Why Isn’t Criticizing Your Religious Beliefs Persecution?

You can hardly go a week these days without some sort of dustup over religious issues making the news. Whether it’s that duck guy making homophobic comments, or some high school coach getting reprimanded for making his players pray, or some public official putting up a Ten Commandments monument at the county courthouse, or state legislatures going out of their way to give legal encouragement to discrimination against homosexuals, these issues come up in a steady drumbeat. And whenever society, or the law, moves away from what evangelical fundamentalists want, or criticizes the fundamentalist position, religious leaders seem to love to scream “persecution!”

But that’s not what it is.

You see, on a certain level religions are collections of ideas. They tend to be collections gathered together under a single label and assigned a supernatural source, but basically they’re just ideas. Some of the ideas are good, and some of them are bad. And when someone evaluates one of the ideas contained in your religion, and decides it’s a bad idea and ought to be prevented from being put into general practice among people who don’t share the belief, that doesn’t mean they’re persecuting you. It just means that they don’t consider some ideas to have some special claim to immunity from evaluation simply because they’re religious.

If I think, for example, that persecuting homosexuals is a bad idea, I don’t particularly care if the reason you do it is because gay makes you feel icky, or because you have the ignorant notion that everybody will otherwise turn gay and doom the species, or because your religion tells you to. Going out of your way to make other people miserable when they’re not doing anything that actually hurts anyone is just a bad idea. I will oppose it; not because I’m opposed to religious people, but because I’m opposed to persecuting people.

Likewise, I regard treating other people with kindness and respect as a good idea. If your religion tells you to do that, you won’t find me opposing you in the exercise of that idea. Because whether you believe your god of choice wants you to do it, or because you just happen to share empathy with your fellow human beings, treating others well is kind of a good idea.

There are many examples I could give. I think demonizing sex and sex education, opposing science education, putting the government in the bedrooms of consenting adults, slavery, using government authority to pressure people into accepting a particular religion, and teaching people that they are inherently vile are all bad ideas. I think generosity, kindness, promoting education, and promoting community are all good ideas. All of those have been put forward by some religious denomination or another in recent memory, and I really don’t care: each idea is good or it’s bad based on its own merits, not whether it came out of a religion.

I see real problems with the practice of packaging vast swaths of ideas together and treating them like a monolithic whole. It creates a situation where two people can agree on 99% of their values, but become wholly incapable of discussing the 1% where they disagree without each feeling like the other is attacking their entire world view. There’s no logical connection between “love thy neighbor,” and “evolution doesn’t happen.” But because both those ideas got packaged into the same religion, you have people honestly making the argument that people who don’t believe the former somehow can’t follow the latter either because they’re immoral. The religion creates an artificial and divisive link between the ideas.

I understand, really, that if you accept a religion then it’s hard to see criticism of a particular idea that it espouses as not being an attack on the religion itself. Most religions seem to encourage that view. But those of us on the outside, we really don’t see it that way. We see the individual ideas, and believe they ought to stand or fall on their own. Many antireligious arguments are aimed at getting people to see past the artificial linking of those ideas, so that the ones we see as harmful can cease to be propped up by the ones we see as beneficial.

This isn’t done to persecute religious believers. It’s done because in a society based on religious freedom, an idea that is propped up only by a particular religion cannot be forced on those in society who do not share that religion.

Why Are There Still Monkeys?

It seems almost inevitable that in any debate over evolution versus creation, some creationist will trot out the old chestnut “If we’re evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?” In fact, in the wake of the recent Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate, the very next day there were commentators throwing out this very question. It’s almost always presented, not as a genuine request for explanation, but with the smug delivery of someone who thinks they’ve come up with the sort of unanswerable conundrum that represents ironclad proof that their opponent cannot possibly be right.

It’s a painful question for people who accept evolution to hear. Not because there’s no answer – in fact, the bulk of this article will be devoted to answering that question. No, it’s painful because of the startling ignorance it displays. If you can ask this question, and especially if you can ask it with that condescending confidence that it somehow disproves evolution, then you need to accept one simple fact: you do not understand the Theory of Evolution well enough to have a position on its plausibility.

