My people!

I just read this article on Friendly Atheist, and boy, did it get me excited! Mary Johnson is one of my people. Her whole journey really resonates with me, and I love that although she is now an atheist, she still can see the value and appeal of religion.

Check out this quote:

I believe that humans need ritual and art and encouragement. I’m in the process of becoming a Humanist celebrant so that I can help people celebrate weddings and births and funerals in a secular context. I’m encouraged that people like Alain de Botton and Greg Epstein and Miriam Muroff Jerris are taking on the challenge of creating meaningful Humanist rituals without supernatural references.

I could have said that! Plus, it takes me back to my original idea for my presentation. Probably, I can focus on deBotton, Epstein and Jerris and that will be enough for one presentation. I wonder if Jerris would answer some interview questions for me. After all, she did reply to my e-mails.

But what REALLY got me going was the discussion in the comment. It seems that Friendly Atheist's readers are up in arms because Johnson used the word "soul" in her last sentence. Personally, I think she was using the word partly as a metaphor and partly because she was asked to address "anyone who is sitting in a church pew right now," so the use of religious terminology was appropriate in that context. But I often say that religion gets a lot of things right, and I think the idea of a soul is one of them.

Let me be clear: I think it's incredibly unlikely that there is any kind of life after death. I don't believe that there is some kind of permanent part of us that is endowed by a deity. 

However, there is the essence of a person. That thing that is not my brain and not my body: the me that metacognates. I know it's not a real thing--it's generated by the chemicals in my brain. But I also know that it is real in my experience of myself and my experience of those I love. It's the thing that makes each of us who we are, different from everyone else. It's the part of my husband that I love all the time, even when his body and his brain are pissing me off. Although I know it's only a concept, it's a concept worth talking about, from time to time, and when we talk about it, we need a word for it. "Soul" is a long-established term for just that thing, and it comes in handy. Because the rest of this paragraph makes very little sense.

And there's another thing. My mother, whose relationship to religion is very confusing so I won't try to explain it here, told me a story that made me wonder about all of this. When my grandmother died, my mother was with her. My mother reports that Nana's last breath was peaceful, and exactly like my first breath, but (obviously) backwards. My mother felt in that moment that death was completely natural. She also says that there is no question in her mind that her mother left the room at that moment, and that she want up.

Do I think Nana went to Heaven? Of course not. But neither do I think my mother is lying, or deluded. She is not a Christian and does not believe in Hell, so there was no interest in her believing her mother went up instead of down, or to the side. What I think is that she experienced something we can't explain. She had a sensation of some kind, and other people have experienced this same thing, and that's where the whole idea of a soul going to Heaven came from. What was it? I have no idea. But I know it brought my mother some comfort. She still had a really tough time with the idea of her mom rotting under the ground. She couldn't watch the body being lowered into the grave, and a few months after my grandmother's death I started singing that lovely childhood diddy about "the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout" and I thought my mom was going to have a panic attack.  (To be clear, I was an adult when all of this happened--there was no child abuse involved.) But she likes the idea that her mom left the room with that last breath, and I can't prove that it didn't happen.

So, to sum up: I don't believe in eternal souls that go to Heaven if we're good, but I do notice that each of us has an essence of some kind and I think "soul" is a useful term for it. Lay off the poor woman.

A little light reading

I went to the library on Friday feeling like it was time for me to do more homework. After all, November is coming ever closer and I recently received a phone call from the Programming Officer of my Humanist Group asking me to send a description of my presentation and my qualifications to our group Secretary.

So I checked out some good ones: The Portable Atheist and Religion for Atheists (which I'm determined to read all the way through this time.) But while searching for "atheist" in the catalogue, I came across God, No! by Penn Jillette. I'm a big Penn and Teller fan, and I've been meaning to read this book for a while, so I decided it would be more fun to start with this one and move into the more serious discourse after that.

I'm almost half-way through, and I have some really mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, Penn is funny, and I am really enjoying his 10 Suggestions. On the other hand, he swears way too much, and in the most vulgar way, and he appears to be a misogynist. Oh, sure, there are some women he seems to respect--his mother, his wife, and the lesbian minister who didn't ask his family to return to the church when they left--but in general, he seems to think that women were placed on this earth (or evolved, I suppose) for his personal sexual enjoyment.

