What is idolatry?

There are some Christian ideas that are easily translatable into secular ideas.  For example, a sin is just something that's morally wrong.  And so when Christians say homosexuality is a sin but they're not judging, nobody is fooled.

Idolatry, on the other hand, is a mystery.  You shall have no other gods before YHWH... why?

I'm not up on my Biblical history, but my understanding is that at the time, polytheism was common, and early Jews believed their god was just one of many.  So the rule about idolatry basically expresses the jealousy and pettiness of their god.  It is also an expression of ethnocentrism--you shall never leave our group or ever adopt practices from other groups.  This law is basically awful and a force for evil.

In many modern interpretations, idolatry is not so much about other gods, but about other "gods".  You're not supposed to hold any idea higher than the one god.  For example, any form of addiction can be described as idolatry since the object of addiction is being held higher than God.  For another example, atheists are frequently described as idolatrous because they're supposedly replacing God with reason or science.

This frankly leads to a very poor understanding of addiction or atheism.  It's a peculiarly Christian-centric worldview, to say that everyone is just like you only sometimes they deviate from the platonic ideal in certain ways.  This is the sort of thing that makes people think it's appropriate for Alcoholics Anonymous to refer to God "as you understand him".  Have you considered that some of us just don't have a God-analogue in our lives?

I also find it strange to have a rule which basically says, the beliefs specific to our group are the most important.  Nothing else in your life should be as important.  This is just more ethnocentrism, and it should not be an explicit value.

No, Obama did not nullify Hobby Lobby decision

Last year, the Supreme Court declared their decision on Burwell vs Hobby Lobby, ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) cannot force religious for-profit organizations to pay for birth control for their employees if they have a religious objection.

This year, a few news sources are reporting that Obama rendered the Hobby Lobby decision obsolete.  Basically, if a religious organization has a religious objection to paying for birth control, then the health insurance provider must provide birth control coverage at no charge.

But it would be wrong to say that this nullifies the Supreme Court decision.  Rather, Obama is implementing the decision.

Here are some facts:

1. ACA, as written, already had the same policy for religious non-profits.  That is, if they had a religious objection to paying for birth control, then the insurance provider must provide birth control coverage at no charge.
2. The rationale behind the Hobby Lobby decision is that if the ACA does it for religious non-profits, then it can (and must) do the same for religious for-profits.  And now Obama has made it so.

When I covered the Hobby Lobby decision in detail last year, I noted that a lot of people were panicking about it, and didn't seem to understand what it actually said.  Now that Obama is implementing the decision, many people are relieved that it's not as bad as they thought.  This is one of the dangers of panicking: people are satisfied with less once they realize that things are not quite as terrible as they initially thought.

There was never any danger of female employees losing access to birth control coverage.  The danger is that it makes religious rights too expansive.  Can religious employers discriminate merely because their religious beliefs tell them to?  The Hobby Lobby decision doesn't outright say that they can, but it sets a poor precedent.

I also worry about perverse incentives.  Why should organizations with particular religious beliefs have to pay less for health insurance?  I do not want to financially incentivize those beliefs, and it is simply unfair.

Though there is a lot of focus on the Hobby Lobby decision, I find the decision itself hard to argue with.  I think the real problem is in the original ACA policy, as written by the legislators.  Religious organizations should not have a right to discriminate, and the ones that do should not have their operating costs subsidized.

What liberal Christians are saying about same-sex marriage

When the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage must be legal throughout the US, many people responded with celebration.  But there were other kinds of responses as well:

-Activists reminding us that the fight is not over.
-Radical queers, feminists, poly folk, and singles complaining about the way marriage privileges certain people.
-Libertarians opposing all state marriage.
-Presumably there's a range of conservative responses as well, but I don't pay attention to them.

Here I wish to highlight a different response, those of liberal Christians.  Surely it is possible to find liberal Christians who say all sorts of things, so I will constrain myself to the links shared by Christian friends on Facebook .  These are all friends from IVCF, a relatively liberal evangelical college campus ministry, although that does not necessarily reflect the views of the links they shared.

1. SCOTUS by Dora4Yiu

I have many mixed emotions right now. Probably more than I can articulate well.

-I don't find it very inspiring when the liberal Christian response is "it's complicated."  So... you think that the pro-gay and anti-gay sides both make good points and that the truth is somewhere in the middle?  It's difficult to tell from such a short piece.

-Dora briefly mentions the distinction between the sacred contract of marriage and the government contract of marriage.  She believes that the government contract is all the LGBT activists really wanted.  This sounds like saying, it's fine for same-sex couples to have equal legal rights because we all know they're still symbolically second-class citizens.

-Dora also echoes some of the points that I hear from my radical queer friends: same-sex marriage is mostly being celebrated by white people, and also marriage privileges certain relationships.  I have opinions about this, but there isn't space here.

-Dora thinks Christians need to clean up their own act and stop idolizing marriage.  I honestly don't understand the point being made, since the idea of idolatry has no secular translation.

2. Some Advice on Same-Sex Marriage for US Church Leaders From a Canadian by Carey Nieuwhof

I hope [this essay] pulls debate away from the “sky is falling/this is the best thing ever” dichotomy that seems to characterize much of the dialogue so far.

-Like the first article, Carey seems to think it's complicated and that both sides have good points.

-The main thrust of the article is that it's okay for the church and law to be at odds, since that's how it's always been.  He's basically trying to comfort anti-gay Christians for their loss.  I hope this isn't too flippant (that's a lie), but no, you should not be comforted, you should stop being anti-gay.

-"Judgment is a terrible evangelism strategy."  I dunno, social justice advocates are pretty judgmental and seem fairly successful.  The problem is when most people can tell your judgments are wrong.

3. How I Came Around on Gay Marriage by Liz Lin

A few years after I changed my stance on gay marriage as a civil rights issue, the needle started to move for me theologically as well.

-This is the most positive essay of the three.  Like in the others, Liz expresses "it's complicated" views, but these are only part of her personal trajectory towards a more gay-friendly view today.

-Like Dora, Liz also makes a distinction between the religious idea of marriage and the civil rights associated with it.  By thinking of same-sex marriage in terms of a civil rights question rather than a religious question, she was able to support it earlier on.  Later she came around on the religious question too.

-The reasons for Liz's change of religious views come from careful consideration of the Bible, and hearing stories from LGBT people.  From the perspective of someone who thinks reading the Bible is a lot like reading tea leaves, I sure am glad that the tea leaves were arranged that particular way!

TL;DR

Being a Christian and also a decent person is a struggle.  :'-(

A critique of secular humanism

The main problem with secular humanism is that it's too reactionary.  The movement seems designed to counter the accusation that non-religious people have no morals, or have no positive ideas to offer.  It's fine and good to offer a positive moral vision for non-religious people, but because of its reactionary nature, secular humanism mostly only achieves the appearance of a positive moral vision.

Vague Positivity

Secular humanists want to offer a positive moral vision, but don't want to actually pay the cost of excluding significant numbers of non-religious people. And what better way to express vague positivity than through the medium of the manifesto?  Indeed, manifestos are littered throughout humanist discourse.

You can take a look at the most recent manifestos of the IHEU, the AHA, and the CSH.  They appear to be written as if they didn't want anyone to disagree. The most common themes are ethics and reason.  As opposed to people who throw their lot in with evil and irrationality?  When you dig down, the particular kind of ethics they favor are consequentialism plus human rights, which is something.  But it's still too broad to indicate any particular stance on a specific issue.

The most specifics we get are from CSH, which seems to be in favor of the UN.  However, I have not gotten the impression that this is a major thing among people who identify as humanists.  This is a problem, because statements of humanist principles are either maddeningly vague, or they're too specific and don't represent the views of most self-identified humanists.  I conclude that there is hardly anything that actually unites humanists.