Let’s see if we can correct that, at least on this particular part of the puzzle.

First of all, evolution (and here I’m going to use “evolution” as a shorthand for the Theory of Evolution), does not say that our ancestors were any currently existing species of monkey. It says that at some distant remove in the past, we shared a common ancestor with modern monkeys. Now if you looked at that ancestor you’d probably call it a monkey, but it would not be a chimpanzee or a macaque or a capuchin, or an orangutan or any other species we see currently running around the planet. Remember, after all, that “monkey” is a broad category covering many different species.

So what happened to this ancient monkey that we and all those other monkey species can be descended from it? Well, let me give you the broad strokes.

Picture, if you will, that ancient ancestor (we’ll call her Mona the Monkey) as part of a band of monkeys happily living in their trees millions of years ago. Maybe that band gets too big for the local environment and part of it splits off to find food elsewhere. Or there’s some sort of local disaster (a flood,  fire, earthquake, whatever) that splits the band. Whatever it is, some of that monkey’s children end up living and reproducing separately from the others.

So now we have Band A, the original, and Band B, the group that split off. Band A is still living in the same place doing the same things, so it doesn’t really change much. Band B, however, ends up in a place where the trees are more sparse, making it harder to move between them and forcing the monkeys to spend more time on the ground. That means that in Band B, the monkeys who are able to move better on the ground are more likely to survive and pass the traits that let them do so on to their offspring.

Before too many generations pass, the monkeys in Band B have noticeably longer legs than those in Band A simply due to the fact that the longer-legged monkeys in Band B are more likely to survive in the environment where they live.

Now, say a member of Band B is born with a mutation that increases the amount of muscle mass it puts on as it grows. This makes it better at protecting itself from predators in a physical confrontation, which enables it to spend even more time on the ground. And here’s the important thing: only those members of Band B who are descended from the money with that mutation will carry it themselves. That means that so long as Band B and Band A remain separate, no member of Band A will ever have that mutation.

You following me so far? We now have two bands of monkeys. Band A still strongly resembles Mona the Monkey and are a group of small, agile tree-dwellers. Band B, though, is composed largely of monkeys who, because of a combination of their environment selecting for taller monkeys with longer legs, and a beneficial mutation (yes, they happen) that increases their strength, are now larger and more comfortable on the ground. Both groups are descended from Mona the Monkey. But you notice what didn’t happen to Band A? It didn’t die out. It also didn’t change in the same way Band B did.

In other words, Band B is descended from Band A, yet Band A still exists.

The only difference between the story of the monkey bands I just told and the relationship between us and monkeys is one of scale. The band of monkeys that would eventually become us split off millions of years ago from the band that would go on to become modern monkeys, and both bands have split and/or mutated hundreds if not thousands of times in the intervening millennia. Some of those bands died, some of them survived, some even recombined at a later date. The details vary, but it’s always the same basic story repeated over and over and over. That’s what makes it so elegant – that by these simple steps repeated often enough over enough time you can arrive at such a diverse explosion of living forms.

That is why we can be descended from monkeys, and yet there are still monkeys.

Or, to steal a saying I’ve heard and found amusingly appropriate: the reason that we can be descended from monkeys, and yet there are still monkeys, is exactly the same reason most American can be descended from Europeans, and yet there are still Europeans.

This is, of course, only the most basic sort of layman’s explanation. I’m not a biologist, after all, nor are the people I’m targeting by writing this. I just hope this shows people that there is an answer to this question, and that it’s not so far-fetched as you might have been led to believe. And if this little glimpse has at all piqued your interest in what the Theory of Evolution actually has to say, I hope that you will pursue further reading on the subject from material written by actual evolutionary biologists.

How Does Being Straight Tell Me that Being Gay is Normal?

Strictly speaking, the question of whether or not being gay is normal, or should be treated as normal, isn’t an atheist issue. There are, for example, many atheists who believe that it’s not normal and ought to be banned for reasons that have nothing to do with the dictates of a god. I happen to disagree with them as well.