Also, Penn is most certainly a Christian Atheist. He said, "I don't understand atheists who claim to also be Jewish. ...I hear hard-core atheists claim that they are Jewish because their moms were Jewish. That's not a genetic rule, that's a religious rule, and if you're not religious, you don't follow religious rules." (P. 33) That, my friends, is a Christian view of religion if I ever heard one.

I don't believe in God. I do believe in religion. There are many, many things I like about Judaism and being Jewish. I believe that Judaism was created by people and is maintained by people. I believe everything in it should be open for interpretation. But there's a lot about it that is very sensible and the structure of it is helpful in many ways. And Judaism has always been about questioning and interpreting. That's why I think the Hasidim are wrong. Somewhere along the line, they stopped questioning, and started imitating. They closed themselves off from the world. I don't think that's real Judaism, and when I believed in God I didn't think that was what God intended us to do.

But I have the freedom to make these distinctions because I was born a Jew. As a Jew, nobody ever asks you what you believe, they ask what you do. "Do you keep kosher? Do you keep Shabbat? Do you daven after dinner?" are all acceptable questions for a Jew to ask another Jew. But nobody ever asks about beliefs. And there is no creed, so we are not asked to promise to believe in anything. So Jewish Atheists do not see a clear and solid demarcation between belief and non belief. Some people keep kosher and don't believe in God. Others believe firmly in God but sit in mixed-gender seating. Your typical Orthodox Jew would be more comfortable with the kosher non-believer than the believing mixed-gender-sitter.

Christians, on the other hand, recite their creed every Sunday. It is a fact that a person who does not believe Jesus is the son of God is not truly a Christian. So for them, Atheism is a much brighter line. Becoming Atheist means that one is no longer a Christian. It all goes out the window in one fell swoop. But let's face it: there are plenty of Atheists who don't eat bacon. There's nothing about Atheism that requires the mixing of milk and meat, or working on Saturday, or eating bread in the springtime. And discussing Biblical passages with Atheists is downright fun.

So, Penn Jillette, why should I stop? Because it doesn't make sense? Of course it doesn't. But I'm Jewish, and not only does my being Jewish not hurt anyone, I teach kids to be skeptical about Jewish teachings and to participate in social justice activities. Objectively, these are good things. So no, Penn, I won't bend to your Christian definition of religion, no matter how hard you argue that it's really free thought. I'm not going to fit into the box you want to put me in. I grew up with a different set of boxes.

Worldwide Secular Celebration

Well, this is it--the biggest secular celebration of humanity that we have. The dream is peaceful competition among nations. The reality is a spectacle of the human body being pushed to its limits in every way imaginable. It comes down to courage, focus and execution. And the best human wins.

I love the Olympics. I've always loved the Olympics. I love watching sports that I never think about when the Olympics aren't on. I love watching people push themselves and achieve their best performances ever on the biggest stage in the world. I love the fact that almost everyone practices good sportsmanship. I love everything about it.

But now that I've realized I'm a Humanist, I think I love it even more. The Olympics is a time when the whole world comes together to celebrate humanity. How many times during the broadcast do we hear the phrase, "Human spirit?" Olympians may or may not trust in god, but they don't rely on that--they prepare, they train, and they come together with other people, whether it's teammates, coaches, family, or the support of national fans. Maybe Olympians are praying before every performance, but we don't see that. Every commercial during the Olympics focuses on the fact that nobody gets to the Olympics alone. And so we are reminded of our connectedness, and of our potential.

We need more secular ways to celebrate and to come together as a community.

Here's one.

What are your post-its?

I've been fascinated by Eric Weiner's idea of religion being a series of "post-its for the brain." If good religion reminds us to be better people--calmer, more generous, kinder, and more focused--then how can this translate to the non-religious? What kind of "post-its" are appropriate for someone who doesn't believe in god?

As I discussed in a previous post, prayer is one that works for me, even without god. One other thing that works for me is my pets. At present, we have three pets: a dog, a cat, and a gerbil. I try to spend time with each of them every day, doing what he or she likes best. I walk, hike or train with my dog, relax with and stroke the cat, and for now, just hold the gerbil and try to be calm so as not to scare him (he's new.)