At most, secular humanism seems to indicate, in the US, nonreligious views and liberal politics.  I guess that's useful, for what it is, but it doesn't get you very far.

Vagueness in humanism today

The problems with vague positivity become acute when we consider the current context of the atheist movement.  The most important dispute in our community is the feminist wars.  Surely, secular humanism should be taking a stance on that?  But in my experience, identification with secular humanism is not indicative of any particular stance on the feminist wars.  Greta Christina agreed:

Many humanist groups have a huge diversity problem. Many humanist groups are overwhelmingly made up of older, middle-class, college educated white men — and while the groups typically embrace the idea of diversity in theory, some individuals in them can be very resistant to the idea that maybe their lack of diversity is partly their responsibility, and that they should maybe consider changing the way they do things. And I can’t tell you how many humanists I’ve talked with who have been total douchebags about feminism: insisting that humanism is superior to and more important than feminism, that feminism is exclusionary and anti-male, that they “don’t see gender” and anyone who does is the real sexist, and that the best way to make sexism disappear is to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist. Humanism in theory is on board with social justice — but the practice can be very different indeed. If every atheist who’s sick of sexism and misogyny in the atheist movement picked up their stakes and moved to humanism, it wouldn’t make these problems magically disappear.

This is a monumental failure on the part of secular humanism.  Wasn't the whole point to take "positive" stances on issues that matter?  I would think this a travesty if I didn't already think that humanism was about appearance over substance

Instead we have the Council for Secular Humanism, run by CFI.  I think it's cool that CFI runs the African Americans for Humanism and Women in Secularism.  But I'm also reminded of the time that their CEO Ron Lindsay gave a tone-policing opening speech at the Women in Secularism conference, or the entire string of drama surrounding Ben Radford.

Respectability politics
 
Part of offering an "appearance of a moral vision" is maintaining appearances.  This image-consciousness echoes from the individual level to the community level.

On the individual level, "humanist" has long been used as a softer alternative to the hated word "atheist".  To be clear, I think this is a fine thing to do.  I personally would rather subvert atheist stereotypes by loudly identifying as an atheist, but this is an expression of my own privilege.  Some people might be made unsafe by an atheist label, or perhaps they don't feel comfortable with it themselves.  I would be a terrible person to take that tool away from people who need it.

But on the large scale I do not support it.  It's a bit like queer people being in the closet.  Being closeted is important for many people and it would be heartless to accuse them of being unhelpful to the cause.  But it would also be wrong to advocate more people staying in the closet.

On the community level, secular humanism has produced several notable communities like The Sunday Assembly and The Humanist Hub at Harvard.  These communities have periodic gatherings reminiscent of protestant church services.  I've been to the Sunday Assembly, and it isn't really for me, but I am still in favor of them.  It's good to have nonreligious communities that fill the social roles that churches did, because there are definitely people who want that.

On the other hand, I don't like the kind of media coverage they attract.  For example, a recent NYTimes Op Ed lauded the potential of the Sunday Assembly to fill that church-shaped hole in all our hearts, and criticized it for not doing enough to bring moral philosophy to all the heathens.  That makes me wonder, why do we expect sing-along gatherings to be the future of atheist moral thought?  Why focus on this particular atheist social trend, among all others?  I bet atheist blogs are far more effective at teaching its participants moral philosophy, but nobody ever writes op-eds about how blogs are filling church-shaped holes.

It feels like a kind of respectability politics.  Somehow, it's more appealing to the mass media to talk about the "next step" in atheism, to talk about how atheists are just now developing new moral values and building new communities.  As for me, I must be one of those angry "new atheists" with no community at all, or at least not one which will be recognized as a substitute for church.  As far as I can tell, even a lot of Christians don't care for church, and there are all those religions where weekly services aren't really a thing, but nevermind those inconvenient facts.

To be clear, I don't blame humanists themselves for the coverage they attract.  Some atheists are secular humanists who love wonder, spirituality, music, and sunday gatherings, and that's fine for them.  Some queer people are attractive young white masculine gay men in long-term monogamous relationships, yay for them.  But what about the rest of us deviants?

Summary

Secular humanism plays the role of offering positive moral vision for non-religious people.  However, it falls short of this goal, because offering a real moral vision means dropping members who would disagree with it.  Instead, secular humanism takes the path of a vague moral vision that nearly everyone would agree with.  As a result, the secular humanist community fails to take a consistent stance on feminism, despite it being one of the most important topics in the atheist community today.

Secular humanism also plays the role of being the more respectable sibling of atheism.  I don't begrudge people who are able to fit themselves into that box.  However, we should critically examine the cultural values that led humanists to be more respectable and the rest of us less respectable.

The atheist aesthetics battleground

While I'm on the topic of aesthetics, I'd like to take a moment to observe that many arguments over atheism and religion are really arguments about aesthetics.

For example:
-Why would a god make this vast universe, just so humans can occupy a tiny part of it for an insignificant moment of time?
-Why would a vast and powerful being care so much about whether people believe him that he'll only perform the subtlest of miracles and then damn you forever when you don't take notice?
-Insert joke about zombie Jesus or Catholic cannibalism.

These are all arguments that religion (Christianity in this case) simply doesn't make "sense", that it's kind of an absurd or ugly way to view the world.  No evidence or reason is really being presented, it's just intuition and aesthetics.

And this is fine, since a lot of the arguments for religion are also aesthetic arguments.  One explicit example is in The Life of Pi, which argues that life is a story and a story is better with God in it.  Or consider the many Christians who say they believe simply because it's what they feel in their heart.  Or consider the portrayal of atheism as sad or rebellious or otherwise something you wouldn't want to be afflicted with for long periods of time.

We can shoehorn these kinds of arguments into rational form, and try to think about philosophical interpretations or concrete evidence.  Indeed, even most rational arguments have some aesthetic element to them, and I don't think there's a hard distinction to draw.  But with arguments that are mostly based on aesthetics, it's easiest to make counterarguments which are also based on aesthetics.  For instance, I might observe that stories with omnipotent deities are not better, and stories with wizards are better.

Personally I don't really like aesthetic arguments over religion, at least not the transparent ones.  I recognize the value of aesthetic arguments, and do not desire for everyone to avoid them, but I would rather avoid them myself.  I just have weird feelings about aesthetics that I'm not sure I can coherently express.  It's fine when atheists argue for the ugliness or small-mindedness of the religious worldview, because I agree with that.  But whenever atheists talk about how amazing the real world is, and how awesome science is, I hate it.  I just can't stomach that level of sincere cheesiness.

Christians vs Consumerism

As a followup to my other post about consumerism and capitalism (summary: yay consumerism, ehh capitalism), I looked it up to see what other people on the internet are saying on the subject.  There seem to be a lot of conservative Christians who say the opposite of what I said: "boo consumerism, yay capitalism."

And yes, Christianity is relevant, because it seems to tie into Christian values.  For instance, take this quote:

Consumerism believes that this world is all there is. While most people would not say that they believe this, their consumeristic actions speak otherwise. This worldview believes that happiness and fulfillment are achieved with material possessions. People think, “If I could only afford that house, that phone, or that car then I would really be happy”. However, once they get that thing, they discover that it’s not nearly so fulfilling as it was advertised to be. But not to worry! There is always something better that will surely fulfill them next time.

In case you aren't sufficiently attuned to detect the Christian values oozing all over that quote, the author goes on to say that consumerism "finds its foundations in atheism."

