In response to an article and personal story posted elsewhere, friends only.
In 5th grade, after some serious emotional trauma, I split ways with Catholicism. I spent a number of years as an asshole atheist.
I like to claim I turned down Catholicism for reason. That’s true, but elides an important detail. I left the Catholic belief system as an emotional reaction. When the shit hit the fan, I expected a caring, omnipotent, omnipresent hand to keep me from harm, and I saw no sign of such a hand. So I stepped onto a different path. A path with less certainty, but one where I felt more confident of the validity of its precepts. I was a little punk at the time. Religion had been my sole comfort in a dismal world. I wasn’t happy. Then I let go of religion and I let myself do whatever I wanted, and I still wasn’t happy.
I continued on that vein for a couple years. I saw that I wasn’t happy, and so I reinvented my belief systems again. This time, it was organized around a principle of making others happy. I was pretty selective as to the others I applied it to, and the way I applied it, but that’s the same for all remotely functional belief systems, I think.
My older sister graduated high school, went away to college, and became a Wiccan shaman. I was fascinated. I checked out several books on shamanism, and read them. I talked with her friends about it, on the rare opportunities I got.
When she started up at her second university, I’d seen her go through a great deal of emotional turmoil. I’d been there for her while she was dealing with it. I met her cool new friends. I tried to straddle the skeptical and new age worlds.
While I was learning chemistry and physics, I tried new age “energy manipulation” stuff. It was all so mercedes lackey, how could I resist? I started adding Animism as a partial descriptor of my beliefs. It offered a ready-to-plug-in belief system that let me see more, offered a more comforting, richer view of the world. Or so I felt at the time. But I could never quite bring myself to believe it. It hung on, suffering a lingering demise over many years. Bringing comfort and painful disappointment in one package.
In college I looked at things with a new rigor. Somewhere along the line, my agnosticism became pretty militant (I don’t know, and neither do you, douchebag), with strong atheist leanings. I have warm, sort of wistful/nostalgic feelings towards faith and the faithful, like my favorite fantasy novels. So long as they don’t chalk me down with the damned, I get along just fine with the faithful.
The journey that we all take to understand and establish our own faith, relgion, and sprit playgrounds is a hard path to walk but when you get onto the path you enjoy, that grass never felt so soft to your feet!
Glad to see you found what you are looking for!
You’ll find a lot of Wiccans were converts from Catholicism. I think it’s because of the structure system is similar. I will agree with bryen though… each person walks their own path. Me, I just go with a Taoistic (Dao) attitude. *grins*
How would you say the structure of Wicca and Catholicism is similar? Is there a Wiccan pope that I don’t know about? =)
lol no, but both believe in one supreme ‘Force’, if you replace the saints with deities, and the priests with shamen, there are parallels. It’s not as fire and brimstone as Catholicism and you have a closer connection to your ‘God’ (whereas you have to talk through a priest with Catholicism).
I was raised Catholic 😛 I’m still recovering. *grins*
Humanism is where it’s at.
I would agree, but….
On paper most religions have alot going for them. I love “the true Tao cannot be written” bit, as page 1 of the Tao Te Ching. I think the compassion embodied in “love your enemies” is great. Even “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” if seen as an attempt to curb the excesses of revenge is a great thing. But…
I think the criticisms the author of the linked article makes of the “skeptical culture” (basically, that it’s aggressively critical and rationally self-righteous) shows up hardcore on this list of humanist principles put out by my local secular humanist organization.
I don’t have a burning desire to tell all the theists “I told you so” as we fall into oblivion. And I think there’s a major element of that in the culture. *shrug* Not that I think you do, necessarily, but I’m hesitant to try. It seems any time people gather around an idea with any significant emotional content, they stop thinking.
Think what you want. You’re entitled to your beliefs, as indicated in #6 on the list of principles put out by your local secular humanist organization.
What part of secular humanist theory has a “significant emotional” aspect?
I don’t have a burning desire to tell all the theists “I told you so” as we fall into oblivion.
This statement really rubs me the wrong way, but I’m not sure why. I’ll get back to you.
Maybe the statement bothers me because it implies that skeptics aren’t proactive in any way, that we just stand on the sidelines and criticize.
That’s not true. We advocate thinking reasonably. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people don’t do that, which is why we’re slipping into oblivion.