Each pet affects me in a different way. The dog encourages exercise and releases a sense of love in my heart when I look into his affectionate gaze. The cat helps me to relax. In fact, if I wake up in the night after a particularly bad dream, I love to touch the cat. Feeling her complete relaxation helps me to relax my own body and mind in a way that nothing else can. When my previous cat died I was in an agony of grief--I had adopted her right after college and bonded with her in a way that I don't think I ever will bond with a pet again, as she was with me through big changes in my life. One of the things that was most difficult about losing that cat was that I didn't have her there to comfort me in my loss. Sure, I had people around me, and a dog, but cats have the ability to relax their bodies totally, and I have always found that touching one can help me achieve a similar, if inferior, state of relaxation. And as I get to know the gerbil I have to focus on him in a way that I don't usually focus. I don't know much about gerbils as I never lived with one before, and so I'm trying to learn about gerbilness at the same time as I get to know this gerbil in particular. In order for him to gain trust in me I have to be perfectly calm when I'm around him and I find that I'm able to do that in spite of what goes on around me: the Little Jewess panicking because he tickled her hands and she's not sure she can hold him, seeds falling everywhere, the cat sneaking into the room where the gerbil lives, or whatever.

Animals have always responded well to me. They tend to trust me. I think this has something to do with a state that I enter when I'm trying to connect with an animal. It's a state of calm in which I forget my problems because I'm focused on the animal. When I'm with the dog, I do doggy things. I don't act like a dog, but I do thinks that interest him--walk, play fetch, sleep on the couch--and living in dog time separates me from my problems. Dogs don't worry about money, or whether they're raising their kids correctly, or whether there's a god. Dogs just worry about what they need right now, and once they've got it, they stop worrying. I'd like to be more like that, and when I'm with my dog, or my cat, or my gerbil, I am.

So for me, pets can serve as a post-it for the brain. A reminder to chill out, spend time taking care of my body, and not worry about the other stuff. And when I am worried, they help me by being a warm body to cuddle with. Pets are a source of pure love.

What are your post-its?

Response to "An Atheists Prayer"

I just read this article on Parenting Beyond Belief--an excellent blog, which is linked at the right. This article is an excellent example of the kind of thing I want to talk about--atheists incorporating prayer into daily life.

Another thing that religion often does well is gratitude. It's one of the things I've always liked about going to services, especially when I can go to a weekday morning service (there isn't one available in my current congregation, so it's been a while for me.) I like the Jewish morning prayer because it's a list of things for which one is to be grateful. I dislike it for many reasons, but I'm not going to go into that now. It's good to be reminded, even in godly terms, that I am free, that my body works, that I'm glad I woke up this morning.

I like the ritual in Liz James's family of expressing gratitude before dinner. Taking time to be grateful for what we have can make us happier. Reminding our children of their privilege is a good thing, too. There are people in this world who don't have food or a table or a house to put it in, and before we get into the inevitable complaints of the day that come during dinner, it's a good idea to remember that we're better off than most people in the world.

And we don't need a supernatural eavesdropper to make it good.

Are Religious People Healthier?

I've been thinking a lot about this guy since yesterday. Obviously, his argument (that religion makes you healthier so Atheists should pay a tax penalty for not going to church) is ridiculous. But I do believe that people who belong to things (clubs, neighborhoods, organizations and yes, churches) are healthier. I don't think this has anything to do with God, but I know from my work in public health that one of the things we look for in our studies is connectedness. We ask questions like

Is there someone who could look after your children for 20 minutes if you needed them to?
Is there someone who would check on you a few times a day if you were sick in bed?
Is there someone who could help you find new housing if you needed to move?

All of these things relate directly to health. People avoid going to the doctor if they can't find someone to watch their kids. They get sicker if nobody brings them chicken soup. They stay in unsafe housing if they don't know where else to go.

Does it matter if they know these people from the neighborhood or from church? Not really. But your congregation is more likely to get together to bring you food when you're recovering from surgery, or to visit you after a death in the family, than your neighbors. Your clergy person has special visitation rights in the hospital.

