it’s something to write in the box marked ‘religion’ when you go into hospital’.
Another nice response is ‘pre-lactarian’, being a person who prefers the milk put into their cup before the tea. Obviously one could also be a post-lactarian.
Seriously though, like you I have gradually renounced my interest in airy-fairy religious/spiritual pursuits (I don’t count buddhist practice as one of them), and find myself requiring little beyond science to instill wonder and compassion in myself.
Thanks for the link to the very interesting article. I particularly liked this line:
“They want to have it both ways: to have the respect traditionally granted to science in the public domain without being burdened by its methods and rules. They seem not to understand, he said, that the credibility of science is a consequence of its method — the very thing that they either fail to comprehend or stubbornly refuse to follow.”
I spend hours trying to explain to my (purportedly) anti-science colleague that science is not about test tubes but about method – the very method that he uses effectively in his work every day. Sadly most people associate the word ‘science’ only with chemistry or physics.
9 May 2006 at 8:56 am
SQ: Seriously though, like you I have gradually renounced my interest in airy-fairy religious/spiritual pursuits (I don’t count buddhist practice as one of them)
I’ve come across a couple of quotes now where the Dalai Lama has said something like: If scientific facts run up against Buddhist teachings, keep science and reject the teaching. And I think, well, that’s the right approach.
Of course, if I had a Hyundai for every religious believer who counted themselves as a critical thinker (including my former self)…
I tried being a pre-lactarian once, but it all became unworkable when I applied it to breakfast cereal.
9 May 2006 at 8:36 pm
Went to that Julia Sweeney show. Delightful. I lost my faith all over again!
9 May 2006 at 8:49 pm
Buddhist practice is essentially empirical which is why I think it isn’t threatened by science. It was largely through buddhist meditation practice that I gradually moved away from fantasies and superstition. It then overlapped with my interest in science and I never found a conflict between the two – the contrary in fact.
12 May 2006 at 6:56 am
Not to pick, snowqueen, but I’ve been reading some things about Buddhist beliefs (I realise there are diferent kinds of Buddhism, but see an example here), and they seem to contain items that are just as unprovable as those of any other religion, especially regarding rebirth and karma.
How are these teachings empirical?
15 May 2006 at 8:03 pm
I didn’t say the teachings are empirical, I said the practice was. Big difference. The site you cited first is the equivalent of a child’s version of Buddhism that attempts to fit it into a ‘religion’. And to be fair, many cultural buddhists (i.e. those born unquestioning into a Buddhist country) have a religious approach to it.
Buddhist practice is an engagement with your own experience and testing it against the teachings of the Buddha. You can read some of the teachings here:
http://www.diamond-sutra.com/
and here:
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/heartsutra.html
The Buddha was basically saying that we are bound by our beliefs and superstitions (this was particularly important in the age he was born into) and the whole of Buddhist practice is designed to cut through our mental distortions. You could say he was the original teacher of critical thinking. The link to spirituality, mysticism and religion is unnecessary and probably undesirable.
15 May 2006 at 8:08 pm
Oh yes – rebirth and karma were pre-buddhist concepts which the Buddha clearly didn’t ‘believe’ in if you read the Heart Sutra. They are cultural concepts which like ‘love thy neighbour’ and ‘if you don’t do x you’ll go to hell’ were politically useful and conveniently retained by later interpreters.