Another post associates consumerism with "caring more about material possessions than our neighbor", gives "church shopping" as an example, and offers the 10th commandment as a solution.  Another one from a more anti-capitalist perspective, quotes the Pope as decrying "the daily vanity, the poison of emptiness that insinuates itself into our society based on profit and having (things), that deludes young people with consumerism."

I hadn't realized how Christian the trope of anti-consumerism really was.  This provides a gold mine of ideas to deconstruct:

-They believe material goods will never satisfy people, implicitly because the only way to truly be satisfied is through God.  This is the standard Christian superiority complex.  It's like if I really liked math, and concluded that math was the only way to be truly satisfied, and everyone who believes they're getting satisfaction elsewhere is deluding themselves.

-They believe advertising deludes people into thinking they'll be satisfied by material goods when they won't.  I find myself wondering if these people are just dwelling on experiences of buyer's regret.  To me, this just seems like the inherent risk of trying anything new--there are hits and there are misses.

-They believe consumption of goods means caring less for other people.  But if you give to other people, aren't you just allowing them to consume more?  The very reason that generosity is a good thing is because consumption is a good thing, and we'd like more people to be able to consume.

And, oh my, I'm not even going to touch "church shopping".

On Christian stereotypes

As we all know, atheists often get criticized and stereotyped as angry and militant.  This precipitates some fairly complex back-and-forth among atheists as to the value of anger.

Christians often get criticized and stereotyped as sex-negative.  What does that lead to?

According to Coyote,

I’ve seen a lot of Christians overemphasizing the greatness of sex as a way to distance themselves from the prudish stereotype, clearly nursing a wound without realizing how it got there.

[...]

When Christians talk about sex — not about sexual purity or sexual immorality, but about sex itself — many of them talk as if to desperately reassure themselves and everyone listening that sex is not always sinful, which usually (always) ends up with them glorifying and sanctifying it and calling it a “gift from God” [...]

This narrative was also supported by a church e-mail project, wherein Coyote e-mailed a bunch of churches to ask how they felt about asexuality, celibacy, and nonsexual marriages.

I don't know what I can say about this, since it was not my personal experience.  Though I was Catholic, I was mostly brought up with a secular sense of morality.  I was not particularly aware of sex-negative stereotypes of Catholicism.

But I think this is important, from an atheist perspective.  When we criticize religion, we hope to change society for the better.  But we don't spend much time observing how Christians really react to our criticisms.  We watch people how leave Christianity, and we listen to Christian rebuttals, but we don't pay attention to how it affects Christian cultures.

To me, it feels slightly uncomfortable to know that by criticizing Christianity, we are generating or contributing to stereotypes.  I am used to opposing stereotypes.

On the other hand, it's not as if our criticisms of Christianity are insincere or invalid.  Many varieties of Christianity have truly hurt people by making them feel ashamed of their sexual behavior.  While Coyote interacted with churches which proclaimed the glory of sex, the same churches often only approved of cisgender heterosexual vanilla marital sex.  These critiques may cause discomfort to Christians, but that is in the nature of social criticism!  It is impossible to effect social change without making some people feel uncomfortable.  It is impossible to effect social change without anger, without mockery, without disruption.

Likewise, when people criticize atheists for being too angry or arrogant, they are also being sincere.  I do not think people are wrong to criticize just because their criticisms generate atheist stereotypes.  I think people are wrong to criticize because the substance of those critiques is lacking.

Nonetheless, it would be helpful if atheist critiques were more responsive to actual Christian views on sex.

It's worth noting that "sex-positive" is sort of like "pro-life", in that there is no one who is "anti-life" and no one who is "sex-negative" (not including feminist reclamations of the term).  "Sex-negative" is a pejorative term used by sex-positive people for positions they disagree with.  People who we call sex-negative do not actually think sex is negative.

One possible view is that Christians think sex is too special.  Having sex with just anyone subtracts from its specialness.  It's so special, it must be a gift from God.  And since it's a gift from God, that implies that it must be exercised in ways that are to God's liking.  And any sexual diversity must be an aberration, because why would God give different gifts to different people, or in some cases give no gifts at all? 

Merging discourses on sexual repression

Content warning: this post deals with some uncomfortable issues regarding people who are or think they are sexually repressed.

In a recent post on The Asexual Agenda, I discussed how it is okay to identify as asexual even if you feel your asexuality was caused by some identifiable reason.  Among the reasons that people commonly identify is sexual repression, particularly from a religious upbringing.

There is a similar common narrative among atheists.  For example, Libby Anne said that she used to be "sexually suppressed and extinguished" by religious purity culture, and that she was "essentially asexual".  For thousands more examples, there was an informal study conducted by Darrel Ray (see Greta for a summary), which concluded that leaving religion improves people's sex lives.

These two discourses are in conflict about their valuation of sexual repression.

Asexual discourse is essentially reacting to the accusation that asexuals are sexually repressed.  Some have reacted by asserting that asexuals aren't sexually repressed.  Some have probed the meaning of sexual repression, and questioned whether it exists at all.  Some have questioned whether sexual repression is necessarily a bad thing, even if we acknowledge that its source, religious purity culture, is bad.

Atheist discourse is primarily geared towards criticizing problems with religion and recovering from religion.  Sexual repression caused by religion is a problem to be overcome.  There is no reason to look for any positive or neutral aspects in repression, or to probe its meaning.  For example, Darrel Ray's Sex and Secularism report claims that sexual repression is ineffective at actually reducing sexual activity (although it tends to slightly delay it), and that the primary effect is that people feel guiltier about their sexual behavior. This is pretty damning, because even if you believe that it's good to reduce sexual behavior, repression seems ineffective in achieving that.

I would like for atheists and asexuals to listen to each other more.  However, on reflection I think asexuals are already listening to atheists.  After all, most people in the asexual community are non-religious themselves, and I found Libby Anne's article (as well as others) through ace community discussions.  So really I should say, I would like atheists to listen to asexuals more.

There are many questions which get asked by aces, which are never addressed by atheists. Questions with no straightforward answers.

What does it really mean to be sexually repressed?  In some cases, it appears to mean only that a person has sexual desires, but feels too guilty to act upon them.  In other cases, like Libby Anne's, it appears to mean lacking sexual desires.  If one has no sexual fantasies or desires, how does one know that one's "true" self is the counterfactual self, the one with fantasies and desires?

How do we know that repression is bad?  Though religion may be bad, there is no reason to think that all of its consequences are uniformly bad.  I accept that guilt is bad, especially when it has no positive effect on one's behavior.  Lack of sexual desire or attraction, though, is more subjective.  It may cause relationship problems, and it may cause personal distress.  There are some people who overcome sexual repression and subjectively feel that it is an improvement in their lives.  But are these problems inherent to ourselves, or inherent to the way society is structured (or both)?

How do we know it can be changed?  Yes, we've heard stories of people who have successfully overcome sexual repression.  But I've heard plenty of stories of people who tried and failed. It often constitutes a form of self-harm, as people try to have sex in hopes of "fixing" themselves.  And since sexuality is a spectrum, there are people who try and end up landing in the middle.

How do we distinguish between attempts that will fail, and attempts that will succeed?  This is an empirical question.

If you are recovering from religion, and its effects on your sexuality, your experience is valid.  You only need to come to terms with your own experience, and you don't need to answer to anyone else's experiences.  You don't need to have answers to the questions I've posed.  Nonetheless, I think these are questions that the atheist community should think seriously about.

(Aside: If you looked at Darrel Ray's study, I have an important comment to make.  Darrel Ray hypothesizes that people who grow up religious and then become non-religious still have residual guilt.  This hypothesis is of great interest to asexuals who think they may have been affected by religious upbringing.  Darrel Ray claims to disprove the hypothesis.  However, the associated survey question was, "How much anger do you experience towards religion because of how it affected your sexuality?" which simply appears not to address the hypothesis.  Therefore, I am skeptical of his conclusion, and have ignored it.)

