Julia Sweeney's Discussion Forum

Guess I'll thrown in a penny pending Herk's reply, should he wish to make one.
This is likely to be my only response to you, Christian, because I don't like whirling around in circles.

If "freethinker" is defined as someone who can evaluate claims based an adequate and appropriate breadth of available evidence AND who is not unduly influenced by distorting elements such as childhood indoctrination, biased authority figures, or social pressures, or psychological neediness, and if "a god" is defined as a supernatural being like the one posited in the Bible or the Koran, then I'd say the answer to your question is no, it is not possible.

Actually, someone did, in a sense, tell me that there was no god. And it was those simple words that made me realize that I'd been blind to reason. But yes, I decided that for myself, in spite of the community of believers I belonged to, in spite of a lifetime of brainwashing, in spite of a Catholic schooling. If it was all about someone telling me to do something, belief would have won, hands down.

If a person believes in a god, or in God, are they really a freethinker? After all, there's that word again: belief. You're hitching your wagon to somebody else's train. But yes, though it sounds like a contradiction, I think that a person can be a freethinker and still hold a belief - they are just not thinking during the act, they're believing. Can you understand that thinking and believing are not synonymous? If anything, they are oppositional to each other.

I don't have to believe that food nourishes me - I know it's true and I understand how such things work.

Okay, for the time being, I am willing to go on the supposition that thinking and believing are oppositional. I "think" I see what you are saying.

When it came to Catholic school though, you said once before that you said you believed "to a certain extent" and "with conditions" (see the thread "What a Real God Might Be" around April 8 of 2008).

I think you are saying that you never really believed in God completely, that you were always looking for a reason not to believe?

From where I stand today, I find it hard to think that I ever really believed. But as a child and at different times I think I did. What is believing? Does anyone really believe? Or do they just become fanatic and zealous because they're trying to hide their own doubts?

I never immersed myself so deeply in religion that I had no doubts. I never shut my eyes. I started reading a lot of science fiction in high school and was introduced to a different sort of thinking. I also realized very early that other people did not share my curiosity.

It's hard to believe that someone in Catholicism can't see through it. It's such an authoritarian sham. At 17, I saw through it and left, not much caring about religion at all. I knew no atheists. At 35, when I realized that I didn't believe at all, I still knew no atheists. I had read a great many science books, as well as keeping up with my early love of science fiction and more and more gained a picture of the real world, and was able to put science fiction into perspective. I still love the Golden Age science fiction, though I know how dated and pseudo-scientific it is. But I've also read some of the newer, hard science fiction and it's very impressive. I don't have much time to read fiction anymore, but haven't forgotten the sense of wonder that accompanies the "What if . . ." of science fiction.

I never thought much about how a lot of the scientists I was reading were atheists. I thought of Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov as fascinating people, never equating their lack of belief with what they wrote. Did you know that Asimov, an atheist, wrote a large commentary on the Bible? It's a good read.

When you read science fiction,or, for that matter, any fiction, you learn to suspend your disbelief, to put yourself in the place of the protagonist. It leads to empathy and understanding of the human condition, which is what fiction is really about. And when you're religious, you not only suspend your disbelief, but you pretend you don't have any.

In regard to doubt, I hope I have not given the impression that I am a "1" on the Dawkins scale because I am not. I am probably more like a 2 on that scale.

Was your conclusion about lack of truth to the Baha'i faith caused by the same root problems with the Catholic faith?

There are a lot of differences between a 17-year-old and a 35-year-old. At 17, I saw the Catholic Church as a bureaucracy that fed on fear and rote brainwashing. Why it didn't take with me, I don't know. But at 35, the sudden realization that I didn't believe in a god at all was a much more clairvoyant moment. As I left Catholicism, I knew that it was not what they wanted me to believe it was, but I did not know whether there was a god or not and at that age I didn't much care. But by 35, I was much more well-read and had far more experience. This wasn't leaving a religion - it was leaving belief behind. I cannot say how long I had doubts or suspicions, but at that sudden, catalyzing moment, everything seemed to come clear to me. Everything I'd learned for many years was like puzzle pieces that suddenly fell into place.

Some of the atheist bus signs being put up around the country that say something like, 'there's no god - it's OK to not believe,' are like that. Just being told that it's a possibility for you can make a lot of difference in the way you think about it. Daniel Dennet posits that a great number of people believe that they should believe, as if they simply never give not believing a thought. People go through their lives accepting and never questioning their faith. They're sure they must believe in something.