This is one of the issues I plan to bring up in my presentation on secular religion. Because I think that these are issues Atheists need to deal with. Caring for others in the community is something Religion does well, particularly in our current society where most of us don't live in small towns where everyone knows each other's business. My congregation has a Caring Community whose job it is to make sure that people in distress get visits from community members, a few meals if they need it, and they keep the Rabbi updated if someone wants a visit from her. There's no reason a Humanist community can't do the same for its members.

The Hunger Games, Religion, and Women (or not)

After finishing Mockingjay, I read Slate's Book Club on the topic. There was much discussion of the ending and the violence, of course, but they also mentioned two ideas that got me thinking about Humanism again.

1) Panem is almost perfectly egalitarian. Women and men have equal chance to be good, evil, vacuous, creative, President, and killed in the Arena. (Although I don't think women work in the mines.)

2) Katniss is weirdly virginal. As a person so in touch with sensation, in such a heightened dramatic situation, and an adolescent, wouldn't she be sexually adventurous?

The first got me thinking about the lack of religion in the books again. Religion is one of the primary tools men have used to oppress women throughout history. After all, if it's all about the afterlife, it doesn't matter that you can't do anything in this life, right? It's one of the few ways we can see that Panem may have come from the world we know now. After the devastation of global warming and the wars, the people left decided that the new society would have complete equality and no religion. And things devolved from there.

However, I have to disagree with the statement about equality. Yes, there are women in power, and in the Capitol, it seems there is a kind of equality. There is also equality in the Reaping and the Hunger Games. However, in District 12, we see women in very traditional roles--raising children, helping in the bakery, and so forth. Greasy Sae seems to be the only woman who works in the Hob, and she is a cook.

Item number 2 I kind of disagree with. The main focus of the book seems to be an exploration of Katniss and the effects of trauma on a very strong human being. At the beginning of the book, we see Katniss beginning to emerge from post-traumatic stress that was a result of the sudden death of her father and subsequent depression of her mother. She has learned to take care of her family, they are surviving, and as her mother emerges from her depression, Katniss is aware of the fact that she is shutting her mother out emotionally, which is the first step to eventually forgiving her mother and moving on. In order to cope with the stress she has been under, she has shut herself off emotionally from everyone except Prim, and kept her distance from everyone except Gale. But she is reaching the point where recovery and a normal life are possible when the Games intervene.

Still, this history has prevented her normal adolescent development. She didn't spend her teenage years ogling boys with her girlfriends, trying on different outfits and reading romance novels. She spent them hunting with Gale and trading in the Hob and making sure every waking moment was dedicated to taking care of her family. So when boys start admiring her in her new dresses and she starts kissing Peeta, her feelings surprise and confuse her. This is underscored at the beginning of the Quarter Quell when the various Victors tease Katniss (Finnick with his flirting, Joanna stripping naked, etc.) Peeta sees this teasing for what it is, but Katniss is completely overwhelmed by it. This suggests that Peeta's sexual development has taken a more normal course (although he's remarkably self-possessed at 17) whereas Katniss is stunted. This is all augmented by Katniss's extreme fear of having children because any children she has will be under threat of the Reaping.

What is not addressed is how women achieved their remarkable equality in Panem. Women in District 12 do not seem to enjoy that liberty--we see women staying home while men work in the mines, or helping in stores (as in Peeta's family.) However, in the Capitol there is more equality.

Darn it. I started out intending to write about the fact that only a religionless and sexless society seems to be able to produce total equality of the sexes, and I have talked myself out of the equality part and the sexless part.

One wonders, then, how the society functions without religion. Most dystopian fiction contains some kind of cultural ritual, be it explicitly religious or shockingly secular. But in this world, the only ritual they seem to have is the Hunger Games. How, then, do the people in the Capitol justify their lifestyle? They know, from watching the Hunger Games, how different life is in the Districts. It is stated in Mockingjay that they have trouble recruiting people from the Capitol to become Peacekeepers because they don't want to live in the Districts. Without religion telling them that they are better than the District citizens, how do they live with themselves? Sure, there are those (like Katniss's prep team) who don't think about anything, but what about normal people? What holds them together as a community? What makes them feel that they should be loyal to the President, or the Capitol?