Atheists react to queer religious people

I was happy to see that Alex Gabriel talking about how queer activists give way too much credit to Christianity, and how this excludes queer atheists.  I was even happier to see this picked up by other atheist blogs, including Heina Dadabhoy and PZ Myers.  (And once Myers picks it up, it's likely to get more reactions from there.)

I feel this topic is under-discussed, and thus when people finally talk about it, so many different feelings and issues get swirled together.  I myself have a lot of mixed feelings which are difficult to disentangle.  It helps to contrast the perspectives of Dadabhoy and Myers.  Dadabhoy brings up her many negative experiences in queer activism:

When I volunteered for the No on Prop 8 campaign, the local dispatch center was a church. At on-campus LGBT events, many of the speakers were religious and talked about their god as if everyone believed in that sort of deity.

The worst experience I had was at a local conference about mental health and LGBT issues. Fully half of the panels were about religion, and every panel had a representative of what was euphemistically referred to as “the faith community.”

PZ Myers, being straight, doesn't have the ground-level experience with LGBT activism, and instead talks about the way religion is used to justify everything:

The problem is that Jesus and Mohammed and Moses are completely malleable imaginary authority figures who can be invoked to justify anything — Jesus simultaneously blesses the peacemakers and comes with a sword in that muddled book of myths, the Bible, so pacifists and warmongers are both happy to adopt his ‘philosophy’.

These are two distinct issues.  There's the practical issue, that LGBT activists are very religion-friendly, and not very atheist-friendly.  And there's the theoretical issue, which is that the pro-LGBT arguments within Christianity and Islam just aren't very good.  It's important to distinguish these issues because there are contexts where only the practical issue is present, or only the theoretical issue is present.

There are some religious traditions which are much more plausibly LGBT-friendly, from a theoretical standpoint.  In particular, I point to Unitarian-Universalism, and Shin Buddhism.  I also point out that most religious traditions are much more ambiguous about other queer groups, such as asexuals and genderqueer people.  And yet LGBT conferences can still be dominated by religious perspectives in a way that is exclusive of ace and genderqueer atheists.

There are other cases where the theoretical issue is present, but the practical issue is not.  Many people, myself included, have complained about the dominance of religion at the big NGLTF conference, Creating Change.  And yet, Zack Ford, a major critic, says it has not always been this way:

I’ve had numerous conversations with folks in the movement about the phenomenon, and the consensus has been that this embrace of religion is new, and a swinging of the pendulum away from what used to be a very toxic environment for any discussion of religion to an environment eager to reconcile with religion.

In the past, LGBT groups frequently excluded religious queers, which is not a situation I endorse.

It's also important to remember that the "LGBT community" is far from a united community.  There are LGBT activist organizations, but nearly every non-activist group subdivides by individual letters.  Furthermore, most of these groups are local, and don't really interact with each other.  Without an activist agenda, why would they?  What I'm trying to say is that while LGBT activist groups may be dominated by religion, in my experience this is not consistent among all queer communities.  Some may even have the pendulum swinging the other way.

Having seen a lot of the practical issues associated with queer atheists, I find myself a little uncomfortable with atheists who focus exclusively on the theoretical issue of reconciling queerness and religion.  The pendulum can swing both ways.  We're not talking about the general US population, which is 73% Christian.  We're talking about LGBT people, who, in the US, are 47% non-religious.  My own community, the ace community, is 59% non-religious.  We absolutely need to continue discussing the theoretical issue of reconciling queerness with religion, but we need to be careful about the practical issue of how that feeds back into queer communities--all queer communities.

I have the sense that many atheists, when they see Christians arguing that the Bible is actually LGBT-friendly, really don't like this.  It seems so hypocritical, and utterly inconsistent.  In fact, it subjectively feels even more inconsistent than the belief that Jesus is God.  I think we should examine why we feel this way.

On some level, believing that Jesus was a queer ally is more sensible than believing Jesus was God.  We at least know that allies exist.  The Bible doesn't say Jesus is an ally.  It doesn't say Jesus is God either.  Besides, it's a work of fiction.  I think the fact of the matter is we're simply more used to Christians believing Jesus is God, and so even as we reject that belief, we take it more for granted.  When Christians believe Jesus loves gay people, that seems more unusual, and thus somehow worse.

I do not see queer Christians as any worse than other Christians.  On the contrary, I like queer Christians better, because they're probably not homophobic.  Straight atheists can complain all they want about bad epistemology and the irrational justifications used within religion.  However, I can only be so principled before I care about the results of beliefs, irrational or not.

Queer religious people should be treated the same way as other religious people.  They absolutely deserve some space to talk about their particular issues and beliefs amongst each other.  But they cannot demand freedom from criticism, and cannot pressure critics into silence.  General queer spaces, just like general society, should be kept secular.  Currently, LGBT activist groups are not very inclusive of atheists.  They can't brush us under a rug just because they're afraid of what it will do to their image.

Five awful things about "God's not Dead"

I saw God's Not Dead, a Christian film that appears to be based on that absurd chain e-mail about the brave Christian student who faces down an atheist professor.  This movie got a 16/100 on metacritic, but still ended up a big box office success.  If you want to know what happens in it without watching it, I recommend this synopsis.

In the world of God's Not Dead, atheists are horrible people who mock their girlfriends in public, abandon people close to them when they're dying, and secretly hate god.  The movie joyously depicts atheists dying by cancer or car accidents, and gloats over their last minute conversions.  Also, all atheist arguments are arguments from authority or assertion (oddly, so are the Christian arguments).

But a lot of that has already been said.  So here I present five things that were awful or bizarre about God's Not Dead that had nothing to do with atheism.

1. The girlfriend from middle school

The main character, Josh Wheaton, mentions that it's his sixth anniversary with his girlfriend.  He's a college freshman.  ...  I suspect the writers didn't think the math through, and just wanted it to seem like they had a long-time commitment.

The six-year commitment makes it all the more devastating when they break up!  Josh's girlfriend demands that he stop trying to challenge his professor, because they need to get good grades so they can go to law school together, like God wants.  Josh stands his ground, so she threatens to break up with him, and then she does.  Wow, how did they stay happy together so long in such an obviously abusive relationship?  Josh, naturally, has no emotional reaction to the breakup whatsoever.

2. A distillation of Muslim stereotypes

Another character, who is utterly unrelated in any way to the protagonist, is Ayisha.  In the presence of her "traditional" Muslim father, she wears what I think is supposed to be a niqab, although it's not remotely accurate.

Her whole plot arc seems to be based on the view that Muslim women wear covers because of direct coercion by male figures in their life, such as their husbands or fathers.  This is pretty much explicit when a student goes up to her and says, "I wish you didn't have to wear that".  Later, when Ayisha converts to Jesus, her father, who loves her very much, beats her and kicks her out.  Gee, I knew these were Muslim stereotypes, but I've never seen them represented so succinctly.

3. The car that won't start

Two Christian pastors are trying to drive... somewhere.  It was explained at some earlier point in the movie, while it was still throwing random characters at us, and I didn't know there was anything worth paying attention to.  But they can't get there because their car won't start.  And then a car rental guy drives a car over to them, and that car won't start either!  And then the scene with the car rental guy is repeated again, for good measure.

Get this: the car rental guy is going to audition for a role in Death of a Salesman.  Why is that relevant?  Who the hell knows?  I don't even understand how he gets to his audition without any transportation.