But the reason I bring it up here is that the vast majority of objections to homosexuality seem to be religious in nature. And it’s one of those areas where having no belief in a god allows you to examine the issue on its own merits rather than simply defaulting to obeying a dictate or by assuming that it must be wrong simply because you were brought up to believe that it is. It’s also one of those areas where you can see that the arguments religious objectors make are so hilariously at odds with reality that you wonder how they can possibly cling to them.

And then you realize that the arguments are meant to be taken seriously, and it becomes simultaneously sad and anger-inducing. Hence this article.

Of course, the primary argument is that one’s god considers homosexuality to be an abomination or something like that. This one automatically falls flat for everyone who doesn’t believe in the existence of that god, or for those who believe the god exists but don’t believe that it really thanks that. So then the argument is forced to go in the direction of things that might make actual sense in the real world. Many of these arguments kind of boil down to claiming that it’s not normal because it doesn’t occur “in nature,” or because if everyone were gay then the human species would die out.

Oddly, the “not normal” argument seems to use a different definition of the word “normal” than is used in pretty much every other facet of life. Only when it comes to homosexuality do I ever see people use “normal” as if it means “universally practiced,” and expect to be taken seriously.

Let me see if I can provide a few illustrations to get at what I mean. It is normal for a person to have blue eyes. We can all agree on that, right? Does that mean that everyone has blue eyes? Of course not. It’d be ludicrous to make that claim. It’s just as normal for people to have brown eyes, or green eyes. And even though grey eyes are unusual, they are still normal. Likewise, it is normal to like sports, but not everybody likes sports (and that is also normal). It is normal for a person to read books, but it’s also normal for other people to hate reading. It is normal to shower in the morning, but other completely normal people are still going to shower in the evening. Even though these things can be quite opposite from each other, accepting one as normal does not render its opposite abnormal. You know this.

Likewise, it’s normal to be sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex, but it is also normal for some people to be attracted to members of the same sex. Accepting homosexuality as part of the normal range of human sexual expression does not mean abandoning heterosexuality. If you think about this with any honesty, you know this is also true.

How do I know this? Because I’m straight.

I have a pretty fair number of gay friends. I like them. I think they’re good people, which is why they’re my friends. Some of the men have even hit on me at various times. And while I was flattered (who doesn’t like knowing that people they like think they’re attractive?), I was never even remotely tempted. And believe me, it’s not because I’m not a lustful person. It’s wholly and entirely because I’m straight. It simply doesn’t matter how accepting I am of my gay friends, or how many opportunities other men may give me to have sex with them, the simple fact of the matter is that I’m attracted to women. I am not just waiting for society to give me permission to give them up, as some people seem to want us to think.

Now, I know that’s just anecdotal. It’s only talking about my own experience, and I can’t speak for anyone else. I suppose that it’s just possible that I’m the only person on the face of the earth who isn’t burning with a repressed desire for others of the same gender that is only held in check by the disapproval of society and the fear of an angry storybook character. But does that seem at all likely? Does it really? It seems to me that the existence of seven billion people on this planet is pretty strong evidence that a healthy number of men really want to get together with women, and vice versa.

That’s why, when I hear people making ridiculously overblown claims such as that accepting homosexuality as normal will lead to the end of human families and procreation, it’s laugh-out-loud ridiculous. But when I see people accepting that argument, it turns to you-make-me-want-to-cry sad. Because there are really only two ways I can see someone honestly making or accepting that argument. The first is because they themselves are genuinely tempted by homosexuality and emotionally damaged over that desire. The second is that they aren’t tempted, but have completely abandoned reason and self-reflection on this subject. Neither of those are good things (and to be clear, it’s the emotional damage I’m claiming is sad, and not the sexual desire).

Of course, it’s possible to dishonestly make that claim. And I’m sure there are some people who do, in order to drum up fear and drive people in their preferred political direction. But if you honestly think about your own sexual desires (yes, it’s OK to think about what you might want), it should be pretty easy to see them for the ridiculous fear-mongering they are.

People love who they love. That doesn’t really change based on what other people tell them is normal. All that changes is whether we make them suffer because of it.

What Do You Worship?

