Melbourne’s ‘Global Atheist Convention’. Despite the insistence of some of my academic acquaintances that it will be great and that I should attend (which is kind of comic in itself, for some reason), I don’t think I’m going.

It’s not that I’m explicitly against a gathering of ‘like-minded’ people. Neither is it due to my conditioned response to be disgusted at large groups of people and the bureaucracy that surrounds them. It’s just that there’s only so much that they can be like-minded about, and anything past that would be an unbearable dogmatism. And yet here we have an entire convention of people who think that it is worthwhile.

Irreligiousity is the norm in Australia. Very few attend a church regularly, and even less understand the basic tenets of their beliefs.

Perhaps my fears are that this convention is just going to be a rampant Dawkins wank-fest, emboldening further pseudo-philosophy and idiotic rationalistic dogmatism that comes up every century or so. Such phenomena is often said to spark a revival in faith-based systems, given the choice of either/or that make it simple for those who aren’t believers, but who are uneducated about other ways of looking at things. The best read I’ve had all year (so far!) is a confession-style piece by former New-Ager Karla McLaren about converting from the New-Age movement to a sort of sceptical naturalism; she touches on issues of reactionary cultures better than I ever could.

It’s only since reading that best-seller, The God Delusion, that I’ve grown so distant from this supposed ‘movement’; the ill-defined philosophical terms that floated through the book was one thing (where a first year undergrad understanding of epistemology would have been sufficient), but to actually lambast VOLTAIRE for being a deist…? Voltaire, one of the greatest and boldest humanists and satirists of much religious and superstitious stupidity… this dogmatic ignorance about history, philosophy and even rationalism is inexcusable for anyone with an intellectual conscience.

But to the topic at hand, and put simply and miserly: over one hundred dollars is too much for everyday kids like myself. It is too much for anyone with a slight interest in the subject matter. It is okay for those deeply invested in this stuff, but that means that it will only be a bunch of clever people preaching to the choir.

Often atheists question theists about ‘faith’-based knowledge. A common retort is that atheists are also in faith about something or other. While this piece of “no you are!” reasoning is common, there are many variations. Hypothetical examples include but are not limited to rejoinders like (circle correct example):

‘You have just as much faith in evolution / your two hands / reason / postmoderndeconstructivisticdialogue / porn / science / no god (/ antimatter deities) / other’

The nice part about this is that if you haven’t already committed yourself to some untenable epistemological position, atheism doesn’t really have to entail anything of the sort. Weak atheism, as it is commonly touted, is merely the default position held by an individual who hasn’t yet found any reason to believe in god.

Weak atheism is part of a basic sceptical stance that refuses to accept beliefs on faith alone – whether evidence based, realist, verificationist, Nietzschean, or whatever we want to label the tenets of our positions. Such scepticism holds that faith is not a viable or reliable true belief forming practice.

Dennett is making this point when he talks about most theists not really believing in a god, but more ‘believing in belief’.

When translated in this manner, the “no you are too!” defence is often saying (to the weak atheist):

‘You have just as much faith in your not-having-developed-faith’

I’ll let you decide whether this is blatant circular reasoning or just a conclusion that is completely counter to where the premises lead.

By the time we’ve developed the ability to read, speak and differentiate between ourselves and others, culture has taken hold. That squishy grey mass in our brains drastically reshapes and remoulds its neural pathways quite drastically during our first decade. As machines who have evolved to learn, the environment that we find ourselves in shapes not only the information that we have access to, but the possible means by which we can encounter it. Knowing what we know now about cognitive development, it’s almost unbelievable that Freud could have had such insight with such little evidence (comparatively, of course): Freud’s Oedipus Complex is to cognitive studies what Copernicus’ heliocentrism was to Newton. We know now that the scope and possibilities available to us for the rest lives can be already predetermined to a large extent at a very early age.

The first episode of South Park’s 13th season not only acknowledges the implicit marketing strategies of so-called ‘tween’ culture, but subtly underlines the parasitic tendency of Christian culture to tap in to and appropriate our most general biologically motivated inclinations.

Sex sells. This is a well-worn advertiser’s slogan, the justification of many advertising campaigns across the ages. Only in recent decades, however, has it been increasingly popular to market sex to a presexual audience who are yet to understand such experiences. Sex does sell. But sex sells better when the target audience is already acquainted with the fundamentals of sexual desire by the time when their bodies are equipped to be influenced by such campaigns.