This whole time I'm thinking, obviously their car doesn't start because God doesn't want them to get on a train that God plans on crashing.  Turns out it's actually because God wants them to convert an atheist and then dance over his grave.  Props to the movie for being unpredictable.

4. That Chinese kid

There's one Chinese student on campus, and he is a visiting student from China.  His entire story arc is that he converts to Christianity, which his family finds inconvenient because maybe the Chinese government won't let his brother visit the US anymore (??).

I am Chinese American, and this is one of the most blatant examples of tokenism I've ever seen.  Couldn't they imagine that some Chinese people actually aren't from China?  It's also suffering from White savior syndrome, wherein a white American male hero rescues a foreigner from his ignorant foreign culture.  I'm pretty sure the Chinese Christian communities are much more effective at converting Chinese people, thanks.

5. The Duck Dynasty cameo

Early in the movie, a character has an interview with the guy from Duck Dynasty.  This served no purpose whatsoever, except to allow some celebrity to spout stuff about Jesus and ducks.  Later I found out from the synopsis that the interview was supposed to be hostile, because the character is an angry blogger.  I totally missed that because the rest of the blogger's story arc is about how she's dying all alone from cancer.

In case you didn't get enough of Duck Dynasty, he makes a second cameo.  For no apparent reason, he shows up at a music concert and encourages everyone to participate in a viral texting campaign (send "God's not dead" to all of your contacts!).  This is, of course, a very good idea, and is well-received by all.

Against defining religion

What is a religion?  How do we decide whether something is or is not a religion?

One standard definition is that a religion is a community with ritualistic practices and an overarching supernatural belief system.  But it depends on who you ask.

There are at least a few good things that come out of philosophy.  The philosophical analysis of concepts and categories is one of those good things.  One important lesson is that concepts and categories don't necessarily have definitions.

It's worth learning about the prototype theory of concepts vs the classical theory of concepts.  (I will only introduce these theories, and if you'd like to read more in depth, there are better resources for that.)

The classical theory of concepts says that every concept has a definition.  A bachelor is an unmarried man.  A triangle is a polygon with three sides.  A chair is a piece of furniture intended for one person to sit on.  However, this cannot explain why many concepts have a strong association with particular items.  For example, why, when we think of a bird, are we quicker to think of a robin than an ostrich?  Why, when we think of a fruit, are we quicker to think of an apple than a plum?

The idea behind prototype theory is that most concepts have one or more prototypical examples which serve as focal points.  Other objects are judged by their proximity to the prototypical examples.  Prototype theory comes from psychological research in the 1970s (although it has some roots in Wittgenstein's philosophy in the 1950s).  Note that prototype theory is not necessarily a completely correct description of how we think of concepts, but it is a decent approximation, and a step forward from the classical theory.

When people attempt to explain what religion really is by coming up with a definition, they've gotten it wrong from the beginning.  On a fundamental level, religion does not have a definition, because that's not how we think of most words.  In the US, we tend to think of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  And then maybe Buddhism and Hinduism.  These different examples provide prototypes for what "religion" is. Any other objects are judged by their proximity to the prototypes.

Definitions of religion are essentially attempts to interpolate the prototypes, to identify common features so that we can more easily decide whether other things are religions or not.  In some sense, we know that Hinduism is a religion before we reflect on the definition of religion, before we even learn any details about Hinduism.  If your definition does not include Hinduism, then something is wrong with that definition.

But sometimes I see people using more nonstandard definitions of religion.  For example, religion as "any all-encompassing belief system".  This definition clearly is not an attempt to interpolate prototypes (or it's a very inept one), nor is it an attempt to describe how we actually think of the concept of religion.  I am forced to consider that these overly broad definitions are prescriptive rather than descriptive.

It's not that prototypes are above criticism.  For example, we here in the US have a bias towards certain religions.  To us, the prototypical religion has a god or gods, an eschatalogy, a sacred text, and it perpetuates itself through evangelism and inheritance.  But not all these properties apply to Eastern religions.  Maybe there are some good reasons to have such a biased prototype, but in this case we don't have good reasons.  It just comes down to ignorance and unfamiliarity with religions outside our immediate surroundings.  It comes down to western colonialism, because if eastern civilizations had more cultural power, they'd be the ones controlling the concept of religion.  Perhaps a prescriptive definition may help to remedy our cultural bias.

But for most prescriptive definitions of religion, I have to ask why.  Why is it good to consider, say, Marxism or Capitalism a religion?  We cannot draw any novel conclusions from a novel definition.  Although sometimes certain conclusions are made more cognitively accessible.  So what does this definition help us understand?  That's what I want to hear when people propose definitions of religion.

Western atheist Buddhism

Buddhists don't believe in gods, so they're technically atheists.  Even Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, which as I read earlier, calls upon the Amida Buddha for help reaching the Pure Land, does not believe the Amida Buddha is a deity.  He is just someone who attained enlightenment.  On the other hand, I suspect this religious tradition will not appeal to typical atheists in the US, because of the clear presence of supernatural beliefs.

But still there are plenty of anti-supernaturalist atheists around who consider themselves Buddhist.  Perhaps they are working within a different tradition of Buddhism where supernatural beliefs are absent or deemphasized.  Or perhaps they're picking and choosing from Buddhist traditions, taking only the parts they like.

There are some Buddhist traditions that I like too.  I like the idea of emptiness, and the idea that there is no constant self.  I think this is true to reality, or about as true to reality as an ancient belief can be.  I am not the same person I was or will be, I merely share some attributes.  Most (or all) things are not really things at all, but patterns.  There is nothing underneath.

But I'm pretty sure there's more to the Buddhist idea of emptiness than that.  And there are plenty of other non-supernatural Buddhist traditions that I just don't care for.  Like meditation.  Or the Middle Way.  Or framing the world in terms of suffering and enlightenment.  None of that stuff's wrong per se, but it just doesn't appeal to me as a way of seeing the world.

The choice for me is easy: I will not identify as Buddhist.  But if you're into all those Buddhist beliefs and practices, minus the supernatural parts, you might be justified in identifying as Buddhist.

Here are a few things people said on Friendly Atheist about being both Buddhist and atheist:

Yes many people who are Buddhist today believe in supernatural things. However at the base of Buddhism, it is just philosophy of how to live your life.

I really don't view Buddhism as a religion. Instead, I understand it to be more of a lifestyle or philosophy; one that can be easily adapted into any belief system or lack there of.

The early Buddhist texts, particularly the Pali Canon, are free from all the woo that seems to have come later.

There is a sutra in the Pali Canon where the Buddha basically states that it does not matter whether rebirth is real or not.

I respect people's decisions to identify as Buddhist, but I disagree with some of these specific comments.  If we see Buddhism as a philosophy, to be judged on its merits rather than on its authority, I don't understand why people feel the need to defend "original" Buddhism.  Gautama's Buddhism is no more authoritative than later developments.  For example, the concept of "emptiness" that I like so much actually appeared some six centuries after the origin of Buddhism.

I think people refer to the supposed naturalism of "original" Buddhism because they are trying to establish that Buddhism is at heart a secular philosophy rather than a religion.  But I disagree with this view, because I think Buddhism, like all other things, has nothing at its heart.  It is empty, without any central essence to represent the "real" Buddhism.  In other words, atheists can be Buddhists, but they are no more legitimately Buddhist than the ones with supernatural beliefs.

Buzzfeed once did a video "If Asians said the stuff White people say", which I think is relevant to the topic.

At 0:50, a guy says, "I'm really into western religions lately.  I love how they're so angry and uptight, you know?  I decorated my whole house in crosses!"