So Representative Rick Saccone is trying to pass a bill in Pennsylvania requiring “In God We Trust,” to be posted in every school in the state. He claims it’s “inclusive,” because everyone who reads it can interpret “God” to mean whatever the god of their own religion is. Even if you ignore the existence of non-monotheistic beliefs, there is the obvious exception of us atheists.

In a recent interview, he was asked about this issue. His response was “Atheists, you know, they look at things their own way also. They can either interpret that as whatever god that they worship, in the form of, maybe it’s materialism, or something else in life that they look at.”

He also lied about receiving encouragement for the bill from the head of an atheist organization that doesn’t actually exist, but that’s not the point I’m angling at today.

There’s a very simple concept in play here that seems to have escaped him. It’s a concept, actually, that seems to escape many theists, since he’s not the first one I’ve heard say something similar. And that concept is that atheists by definition do not worship any gods. None. Zero. We do not believe they exist. By the way, that also means that we do not believe that we are gods either, just in case you were wondering.

Also, more than that, we haven’t gone and just replaced gods with something else to worship. I can’t even imagine what we would. The idea just seems ridiculous to me. It’s not as if I just have this weird urge to worship, such that in the absence of a god I’d have no choice but to direct that urge at something else. We don’t worship “materialism,” as the Representative Saccone seems to suggest, or ourselves, or science or anything at all. What would even be the point?

Bringing us back to the “In God We Trust,” thing, surely you can see that there’s no way to rationally argue that the phrase is inclusive of atheists. But the argument the Representative is making is nonsensical on another level as well. See, he’s basically arguing that the word “God” means whatever the reader wishes it to mean. Which means that he wants to spend legislative effort and public funds to plaster a nonsense phrase that essentially means “In whatever we trust.” Under that interpretation, the phrase is meaningless. It conveys no information and states no principal at all.

But of course, he doesn’t really mean it. He means the Christian god, and he wants to spend our tax money stamping our schools with it like a dog marking his territory. I hope his fellow representatives won’t fall for it, or worse, collude in it.

Why Don’t Atheists Want a Moral Basis?

In many debates I’ve seen between atheists and theists about the existence of a god, theists will frequently accuse atheists of having no moral basis. Some will even try to focus on this argument to the exclusion of all others, in spite of the fact that it actually has nothing to do with whether a god exists or not. And this is one of those arguments that just seems bizarre to me, because it’s one that no theist should want to win.

Why? Because the argument that “Without God, there is no basis for morality,” does nothing at all to prove that a god exists. At best, it’s an argument to want a god to exist. But just wanting something, no matter how much you might want it, does not make it true. The universe does not owe us an objective moral basis, and therefore the proposition that objective morality cannot exist without a god doesn’t demonstrate that a god exists.

So what happens if you convince somebody that there’s no moral basis without God, if you haven’t separately convinced him that there is a god? You take someone who had previously been moral, and turn them into someone amoral? Who actually wins in that situation? Anyone?

See, here’s the thing. By and large, atheists don’t look for ways to construct moral systems independent of God because we think they will banish him. We already don’t believe he exists. We try to construct moral systems because they are necessary to live in a society, humans by and large thrive best in societies, and nobody but humans is going to construct those societies (or the morals that guide them) for us. We don’t construct secular moral systems to deny God, we construct secular moral systems because we have no other choice.

And having to deal with the realities of living with other people seems like a pretty decent basis for a morality to me.

But ultimately I don’t think that the debate is necessarily about whether any given atheist can be a moral person. Inevitably, the debates seem to come down to this: how does an atheist justify imposing his morality on those who do not share it, since (as the theists claim) any moral system not based on a supreme authority is just as valid as any other?

From here on out, I’m speaking only for myself. Though my thoughts have been influenced by others, I cannot say that they are necessarily those of any significant number of atheists (who tend to be a diverse lot with a number of strongly conflicting opinions). But to me, it seems like the question posed in the preceding paragraph has some assumptions built into it that I do not believe are justified.

Firstly, the question seems to assume that morality is a fixed thing, and therefore when two moralities come into conflict one must be imposed unchanged on the other.

Secondly, it seems to assume that without a supreme authority, there is no basis for evaluating whether one moral choice is better than another.