In the early American colonies, church attendance among males was very low compared to what it is today, as low as 15% in some colonies. Today, church attendance is probably less than 50%. So what about the fifty per cent who don't attend church? Why don't they? They claim to believe, but probably aren't very sure exactly what it is they claim to believe. Is that really believing?

The Evangelical movements are sort of a reaction to the unbelief of the mass of U.S. Christians. They will themselves to believe with a vengeance. But most people go through their daily lives seldom attending a church, never reading the Bible, maybe teaching their kids to say a prayer before they go to bed. They believe they should believe. And I'm sure there are those who, once pointed in the direction of belief, keep on doing it out of habit. I was probably one of those. Inertia. The friends you meet and the activities you participate in keep you going and you never think to question why you're doing it.

Once the thought was there - you don't need to be doing this - there was no exorcising it. It wasn't something I could just put out of my mind. Reality just makes a lot more sense than the magic, and the magic is just an impediment to living in reality, to understanding it. Those questions like why does God allow evil and so on with their convoluted constructs of answers all clear right up when you just take the magical belief out of the equation.

Great post, Herk...honest, expressive..
Evidence in re Christian, however, indicates that she is not really interested... her questions notwithstanding.
The tacit thrust of those questions is, essentially, that your "problem" is that you have not yet found the right religion.. Catholicism, Bai"hai..... both are affronts to god.
What you have not yet reached is that exalted moment when god appears to you in all his glory and your declare for Christ... born again!
The constant flow of questions may seem inane, frivolous, foolish to readers here who have worked hard in terms of reading, observing the world, exchanging conversation and ideas with others of similar or different mind, but they are hardly casual... they are part of a concerted effort to convince you that you just have not yet hit the enchanted moment when the confluence of fear and need meet the right inquiry... which, then, like magic... will open up the door to god's kingdom for you.
Oh, the missionary mind!!
It will not be denied by reason, nor by polite response, and obviously not by eloquent, educated rejection.
Rudeness will not deter the missionary: it only spurs the missionary on by enhancing the sense of martyrdom that propels the him/her forward.
Offering book lists that have led to one's enlightenment is more than merely dismissible to the missionary, who is predisposed to believe that it is all those books that have caused mankind's salient problem, a loss of unquestioning faith, in the first place.

For one thing, and the most important: in order to ACTUALLY be a missionary, even unaffiliated , even self-appointed, the missionary has to have an immutable belief in his/her duty to make others as miserable, as fearful, as addled, as god obsessed as s/he is.

NMB

[quote=Herk], but haven't forgotten the sense of wonder that accompanies the "What if . . ." of science fiction.[/quote]

Herk - what are the What if's-the possibilities science fiction suggests?

The possibilities are unlimited. In the Golden Age of science fiction, science was in a comparative infancy to today. There was a lot that was possible. As a genre, science fiction has rules: it's really about the present. If it wasn't about the present, it would not be germane to our lives and no one would read it. But the endless possibilities of ships that can travel through time or space with few limits or a mind that can be expanded without limit or whatever . . . it's boggling.

The spaceships and interplanetary travel and fantastic machines are not the story, they are the vehicle by which the story is told. Science fiction explores concepts. Characters are often secondary.

Enter hard science fiction.

As science became more available to the mainstream, a lot of things that used to be used in science fiction became improbable or impossible. Science fiction became divided more into hard science fiction and fantasy. In fantasy, anything is possible, but not necessarily believable. In hard science fiction, you can't just make anything up. It has to agree with what is currently known about science. There is a wriggle factor in that if something has not been proven impossible, it can be used. So, for example, a spaceship can go faster than light if it "cheats" by skipping over layers of folded space or by some other little-known method. (Particles can disappear at one place in the universe and reappear at another with no appreciable time elapsed, or so I'm told.) Until someone proves that this cannot possibly ever ever ever be done, it can still be used. Nothing, says Einstein, can go faster than light.

So, things that are still speculative can be used. A few years ago, I read a story about a slightly futuristic society where the protagonist had access to advanced research submarines and was able to examine life growing around the volcanic vents deep in the ocean. Is there no wow in that? All was within the realm science as we know it, with perhaps just a skosh of wild speculation thrown in.