I wouldn't say that it's appropriation, exactly, to take ideas from Buddhism that you like.  It wasn't "appropriation" when Filipinos adopted Catholicism, it was just conversion (and colonialism).  Buddhism is an idea that wants to spread, so there's nothing wrong with having it spread and transform across cultures.

However, I suspect that if there were more Buddhists in our culture, atheists in the US wouldn't be so quick to say that the kind of Buddhism they practice is the real Buddhism.

Where does Burwell vs Hobby Lobby go wrong?

As I may or may not have mentioned before, my boyfriend has a law degree.  So I get to hear a lot of lawyerly opinions on the recent Burwell vs Hobby Lobby decision, both from him and his friends.  And they seem to contrast with the opinions I get from atheist blogs, where there's lots of panicking about the consequences, but very little explanation of the mechanical details of the decision.

The Hobby Lobby decision was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a federal law from the 90s.  The RFRA says,

Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.

Laws specifically targeted against religions are already unconstitutional, but the RFRA adds religious protection from neutral laws.  For example, if a company bans hats among employees, that is a neutral rule that disproportionately affects certain minority religions which mandate wearing hats.

It's intended to protect religious minorities, because while the legislature is always conscious of the impact on the religious majority, they may ignore the impact on religious minorities.  For example, during prohibition, there was an exception for sacramental wine.  But in the 90s, some Native American employees were fired for using peyote, which is the case that motivated the passing of the RFRA.

Of course, you can imagine neutral laws which really should apply to everyone even if they burden some religions.  Non-discrimination (with ministerial exceptions) seems like an obvious one.  Therefore, RFRA does not completely rule out laws which burden exercise of religions.  Rather, it requires that those laws undergo "strict scrutiny".  That means they must be:

• Justified by a compelling government interest
• Narrowly tailored to achieve that interest
• Be the least restrictive means to achieve that interest

Hold on, isn't women's health a compelling government interest?  Did the Supreme Court decide that it is not compelling enough?

In fact, the Supreme Court did not opine on whether it was compelling.  Instead, they ruled that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was not the least restrictive means to achieve that interest.  And here's why.  The ACA already exempts nonprofit religious organizations from paying for contraception.  The legislators wrote that in.  So if they made exceptions for nonprofits, why not for-profits too?  How can we argue that the ACA is the least restrictive law when applied to for-profits, when it is already less restrictive on nonprofits?

This is not so much bad because of the direct consequences.  Hobby Lobby employees will still get contraception covered by their health insurance, because the health insurance is required to pay for it when Hobby Lobby doesn't.  Presumably, the insurance providers will just raise non-contraceptive premiums to balance it, and Hobby Lobby can pretend they're not paying for it when they sort of are, really.  But it's bad because it sets bad precedent.

This should provide a road map to the various things that could have been wrong with the Hobby Lobby decision.  Should the RFRA be changed, or removed altogether?  Is the problem (as many argue) that RFRA should apply only to individuals and not corporations?  Is the problem with the legislature, who already made a huge exception for nonprofits?  Or is there something wrong with the slippery slope argument between nonprofits and for-profits?  What do you think?

In which I research Buddhism

One of the characters in my novel is potentially a Buddhist, probably Jodo Shinshu Buddhist (aka just Shin Buddhism), which is one of the most common forms among Japanese immigrants.  Part of the reason I made this decision is because it's something I'd like to learn more about.  So that's what I did.

This is stuff you could learn by browsing Wikipedia (as I did), but I'm just picking out my favorite facts:

• While Hindus believe in reincarnation, Buddhists believe in rebirth.  Reincarnation involves the transmigration of a soul, but Buddhists don't believe in an unchanging soul.  Rebirth is instead the continuation of the pattern of self.  Rebirth sounded like an ancient response to reincarnation, but instead it appears that reincarnation only came to dominate Hinduism after Buddhism began.
• Tendai Buddhism is a kind of Buddhism based on the Lotus Sutra.  The Lotus Sutra claims to have been written during the time of Siddartha Gautama (the founder of Buddhism), but it was stored in the realm of the snake gods for five hundred years.  This seems to me about ten times more outlandish than the Christian belief that the gospels are accurate accounts despite being written down 50-100 years after Jesus.
• There's actually a Christian saint based on the story of Gautama.  In the Christian version, Josaphat is a prince in India, whom astrologers predicted would become a Christian.  So his father tries to isolate Josaphat, but he sneaks out, becomes a Christian, and then soon converts his father, who abdicates the throne and becomes a hermit.  Medieval Christianity sure produced some bad fiction.
• Buddhism claims to be compatible with science (but that's what they all say), but some Buddhists claim that Buddhism *is* a science (which says to me that their particular form is not compatible with science).
• There's a Pure Land Buddhist tradition of Sariras, pearl-like relics found among the ashes of cremated remains.  They are taken to be evidence of enlightenment.

And specific to Shin Buddhism:

• Shin Buddhism is a kind of Pure Land Buddhism started in Japan around the 12th century.  They believe that achieving enlightenment is impossible for most people without assistance, so they call on the Amida Buddha in his boundless compassion.  It's called Pure Land Buddhism, because enlightenment is equated with going to a Pure Land, a sort of paradise realm.
• The idea of calling upon a religious figure for help getting into the right afterlife is superficially similar to Christianity (early Christian missionaries thought so too), but it's actually an independent tradition.
• Shin Buddhists contradict many stereotypes of Buddhism in the US.  They do not meditate, and do not have monks.  It was sort of founded as a rejection of these practices.
• Possibly one of the most famous Shin Buddhists in the US is George Takei.
• Shin Buddhism in the US is one of the most LGBT-inclusive traditions around.  They've been performing same-sex marriage ceremonies for over forty years.  But this is not so true of other Buddhisms, or even of Shin Buddhism in Japan.

Review: Jesus Christ Superstar

The other night I saw Jesus Christ Superstar again, the newer version from 2000. I've probably seen the musical four or five times by now--I am a fan. But there are also aspects of it I don't care for, which I will get to below.

The really outstanding thing about Jesus Christ Superstar is, of course, the score composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Weber manages to incorporate plenty of musically interesting ideas, and make them easily accessible, and catchy, even. One of my favorite parts is the introduction of the high priests, which uses polytonality to great effect. The high priests sing in a minor key ("He is dangerous!"), while the crowds praise Jesus in a major key ("Jesus Christ, Superstar!"). Polytonality is an idea that is very hard to "get", but in context it makes complete sense. This kind of thing is only possible in incidental music!

And that's not the only song which plays with tone. There are a few examples where the same theme is repeated with different tones (such as when Judas and Jesus argue while Mary tries to calm Jesus down). And there are examples where the musical tone is bright, but the meaning is soured with irony (such as when the zealots ask Jesus to lead them in battle, and when King Herod asks Jesus to perform a miracle).

My least favorite songs are the ones expressing straightforward devotion to Jesus. I prefer music with more anger, bitterness, or tension.

The many devotional songs, especially concentrated near the end, I think speak to the definitively Christian perspective of the musical. But one of the great things about the musical is that it lends itself easily to alternate interpretations. King Herod has a classic scene where he asks Jesus to perform a miracle to prove that he isn't a fraud--Jesus has no response to this. Judas has a relatively sympathetic portrayal, and says lots of sensible things ("You've begun to matter more than the things that you say").

Judas is a jerk, mind you, but then again, so is Jesus. Jesus Christ is like a D&D adventurer who rolled high charisma, but whose player doesn't actually know how to role-play charisma. Everyone is falling over themselves to please Jesus, from Judas to Mary to Pontius Pilate. But never does Jesus do anything to justify this treatment. Instead he spends most of his time throwing tantrums, telling people that they don't love him enough, and offering maddening hints that he intends to die. And then, when he dies, he has the gall to forgive people for carrying out his intentions.

