Weak Tea: A Side Show

My brother sent me a link to the following video, with a note that it "speaks for itself."

This is outrageous!  I mean, what a terrible, terrible song!

If I were Mr. Obama, I'd be mortified.

An Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama

Dear Senator Obama,

I have to this point been an enthusiastic supporter of your candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I must, however, register a grave objection to your stance on faith-based initiatives, as articulated in your July 1 speech in Zanesville, Ohio. Not only is this a misguided policy, but I found your comments unduly dismissive of those who might object to it.

Collateral Damage

I've been reading Hitchens' marvelous little screed, god is not Great, and brought it with me this morning on the train.

I did this with some misgiving, knowing that other people on the train might be put off, offended, or otherwise disturbed just being in the presence of a book with such a title. I've heard a reliable second-hand account of an otherwise reasonable person who was uncomfortable even having Hitchens' book in the house, as though its mere presence posed some sort of threat.

Magisteria

I've now started reading Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, and already the book has allowed me to make explicit a useful distinction toward which I have been fumbling.

I think part of my concern about possible dogmatism at the heart of atheism comes down a sense that the natural sciences, whatever their evident power, are necessarily limited in scope. The empirical, quantitative methods of the sciences simply cannot tell us or explain everything that is interesting about the world. To the extent prominent atheists like Dawkins assume the question of God's existence or non-existence can definitively be settled by the natural sciences alone, they seem to have fallen into the dogmatic ideology of scientism.

Is Atheism Just Another Dogma?

I've just finished Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I very much enjoyed the author's oft-noted wit and passion for his subject, but the book still leaves me with one of the nagging questions I had going into this project.

As a skeptic, I am suspicious of dogmatism in all its forms, particularly concerning matters that transcend the world of common experience. As a corollary, I am suspicious of polarization and false dichotomies in public discussion.

The nagging question is this: To what extent is the "new atheism" of Dawkins, Harris, et al., a form of dogmatism? One way to get the measure of this would be to ask: To what extent does the "new atheism" either presuppose or promulgate polarization?

The Atheism Project

Though I have not been a Christian since before I graduated from high school, and have consciously thought of myself as a skeptic for at least the past decade, I have never really grappled directly with the question of whether my skepticism amounts to atheism.

I have usually been content casually to think to myself - and occasionally to write in this blog - that atheism strikes me as altogether too dogmatic, and its public proponents too zealous, shrill, and occasionally repellant for it to really be taken all that seriously.

But then, recent work I've done on the consequences of the Darwinian revolution for human self-understanding and moral experience has led me to think that I cannot remain as nicely neutral on, say, the relation between science and religion, as I might have hoped.

Of Whales and Bitterness

This morning's online New York Times includes an article on Senator Obama's efforts to explain comments he made a few days ago about voters in small towns in Pennsylvania. As the Times has it:

“And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not,” Mr. Obama went on. “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Senator Obama has since admitted that he did not express himself very well, and he has clarified along these :

“So I said, well, you know when you’re bitter, you turn to what you can count on,” he added. “So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community.”

My interest here is not in what Obama said or what he meant or the velocity at which he is spinning. My interest is in a reply to this from Senator Clinton. Here's how the New York Times presents it:

Blasphemy for Fun and Profit

I discovered a few years ago that I have the same name as a writer of comic books, including Invincible and the inimitable Battle Pope (about which more in a moment).

A Fir Tree By Any Other Name

Today was the last day of class for the semester, and I unwound a bit by having my students discuss a simple question: "When we get up to leave today, should I wish you a Merry Christmas?"

The discussion in each case was livelier than many we've had this semester, and covered a lot of the ground I've covered in this blog in the last few days. My students helped me to clarify my thinking.

Yuletide in Public and in Private

While I celebrate Yule and accept that others celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and the Feast of Acquisition, I think it is important to draw a line between the public realm and the private realm regarding the various observances of the season.

Happy Chanuchristnicholanzaa Yulestice!

I have a guilty secret that I always have to grapple with at this time of year. I am no longer a Christian, but I love Christmas.

This may be just an artifact of my upbringing. With my family, Christmas has always been a big deal, with unrestrained decoration and big family gatherings with lots of good food. There were church services for Advent, pageants, the works.

I don't go to church any more. I don't celebrate Advent or the birth of Jesus. Even so, the lights, the music, the food, even the shopping (especially now that I have children), all of it is still strangely moving to me.

Two More Thoughts about Universism

What disappoints me most about Universism is the near-total absence of modesty on the part of its founders.

As I understand it, skepticism is really just a kind of modesty, a willingness always to question our own most cherished assumptions and (to use Sextus' words), to continue the inquiry. Serious and enduring doubts about all claims regarding transcendence or the divine seem to come with the territory.

Half a Conversation on Universism

I wrote to the Universists at info@universist.org. The note I sent was a shorter, earlier version of the previous posting to this blog.

To my surprise, I received a reply from none other than Ford Vox himself. Here is my half of the exchange that followed, with brief summaries of Mr. Vox's responses.

Why I Am Not a Universist

I recently read an article in my local paper about a new religion called "Universism", created by a medical student in Massachusetts. I was intrigued.

I am a skeptic in all matters transcendent, with existentialist leanings. At the same time, I miss the sense of community that can be a vital part of religious life, especially as I have encountered it in more progressive Christian congregations. So, I was curious to see what a "faithless" religion would look like.

I checked out the Universist web site (www.universist.org), and read the recent speech by Ford Vox, "Rise of the Faithless."

I have to say that I am more than a little disappointed. In fact, I was alarmed by what I read.