I was afraid what I was saying might come off as a personal criticism. Sorry if I came across as attacking you, it was not my intent at all.
What I’m objecting to isn’t in the semantics of the words, it’s in the pragmatics I associate with them. I agree with a version of all the statements reworded for a different tone. I’ll do that in a sec.
Reading the list of statements, they are absolute, and certain in their knowledge, like the commandments. My belief system requires that everything be questionable. Is the scientific method always a valid way to gain information? If something can’t be observed, does that mean it’s not real? I’m inclined to give a qualified yes to both of those questions. An immediate example of how I find it broken, though is that the mental state and emotions of others aren’t directly observeable (in a pragmatic sense. mri’s and scifi brain scans may make a liar out of me).
More importantly, to me, science is all about asking questions, and stating, up front, “this is our understanding of how the world works”. My understanding is that quantum mechanics makes a liar out of newtonian mechanics (‘liar’ is a harsh word, more accurate would be “shows newtonian mechanics as a an innaccurate simplification of the true nature of reality, which becomes a great approximation for the true nature of reality when observed at a human scale.”). To me, science is about working to understand, while never having a final or certain answer. The lack of certainty is a large part of what distinguishes it from religion for me. Both are, after all, ways of explaining the nature of the world.
That and the piddling based on observeable phenomena. 😉 Though some people find that the complexity of various bits of science only reaffirms their faith in god. ymmv, of course.
Now on to the reworded statements, to make them more palatable to me.
scu’s statements of principle
acceptableundeniable evidence for the existence of any supernatural entity or phenomenon, including gods, devils, souls, heaven or hell.not faith,are among the best paths to understanding.only fair and just societybest option we know for governing humanity.Also, add “I believe” to the front of everything I didn’t otherwise modify. Particularly #4. I recently saw a very convincing point, which can easily be summed up as follows: Churches were the birth place, meeting ground, and central organizing force for the civil rights movement.
So, basically, insert enough pansy qualifiers in there, and I’ll swallow. =)
Re: scu’s statements of principle
Dude, we need to talk about this in real-time on AIM. I feel like you’re nitpicking here.:)
There’s nothing absolute about humanist thinking. If anything, it’s the only mode of “spiritual” thought that sees the full spectrum of grays. The article you linked to agreed. Whereas theists have answers for everything, skeptics know that there are mysteries and are constantly refining their explanations to fit the available facts.
Oh, by the way, I didn’t think it was a personal attack. I’m asking for explanations and lovingly challenging you when I don’t agree. 🙂
So, yeah. AIM.
Re: scu’s statements of principle
I didn’t see this before, but what’s with the use of the word “asshole” to describe atheists? Are you speaking about yourself or all atheists?
Re: scu’s statements of principle
It was applied to myself, as a shorthand for an atheist who tosses out the baby of socially appropriate behavior with the bathwater of religion. I know many non-asshole atheists. =)
Re: scu’s statements of principle
Oh, OK. Carry on, then. 🙂
Heh, you can agree with all of those points and still be a Buddhist…
I certainly believe that. Would a strong agreement with all those points make one an unusual buddhist, though?
Yeah, mostly your point above that they are rather absolute. In my point of view, the Buddhist would consider certain things, like the existance of god/soul/afterlife, irrelevant to the condition at hand. Do you pull the arrow out and treat the poison, or wonder where the arrow came from and what the nature of the poison is? Other statements are rather absolute and may not be well founded, like the seperation of church and state.
Meh, I should get to bed though.
the article hits on a lot of things that bother me about skeptic magazines and such.
The skeptics seem just as self-righteous as some fundamentalist christians do. I read Innumeracy a few years ago. The guy makes a point, but he definately has an axe to grind.
I need to come back later, when I have more time, but for now I thought I’d upload some old memories: Jesus Week and related responses. Does anyone else have (better) archives of this discussion? I just kept the posts I enjoyed reading, and (surprise, surprise) quite a few are from scu.
Jesus! (pun intended) I posted way too much to graffiti in college. Life is so much better now that I use livejournal 😉
You have any archives containing seth’s work? =)
Alas, I don’t think I have any of Seth’s stuff. It wasn’t until I was near the end of my term that I realized one could copy board post files directly instead of using the actual text. I only have a few files saved from my afs days.