This is part of a larger problem with the musical, which is that it relies too much on the audience knowing and accepting the source material. The audience already likes Jesus, so the musical doesn't spend any time demonstrating Jesus' charisma. On the other hand, the musical still felt the need to hit all the common Bible stories from the New Testament, even when they didn't really fit in with the rest of the narrative. As a result, my boyfriend, a first-time watcher, complained that the plot was very thin, and that it seemed more like a series of unrelated vignettes.

My own complaint is that the ending is just way too slow. Spoiler alert: Jesus dies and everyone is sad. They are so sad that the music loses all its anger and becomes boring. Oh, if only Jesus were still around, he'd make the music more interesting by yelling at people for no apparent reason. Yeah, I'm harsh.

"Deeper" causes for bad religion

Most liberals think that religion is never the true source of a person’s bad behavior. Even when jihadists explicitly state their religious motivations—they believe that they have an obligation to kill apostates and blasphemers, and they want to get into Paradise—liberal academics, journalists, and politicians insist on looking for deeper reasons for their actions. However, when people give economic, political, or psychological reasons for doing whatever it is they do, everyone accepts those reasons at face value.

This is a quote by Sam Harris in his interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  I think I have only ever talked about Sam Harris on this blog in the context of criticizing him, but I give him credit here for offering an interesting idea.

The idea is that we can offer plenty of reasons for bad behavior.  But if you ever suggest that religion as a reason, liberals won't settle for that.  There's got to be some deeper reason.  This is especially easy to say about the Middle East, where there are lots of political and economic pressures that I don't understand that must go into the equation.  But why are political and economic reasons "deep" while religious reasons are not?

It's very hard for me to say anything about the Middle East, since I know so little about it.  So let's try asking the same question about the US.  Why are Creationism, climate change denial, and anti-science in general are so common, and well-organized?

You could probably come up with lots of economic and political reasons--Corporations stand to gain a lot from preventing environmental regulation, so in a democracy they have to sow doubt about climate science and science in general to get votes to go the right way.  And you could come up with religious reasons.  Evangelical Christianity is a fairly obvious explanation.  Belief that the endtimes are imminent may play into climate change denial.  Are the political and economic causes "deeper" than the religious ones?

To a limited extent, religious reasons may actually explain more than the polical/economic reasons.  The things that need explaining are: who is doing the most active denial?  What particular things do they deny?

But even if religion is a "shallow" reason, why does that mean it's not worth talking about?  Dismantling religion may not dismantle the "root" causes of anti-science, but it may deprive anti-science of one of its tools.  If we only attempt to attack the "deeper" issues, well, those issues may be so deep that we won't make much headway.

And while my standards prevent me from saying much about the Middle East, I should point out some relevant biases we have with respect to foreign nations.  First, we see foreign nations as monolithic.  So if there are terrorists in some foreign country, we blame it on the conditions of the country rather than blaming it on the qualities of that particular group (such as their religion).  Second, we see foreign nations in simplistic terms, wanting to reduce all trends to just a few factors.  Of course the Middle East is affected by the particulars of its religions, and of course it is affected by many social/economic/political factors.  Why can't all of these things be causes simultaneously?

Christian doubt

When I grew up in Catholicism, I was never taught to think that doubt was a bad thing.  In fact, doubt was a good thing, ennobling even.  Doubts were something that everyone experiences.  Why then, is it said that Christianity is all about faith, dogma, and purging all doubt?  Where does this image come from?

Let me tell you what happened next.  I started doubting Catholicism.  And even though I was never taught that doubting was bad, I knew that the particular way I was doing it was bad.

What I was doing was reading on some arguments against Catholic beliefs, comparing them to the arguments for it.  I knew that changing my mind on so many things all at once was impossible, so I considered each issue independently, one at a time.  I worried about the consequences of deciding one way or the other, but I tried not to let that affect my judgment.  Finally, I collected my many thoughts and tried to draw some overall conclusions on Catholicism and God.

In my mind, this is more or less the proper way to deal with doubt, so why did I know in my gut I was running afoul of some rule of my religious upbringing?  The truth is that doubt was accepted in the Catholicism I grew up in, but only if the doubt fit into a specific narrative.  Doubt was not an epistemological tool, but a personal struggle to be overcome.  This is a fundamentally negative depiction of doubt.

Even the supposedly positive narratives about doubt are fundamentally negative.  When doubt is seen as ennobling, it's the same sense in which a chronic illness is seen as ennobling.*  It's not the doubt which is good, it's that we respect someone who maintained (or even strengthened) their faith despite their painful struggle with doubt.**  When everyone is said to have doubts, this is not a way of saying that doubts are good.  It's a way of saying that Christians are not Mary Sues.  Christians are imperfect (being afflicted with doubt and sin), and thus relatable.

*Even when someone literally has a chronic illness, I do not think we should see it as ennobling.
**This is largely how Catholics saw Mother Teresa's "Dark Letters", in which she expressed her struggle with doubt.

This isn't just my personal experience growing up, it's a pervasive narrative about doubt within Christianity.  To show this, I will pull out quotes from the top three page hits for "Christian doubt" (bold emphasis all mine).

1. A letter to William Lane Craig:

Natalie: When my best friend told me she was struggling, I figured it was just a phase and started thinking about what books to recommend to her. But then something hit me that had never really been an option before—what if Christianity really isn’t true?

My intuition is still that it is, but I am in dire need of your help—someone whom I know has a strong faith as well as a strong philosophical background. What advice could you offer me, my best friend, and the non-believers we know to elucidate Christianity and rekindle our faith?

Craig: I find that when folks are struggling with doubt, the doubts can balloon all out of proportion, so that their belief system comes to look rather like those maps of the world which show a country’s size according to its economic wealth rather than geographical area.

 2. Dealing with Doubt in our Christian Faith:

So what can we do if we find ourselves struggling with doubts about the truth of Christianity? Why do such doubts arise? And how can we rid ourselves of these taunting Goliaths?

First, we must always remember that sooner or later we'll probably all have to wrestle with doubts about our faith.

I know of a young man who had converted to Christianity, but who's now raising various objections to it. But when one looks beneath the surface, one sees that he's currently involved in an immoral lifestyle.

3. An interview with Greg Boyd, author of Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty:

Many today assume that doubt is the enemy of faith–as though a person’s strength is as strong as they are free of doubt. I argue that this common model of faith today is neither biblical nor healthy.

When we embrace a biblical model of faith, we no longer need to squelch doubt. To the contrary, we will find that doubt can sometimes prove beneficial in helping us grow spiritually and in keeping us honest in our relationship with God and others.

Sadly, many today think that people are “saved” simply because they espouse certain beliefs, apart from any consideration of how they live.  This is why research demonstrates that the vast majority of Americans admit to believing in Jesus (and a host of other Christian things) while also demonstrating that this belief has very little impact on how they actually live.

The reason I choose the top three hits on Google is to avoid cherry-picking on my part.  Note that #3 does not espouse the negative views on doubt that I grew up with, and in fact #3 rebels against such views.  Also note that #2 states that doubters are really trying to justify an immoral lifestyle, and this is not something I believed as a kid.  I conclude that some Christians have more positive attitudes towards doubt, and some have more negative attitudes.

I understand why Christians see doubt as a struggle.  I've seen similar patterns among questioning queer people.  But even if, in one situation, doubt is causing you distress, I think it is best to see doubt as a tool--neither good nor bad, only useful.  Doubt is a tool used to better align our beliefs with reality.  "Giving in" to doubts is bad if and only if the thing being doubted is justified and true.  Thus, the only way to know whether doubting is good or bad is to not have doubts!