I simply do not agree with either assumption.

To address the second one first, I do not believe that morality has anything to do with pleasing or obeying an authority figure in the first place. Morality is about how your behavior affects other people (and, to a certain extent, other living things). Once you understand that morality isn’t about rules, but about people, then it’s easy to see how there is a basis for judging whether certain moral choices are better than others.

To address the first assumption, when conflicts arise it may seem in some situations where it is clearly obvious that one path creates better outcomes for the affected people, then it may be necessary to impose that path. But often it’s less clear, which is why the morally responsible thing to do is be open to the possibility that your moral preference may be the one that’s wrong. Or that there’s enough ambiguity that imposing one or the other is not justified.

That’s the part I think is the hard one to convey. The idea that you can be wrong, or even that there might not be a clearly obvious right thing to do in all situations. That imposing your moral preferences, no matter how strongly felt they are, may not always be justified. And also accepting that the mere fact that you can’t know the absolute most right answer in every situation does not mean you can’t make a good decision. And more than that, it’s OK for that to be the case.

If you insist that morality is based on following the rules of some ultimate authority, then you have surrendered the ability to change those rules even when they demonstrably create awful outcomes for actual people. Following rules that create misery simply because an authority tells you to is, in my opinion, a fairly immoral stance. Particularly when that authority is one that can’t even be demonstrated to exist, or to have the best interests of any people whatsoever in mind.

We’re human. We’re fallible, but we’re also learning. We do the best with what we know now, in the hopes that in the future we’ll be able to do better based on the knowledge we’ll have then.

Do You Celebrate Christmas?

Well… yes and no. I celebrate the secular version of Christmas, and not the birthday of Jesus.

Christmas means a lot of things to a lot of different people, and there’s a whole range between the extremes of “It’s all about Christ,” and “It’s all about sales and crass commercialism.” Actually, there’s a whole lot of meanings that don’t fall anywhere on the line between those two positions.

I could go on, I suppose, about the fact that it’s pretty much impossible that December 25^th is the actual birth date of Jesus, or how Christmas is just a Christian appropriation of pagan midwinter celebrations anyway with a modern incarnation defined more by Normal Rockwell and the Coca Cola Company than any religion, but I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard that before. My telling you about it again isn’t going to give anyone any new insight. And if you have somehow failed to hear about those things, there are people better qualified than I to spell out the details who are just a Google search away.

No, the purpose of this post is to talk about the Christmas I celebrate, and why I celebrate it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was raised in a Christian household. So, of course, I was raised celebrating Christmas. We used to do the whole Christmas Cantata thing, where my brother and I would participate in church productions of the little play telling the Christmas story. We sang all the religious carols. We set up an Advent wreath with the four candles, lighting one more each Sunday leading up to Christmas. We decorated the Christmas tree, and gave each other presents, and had a big Christmas dinner (which, as wonderful as it was, still placed second behind Mom’s Christmas cookies for holiday foodstuffs, as they are the best cookies in the known universe). Christmas from my childhood holds nothing but happy memories for me.

And really, that’s a big part of why I celebrate it: because it reminds me of happy memories. And I would like to share those happy memories with my children and help them form some of their own. Obviously, the religious symbolism (including the symbolism of the huge number of pagan elements contained in the celebration) is pretty much ignored, but the things they symbolize played little to no role in my enjoyment of the holiday to begin with.

Another reason I celebrate Christmas is that I happen to believe that the secular notions that it has come to embody are very good things. Setting aside time to be with your family and loved ones. Demonstrating love through the exchange of gifts (and no, I do not accept the notion that doing so is inherently shallow or commercial). Encouraging acts of generosity towards even total strangers. I think those are good things to do, and to be reminded of.

And finally, I happen to like tradition. That doesn’t mean I think tradition should always be adhered to without examination. But at their best, traditions are things that help to bind families and communities together through shared experience, and Christmas traditions are generally pretty fun and positive. Our family has a tradition of gathering at my parents’ house the first Sunday after Thanksgiving to decorate the Christmas tree. It’s a time we have set aside where everything else gets put away so we can get together in a loving environment and each contribute our efforts to creating something together. I love it.