This understanding is taken (amongst many, many others.. *cough* Funtastic *cough) up by those who produce magazines like Australia’s Total Girl (and the American equivalent, Cosmo Girl) – and of course, as emphasised by the recent South Park, the wide-world of child entertainment embodied by Disney, including such teen icons as The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and the High School Musical franchise. According to the allusions of the South Park episode, the supposedly explicit message of sexual conservatism (falling alongside the joys of consumerism) is masking the implicit sexual undertones that permeate the plethora of dolls, songs and advertising campaigns marketed at these pre-pubescents. Selling the notion of sexual conservatism so thoroughly is getting these developing teens to think about and desire sexualisation, while avoiding the undertones of molestation that would otherwise be associated with an explicit marketing tactic (think, for example, of the outrage often caused by parents who deliberately dress their 10 year olds to look ‘sexy’).

Considering the ignorance at which many fundamentalist groups approach sexual education, the damage that such ignorance can cause to individuals and families is no surprise. One only has to think of abusive ministers and priests, or barbaric genital mutilations that can occur. But even the less extreme cases like Ted Haggard’s repressed homosexuality lead one to conclude that these sexual policies might be bit irresponsible.

But this implicit sexual advertising has been promoting the Christian faith from the very outset. In his thoroughly derisive book The Antichrist, Nietzsche pointed out that the very Christian tendency to deride bodily desires and functions as dangerous has been (rather counter-intuitively) one of the reasons that the religion has spread so prominently. The in-your-face anti-sexuality campaigns involved in conservative religious preaching produces even greater sexual desires. Denying our basic functions instead of harnessing them, Christianity has produced beings who build up such a resistance against their bodies that these thoughts are always eating away at their minds – more so than a healthy teenager who isn’t scared to jack it a few times a week – thus reinforcing the belief that such thoughts are dangerous and reinforcing allegiance to the religion.

At one point, the ‘Christian Union’ at my university put up posters with ‘SEX’ written in large bold letters, across half the page. Apparently, they were advertising a campaign to get people to think responsibly about sex. It wasn’t the first thought that came to the minds of people walking past. Not all publicity is good publicity. The so-called ‘new atheist’ movement (Dawkins et al) has also been criticised of throwing believers into a position of either/or: deny any shred of religious experience until it becomes verifiably credible, or recognize the supposed arational nature of their beliefs and move closer to the fundamentalist way of thinking about these things.

Not everyone can be sceptics. Foster doubt where you can. There is no point having expectations that will never be achieved – or worse, lead some to the opposite of what you aim.

“For a start, the earth is four and a half billion years old, for gods sake. That unsavoury taste is the palpable palette of your faith-fucked goals.” And so opens the most reasoned atheistic punk and/or rock album I’ve ever heard.

Lungs are an east-coast Australian band headed by ex-Staying at Home guitarist Adam Lees, and musically I find the fast-paced under-40-minute album An Anatomical Guide to be plain orgasmic. Maybe I find the bass a bit boring, but I am a bassist, and as long as it is following Lees’ guitaring then it is going to be good enough for me. Lees, the author of the rationalistic prose contained in the songs, is rather evidently a fan Dawkins and even includes images from The Blind Watchmaker in the album artwork.

Opening track Tens of Thousands doesn’t show any mercy to faith-based religion:

“You can euphemise these insane holy wars to ethnic cleansings of terrorisings, but there’s such an obvious obtrusion behind it all. You’re all just as bad as each other. You’re just as stupid. Promptly decloud your heads and put them together instead”

And the closing track Alone in a Godless Universe makes it even more explicable, paraphrasing Douglas Adams:

“Consciousness beholds the garden in its various beauty. It’s natural. But isn’t it enough without having to believe in fairies at the bottom of it too?”

Backing up popular culture with reason:

“Complexity could never be explained by merely postulating further complexity. An infinite regress.”

Lastly deserving a mention, from their previous EP, off the song Huxley (which I can’t help assume is about T.H. Huxley, agnostic and famously labelled ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his loyal support of Darwinism):

“It’s true that to know is delusional… but not knowing is driving me crazy”

Huxley’s agnosticism was the result of his scientific world view, in which he proposed that beliefs should only be formed on the basis of evidence. Asserting that one could know in such cases that there is no evidence is dogmatism and clearly incorrect. Problem is, most of our everyday beliefs, including much of our social interactions, are based on assumptions that we can’t live without; ie, the notion of another consciousness, or the notion of an outside world. Sceptical arguments from classical empiricists like Locke and Hume seem to be impossible to decisively refute, and yet impossible to rationally accept. This is basis of Camus’ absurdism; that we know things like the outside world (through living in it) and yet can never know such things (through the necessary, if ever-so-small, possibility of intellectual errors). Sure, Camus might have exaggerated how much indeterminate evidence can suck, but he had the right idea. Karl Popper can also be classed an agnostic in this case; falsification only eliminates whatever is incorrect within controlled premises and a controlled environment, but can never give us positive knowledge.