(This topic was inspired by Greta Christina, but my perspective is entirely independent from hers.)

How religious people *should* relate to science

Some years ago, I attempted to illustrate the different views on the relationship between science and religion.  For each view, I drew two diagrams: one showing how science and religion relate, and another showing how they should relate.  This is the all-important is/ought distinction.  In fact, most people talking about the relationship between science and religion don't explicitly make an is/ought distinction, but I infer an is/ought distinction because frankly nothing makes sense otherwise.

But perhaps I've been too charitable to people who argue that there is no conflict between science and religion.  Recently Friendly Atheist hosted an essay by Sean McDowell which argues that there is no conflict.  The argument is primarily based on citing various religious scientists.  You can tell that they are not making an is/ought distinction, not even implicitly, because their argument is incoherent any way you slice it.

Interpreted one way, they are arguing that science and religion ought not to conflict.  If so, then why do they make historical arguments?  Why do they merely refer to religious scientists without making any attempt to justify the views of those scientists?

Interpreted the other way, they are arguing that science and religion do not conflict.  If so, it makes sense to refer to religious scientists, but it does not make sense to ignore the fact that they are in the minority.  Nor does it make sense to ignore the millions of religiously motivated creationists in the US.  It does not make sense to say,

The idea that science and religion are at odds is a popular myth in our culture, perpetuated by news headlines like “God vs. Science” in Time magazine.

since descriptively, it is entirely true that there is conflict between science and religion.

The arguments religious people make in favor of the compatibility of science/religion are nonsense.  Here are the arguments they should be making:*

1. Religion has conflicted with science in both the past and present.
2. If possible, it would be better if science and religion did not conflict.
3. It is reasonably possible for religion not to conflict with science.
4. Religious scientists are presented as models for this possibility.

*Whenever an opponent offers advice on how you should make your argument, it should be considered suspect at best and disingenuous at worst.  My advice is no exception.

Note how this argument is different from Sean McDowell's argument, in that it does not deny the conflict between science and religion.  In fact, it's important to recognize that conflict, because that's the first step in resolving a conflict.  It's important to study why religious people oppose evolution.  It's important to think hard about why religious scientists are the exception rather than the rule.

It's important to confront the ways in which religious scientists fail as models.  For example, Francis Collins is a great ally against Intelligent Design, but has argued that evolution cannot account for altruism, implicitly rejecting the entire field of evolutionary altruism.  Another scientist mentioned was Owen Gingerich, and I am appalled to find that he thinks some beneficial mutations must be "inspired".  (I looked into the third example named, Paul Davies, and he seems more acceptable.)

Collins and Gingerich have only minor problems, but why is it that even when people think their religion does not conflict with science, the conflict often remains?  Why is it that religious people who consciously reject the "god of the gaps" simultaneously accept the "god of the gaps" under a different name?  People who advocate the compatibility of science and religion should be thinking hard about this problem so they can solve it.  When people deny the conflicts between science and religion, they become examples of the conflict.

Christian sorority kicks out couple

A bit of local news, for me: Two members of the Christian sorority ADX at UC Berkeley were kicked out for forming a relationship with each other.  Despite the support of their local chapter, the national board of ADX decided it was against the charter.  The couple now protests ADX.  Good for them.

On Friendly Atheist, most people felt the same way. But a couple commenters argued that ADX was within their rights:

And the fact is that sororities and other groups have a right to hold to a certain ideology and expect their members to hold to it as well. Nobody is being treated like a second class citizen. Nobody's rights are being taken away.

They didn't need to join such an organization, unless of course their goal is to change it from within. If the organization has no goals, no guidelines, and no consistency, it would not be a "Christian" sorority.

Let's take these arguments seriously for a moment.  It's true that organizations have a right to enforce certain rules on their members, and exclude people who disobey.  It's not just that they have the right, sometimes it is just and good.  For instance, I've heard that many queer sororities and fraternities have a rule against members dating each other.  This is a just and good rule because breakups can ruin communities.

But some rules, even legal ones, are injust and bad.  To sort out the good from the bad, the rules should be subject to public criticism and social pressure.

ADX disallowing same-gender relationships is not a good and just rule.  Kicking out loyal members from a group is never good in itself, and needs some other good to justify it.  Christianity is not sufficient justification because Christianity is not justified.

Of course, that argument is not very satisfactory because obviously the members of ADX are Christian, and we're not going to agree on Christianity any time soon.  Indeed, the protesting couple is Christian as well, so they have to resort to different arguments:

ADX is supposed to be interdenominational, Foo argued. What about Christians who support same-sex relationships?

There are valid arguments to be made on Christian terms.  As in the quote above, ADX's policy goes against their goal of being interdenominational.  You could also criticize ADX for not being upfront about excluding people in same-sex relationships (the charter only says something about not letting sisters "stumble").  Or you could make Christian arguments against homophobia.  Or you could just point to the way this community tore itself apart.

I think all these arguments are good and useful.  But even if it's not the most persuasive argument, the main reason I think ADX's policy was unjustified is because homophobia is harmful and Christianity is unjustified.  Even if the group were upfront about being exclusive, I would still criticize the group.  The couple, Kylie and Sophia, does not have to agree with me.  I nevertheless applaud their activism.

I don't categorically oppose religion

I suppose I'm what the media calls a "new atheist"--I'm an atheist and I advocate for atheist causes.  Many people see opposing religion as the primary atheist cause.  But in my case, this is not entirely accurate.  I oppose many religions, but I don't know that there is anything wrong with religion per se.

I oppose most religions I see around me, for many reasons.  Faith is seen as a virtue.  Supernaturalism is encouraged.  Voices from ancient societies are thought to have moral authority.  Special privilege and admiration is given to people who happen to enjoy ritual or awe (not that there is anything wrong with enjoying those things).  And of course religious people systematically advocate many specific causes that I oppose, such as Creationism and abstinence-only sex education.

I don't think any of these are essential properties of religion.  Perhaps you think that at least some of them are essential--for example, many people think that if there are no supernatural beliefs, then it's not a religion.  But even so, you can certainly imagine a religion that places a much lower value on faith, does not value ancient morality, and does not advocate such terrible political causes; I would oppose this hypothetical religion far less vehemently.

To make the hypothetical more concrete, what if I moved to some part of Asia?  I know very little about how religion interacts with society on the other side of the world.  In that situation, I would tentatively still oppose religion, but it would be a kind of shallow opposition until I learned more about the specific harms caused by religion in that culture.

Even in the US, there are some "religions" that I have little to no problem with: Unitarian Universalism, Secular Judaism, and the Sunday Assembly.

I put religion in scare quotes because I've heard many atheists argue that these are not religions.  There are likely reasonable arguments to be had about the best definition of religion, but my impression is that atheists are using motivated reasoning; they want to be able to say concisely that they oppose religion, so they're motivated to argue that things they do not oppose do not count as religion.

I don't think it's useful to get too attached to any particular definition of religion--if you're interacting with UU people (who see themselves as having a religion), would you rather argue with them about what counts as a religion, or would you rather work together on more productive causes?  (Disclosure: my boyfriend is ex-UU.)  Another advantage is that no one can cheat their way out of criticism.  If you say you're spiritual but not religious, maybe because you have a personal relationship with Jesus but don't participate in any churches, that doesn't give you an out.  If you think that my atheism is a religion, I think you're really stretching the definition, but also it doesn't matter.  If there appeared an atheist organization that had a hierarchical structure and performed rituals and sermons in a church, it could more plausibly be called a religion, but that still wouldn't make it wrong.

TL;DR: I oppose the major religions in my present society, but I am unwilling to generalize to everything in the world, present or future, which could plausibly be called a religion.