So this season, we will once again put up our Christmas tree, and hang our lights around the house. And my wife and I will put in some late nights shopping and wrapping up presents in secret. We’ll even hold back a stash to lay under the tree Christmas night after the kids have gone to sleep, even though they know the truth about Santa, because it’s fun and it’s tradition, and it contributes to the whole magical feeling of the holiday. We’ll give to our charities, and we’ll visit our families (and score some of Mom’s Christmas cookies!).

So for those who celebrate it: Merry Christmas! And for those who celebrate other traditions: Happy Holidays! And for those who don’t celebrate anything at all: we love you too and wish you only the best!

Aren't You Thankful?

Well, I was hoping to get something up on the subject of Thanksgiving before the actual holiday happened, but life sometimes has a way of foiling these little plans. Still, I want to say a little something on the subject of thankfulness. Because personally, I think it’s a good thing to set aside time now and then to think about it.

There is no doubt that I have plenty to be thankful for. I have a wife and kids whom I love and who love me, I have supportive and loving parents and in-laws, a roof over my head, and a full-time job that keeps us fed and housed. I have some friends I can count on, and others that I can simply have a good time with once in a while. I live in a country where I can have all of those things while being able to choose (more or less) what I do for a living, and where I can say the things I say on this blog in spite of them being an extreme minority opinion.

So that’s just a few of the things I have to be thankful for. I’m sure that if I really set my mind to it, I could come up with more and more until I completely bogged down this post with a huge list of everything positive in my life. But listing what you’re thankful for does raise a related question: who am I thankful to? I think that bears some thought as well, and may even be the more important question.

Almost every year, we spend Thanksgiving with my parents. And my parents, like probably millions of families worldwide, commemorate meals on significant occasions by offering a prayer of thanks to God (the Christian God – they’re Baptists) and asking for his continued blessings. I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that I’m not a big fan of the practice. Usually, I just sit through it in silence out of respect for my parents, and this year was no exception.

But what’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable to me is the fact that God is the only one to get thanked. He gets the thanks for the food, for the home, for the family, for all of the things that my father calls out to name in his list of blessings, he gives the thanks to God even though there is no visible participation in any of that by any immaterial being.

Meanwhile, it’s demonstrably true that a farmer grew the food, and a store sold it to us, and that my father’s earnings paid for it, and that my mother’s efforts transformed it into a feast. We have a family because each and every one of us makes the effort to plan these times together, and to let one another know that we love them, and because each of us there lends their own personality to the mixture that is our family.

And, of course, when you think about it a little more deeply, it’s not hard to expand the circle of people and events to be thankful for. Even just the ones that were necessary in order for me to be alive to be writing this, much less to be having any joy in life. For example: I was born in breach position, a situation which could easily have resulted in the deaths of both myself and my mother. So I have a doctor to be thankful to that I ever got to draw breath in the first place. And he couldn’t have had the knowledge to save us if it weren’t for the generations of people who not only investigated that knowledge but also set out the means to record it and train others in how to apply it. And each of those people, in turn, had to have all the things go right in their own lives to allow them to survive to achieve what they did. Plus each and every one of their ancestors all the way back through hominids, apes, primates, and on and on to the first organic molecules. It rapidly becomes absolutely mind-boggling the sheer number of events that came together so that I could be here writing about the fact that I’m kinda glad it came together in such a way as to make me.

That’s an awful lot to be grateful for. And a huge amount of those things are so impersonal, or so distant in time and space, that it would be impossible to express thanks to them in any meaningful way. It’s a vast and incomprehensible web, and merely getting a glimmer of the incredible number of things that had to come together so that I could even exist is both humbling and awe-inspiring. When I look around and realize that every person I meet is the result of an equally vast number of events coming together, that’s even more humbling and amazing still.

But that, I think, is the connection to the enormity of it all. I cannot express my gratitude to the impersonal and distant forces that led to my existence. But I can express it to all the people around me who are the equally improbable products of those same forces. By thanking them… by thanking you… I am thanking the universe as well.

So I say in all sincerity to all who are reading this, and even to all who aren’t… THANK YOU!