Anyone interested in pop punk that is technical, intelligent, melodic, critical and poetic should check these guys out.

Um… pizza is cool too

     During my earlier school years, my publicly owned school decided that we should get some Religious Instruction classes for those parents who didn’t throw up at the notion. My parents, being more indifferent to religion than to the non-existent hairs on my pre-pubescent back, didn’t see why this was such a bad idea. So those crazy missionaries came and penetrated our school and undoubtedly countless minds in a ideological rape that we’ve all grown to despise in our godless lives. (Only the Christian story too, of course.)

It was quite an exciting story mind you; this god who now sits up in heaven and talks to us all after he decided to kill himself who wasn’t really him or something something… my parents got to hear me ramble about it for about a day before Good Grief, Charlie Brown stole my attention and the Great Pumpkin began his conversations.

Obviously I left this near-accident relatively unscathed. But one memory of this god-time really stands out in my mind as engagingly symbolic (or prophetic) : sitting on the toilet, reflecting on the story that was told to me earlier, I wondered why I could never hear god talking to me. Ah! The magnificent parent (read: father-figure) of the universe! At that point, I began to wonder who god’s parents were and when his birthday was. In fact, after pushing out that giant shit that kept me occupied in there for some time, I began to worry if anyone else had even bothered to check when god’s birthday was. How offended he must have been!

In show of good spirit I hummed ‘happy birthday’ to god in my head while I wiped my asshole clean. And that was all.

Preaching to the choir.

Gives no compelling moral reason to reject certain aspect of religious belief, such as faith (Sam Harris).
Gives no intellectual (edit: epistemological) reason to question its plurality and origin (Daniel Dennett).

I want a documentary written by these two and hosted by Richard Dawkins (but only for his charm and sexy accent). And probably edited by someone with a qualification - I mean really, even 9/11 conspiracy docos have better production.

Sorry Flemming, but you’re not going to make people think focusing on a singular religion.

Camus on Suffering

I would name Albert Camus as being one of the most under-rated atheists of last century. Unfortunately, The Simpsons got it wrong with the whole ‘Sartre is smartre’ thing. Also, Sartre was an inconsiderate twat who practiced personal hygiene less than even the most devout arts-school drop-out. Camus’ arguments are equally applicable to realists as they are to phenomenologists, which is quite nice considering the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo of Heidegger and similar metaphysicians. Who would have thought using common language could be so effective. Sigh.

Anyhoo… Camus makes an interesting attack on theism.

In Camus’ The Plague there is a character by the name of Father Paneloux. His first real mention in the novel sees him delivering a sermon preaching the god-given nature of the plague that has infected, exiled and alienated the town of Oran in which the novel is set. He offers the same belittling opinion of humanity as is necessary in Christian thought - necessary because we must all be lowly sinners if Christ’s sacrifice is to be meaningful. It is the rational stance to be taken by someone assuming the truth of Christianity. In a theoretical perspective it makes sense to him that god should be punishing these wicked creatures. But upon seeing first-hand the enduring torment that the plague inflicts upon a small boy he falls to his knees and is horribly shaken.

Paneloux knows that this intense suffering (followed by the child’s slow death) must be for the greater good if God is to exist. Let me go back to my earlier Scrubs post in which I laid out the general argument from evil. Those who already feel that they know the existence of god can simply deny this argument by denying P5 on faith. Considering how unsuccessful most theodicies are, it is no surprise that this is the most general position taken. Theists, Paneloux included, assume on faith that all seemingly gratuitous suffering is actually for the greater good and they just don’t understand how. God does work in mysterious ways, after all. While the argument from evil is not objective, it is objective that from what follows from the argument is either god does not exist or there is no gratuitous suffering. Thus, when Paneloux is presented with the intense suffering of the boy he is given two choices; he can abandon his faith or convince himself that these horrors are necessary. Logically following his predictable choice he has to admit that the cause of this boy’s suffering is not an unnecessary evil; that the plague bacillus, killing hundreds a day in the same manner, is there for the greater good. Paneloux does not encourage going out and deliberately infecting himself with the plague, but insists by analogy:

For the true Christian, one who has a logically consistent faith in god, it is unreasonable to not welcome suffering that has made others in the same circumstances suffer.

No one is sure if Paneloux dies of the plague or some other disease and is ironically marked as ‘a doubtful case’. Truth being, if he had have doubted his Kierkegaardian ‘leap of faith’ he may not have died.

This is about as far as the text goes in the way of argument. But I have a couple of criticisms of this argument that I’ll put in my next post. I have a feeling that I can strengthen it afterwards.