What if you could enhance the human body? Give it better vision, faster reflexes, a pouch to hide things in. How about immortality? An occasional visit to a facility that can, so to speak, wash your genes and make them like new. Is that a wow or what? Dr. Ben Bova wrote a non-fiction book (he also writes fiction) called "Immortality" in which he opines that there may be people living today who will virtually never die.

There was a story by Isaac Asimov, as I recall, where an alien race interacted with humans and (spoiler alert!) when the subject of life after death came up, the answer the aliens gave was something like: "We live on. You do not." Wow.

Percival Lowell believed that the canals on Mars could have been built by intelligent life. Giovanni Shiaparelli was the first to observe them through a crude telescope around 1877. In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a story called A Princess of Mars and those canals played a big part in that story and the sequels.

". . . The transition had been so sudden and so unexpected that it left me for a moment forgetful of aught else than my strange metamorphosis. My first thought was, is this then death! Have I indeed passed over forever into that other life! But I could not well believe this, as I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs from the exertion of my efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me. My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out from every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching revealed the fact that I was anything other than a wraith.

". . . As I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination--it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.

My longing was beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity of space. There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness.

" . . .I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did I. "

Of course, we now know that there are no canals on Mars, unless some putative Martian has covered them over and hidden them from our sight. The Martians in the story call their planet Barsoom. Do you know, I'd far rather travel to the fabled Barsoom when I die than some place with worthless gold streets and gates encrusted with mother-of-pearl. Wow.

Sometimes when you ask stupid questions, you get an incredibly smart answer.

I was going to respond to the question, but I couldn't get passed my surprise, outrage and sadess at it. And at the person so lost as to not have come up with the answer from personal experience long ago.

CB.

Asking empty, inane questions can't be confused in any way with genuine curiosity.... and the waste is truly sad, as well as enraging... life is too precious as well as too short to be wasted on those who have to be told how to use it.
But you've responded to the question of what it means to see the world through an enlightened prism many times in the past...no matter the subject..
I am not particularly a science fiction fan, but what you have said often, and what Herk has written today, applies to all experience outside the narrow confines of our own lives...it is what drives man to explore his world and wish to go beyond it....it's the magic of the moonwalk, and seeing Kobe Bryant defy gravity while looking preternatural, but being entirely human., and watching little kids when they are unself-consciously happy before "no" has become the operative word in their existence..


it is the reason for art, for litereature, for theater... for the best of television.. for story telling around the dining table, and camp fires.....for eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers.
And it is summed up by one word, and explains the what-if for mortal man, why we have the wheel.. CURIOSITY... WHY? HOW? WHERE?
We only gete one life to live, our own, and so far on this planet..... but we can attempt to access the ways of life of others through reading, talking... and even dreaming of what might be out there being experienced elsewhere, by others not necessarily at all like us.
The tragedy of religion, (one tragedy among many) is that it foreshortens experience as well as imagination because it holds such a narrow image of the world and its possibilties up for us to yearn for..... the "missionary position" is not just a joke, but a symbol of crushed imagination.
In order words, just waiting to die so that you can sit on a cloud adoring god even more than you wasted time doing it here, doesn't seem like a helluva stimulating idea.
Especially for members of a species with OUR potential.... as yet unfulfilled, retarded as we are by ... yes, religion..... which doesn't manage to stifle us completely,but just makes breaking the bonds of mediocrity and convention, and lack of flights of fancy that much harder, and progress that much slower..

NMB

Wow, I drop off the map for a year or so and come back to find you've all turned into poets

Beautiful prose in response to the same old questions. Keep it up folks

BDd

Herk - Thank you for your responses. Your writing is articulate and helps me to gain a much better understanding of your individual position on religion and faith.

I would agree that there are some wow factors in the "what-ifs."

In regard to Dr. Asimov, which of his works resonates most with you?

That's an impossible question. He was one of the most prolific of writers and wrote in excess of 400 books. Some of the books are hard science, some are science fiction, and some are other varied topics. It's like asking, 'Which breath that you took yesterday was the one you liked best?'

LOL...give the girl a chance to shine!!
She was waiting to ask that question after the topic turned to "Respiration: Will it exist in a godless world?"

Which subject is slated to be followed by : "Huffing and Puffing with St. Paul on the Road to Damascus."

NMB