One reason I think people are unsatisfied with the trilogy is that they want to know more about Panem: how it works, what rituals it has, and why it functions. I think the people who are unsatisfied with the ending are looking for one of two things: a happy resolution (which is impossible) or a description of the political situation post-revolution. But Collins isn't interested in Panem, particularly. She is exploring the psyche of an adolescent girl whose world is destroyed piece by piece but who survives. That's why the ending is so quick and so anticlimactic. Because once the Capitol is done with Katniss, Katniss begins to heal, and Collins loses interest. Her only point after that is that Katniss never recovers completely, and the rest of her life is framed by her participation in the Hunger Games and the Revolution. The world doesn't really change because people don't really change, but Katniss changes enough that she is able to have children, and mostly enjoy them.

Now I talked myself out of the only bit I had left. We don't know about the rituals of Panem because Collins was only interested in setting up a world where Katniss could be destroyed.

I really liked the books, though, because it's a fascinating character study. While there are choices I would have preferred (the real Peeta in book 3, for example, would have been more interesting in a lot of ways) Collins always takes away the one thing Katniss is counting on, and Peeta's love is an important piece. It's a really interesting thought exercise.

But I'm afraid it has nothing to do with Humanism.

Oh, well. On Saturday I'm going to a meeting of my local Humanist group. Maybe I'll have something relevant then. In the meantime, feel free to argue with me about The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games and secular religion

Like everyone else in the country who hadn't already, I've just finished reading The Hunger Games. If you haven't read it, you should probably skip this post, because there will be spoilers. Also, I'm going to assume that you've read the book, because I'm still reacting to it myself and don't have the capacity to explain plot points right now.

The Hunger Games isn't presented as an element of religion, but in many ways it is. There is ceremony, and ritual. There are people with supreme power who make the rules, and people who need to follow them. The children sent to fight are called "tributes." There is the randomness of fate, and the communal element of watching something as a nation. The reaction to the games is presented as binary in the book: those in the Capitol love it, and see no humanity in the competitors (except for a few residents whom we get to know a bit better.) Those in the Districts see it for what it is: a hopeless bloodbath set up to keep them in their places.

But of course, that reaction is unlikely. Many in the Capitol would dislike the games and do small things to disrupt them: it's one motivation for being a sponsor, and it is clearly Cinna's motivation in asking for District 12 and everything he does for Katniss from then on. Anyone with a fair dose of brains and compassion would find enjoyment of the Games difficult; even if one had never met anyone from the Districts and thought of them as less than fully human, the barbarism of the Games must be clear.

Conversely, there would be those in the Districts who enjoyed the Games. Clearly not the families of the Tributes, but others. Some of these others would be people who were somehow unaffected by the games: single adults who couldn't themselves be called, who had never been called and who perhaps disliked all of the people their age who had been called. But there would also be some in the Districts who believed themselves superior. It can't be helped--it's human nature. And some people would develop superstitions and rituals to keep themselves safe. There would be some kind of underground religion (a pity that Collins didn't think of this, as it would add a wonderful layer to the world of the book) that people followed, believing that it protected them and their loved ones from the Games. This would be more like Christianity than the secular "religion" of the Games, and would rely on a deity and a complex system of sin and reward that would account for the randomness of the system the Capitol has put into place. As a result of that, these people would believe that those in the Games had sinned somehow, and this belief would free them to see the Games in the same way that those in the Capitol do--as a sport to watch and gamble over.

In all of this, though, there are positive elements of secular religion to be found in The Hunger Games. Katniss is comforted throughout the book by her familiarity with the rituals of the Games. She knows what to expect, and she understands and anticipates the audience reaction to every moment of the process.  She is pleased to speak to Flickerman because he is the friendly face of the Games, and she again knows what to expect from him. Every item she encounters in the arena has a special significance, from the birds to the food to the horrible creatures sent to kill her. Each thing sets off an emotion in Katniss in a special way that only really good symbols and rituals can.

So what can we take from this? Surely there is nothing to emulate in Panem. Setting the residents against one another is the worst kind of politics, and there is no glimmer of human dignity in the Games or the Capitol. But what if those elements--the songs, the rituals, the food, the symbols--could be used to harness the power of people and advance the cause of dignity around the world? What then? Is it even possible? And how would we begin?