51. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93436 by Santi Tafarella on December 3, 2007 at 6:41 am

Response to Comment #93408 by "brian coughlan worldcitizen"

Brian,
You rightly catch where my argument about state interference with child-raising breaks down (in cases of murder, physical abuse etc.). But I think that we should cross the physical/emotional abuse line with great caution. Teaching children, for example, that there is a hell is (in my view) mentally abusive in the extreme. But perhaps half of all parents in the United States teach this idea to their children. Hell realms are taught in Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim cultures too. And secular parents are not immune from putting upon their children "mental abuse." A secular parent, for example, may allow a child to watch a barage of emotionally manipulative propaganda (in the form of advertising etc.) on television that a fundamentalist (who has no tv in the home) never sees. A little girl can grow up in a secular home and become an adult with a totally sexist and skewed body-image problem because her parents let her watch shows like "what not to wear" and "total body makeover," and let her subscribe to cosmopolitan at the age of eleven. There are all sorts of ways a parent can psychologically confuse or "mess up" a child's emotional development.

52. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93325 by Santi Tafarella on December 2, 2007 at 5:38 pm

For me, this was the money quote from the author of the New Republic article: "To be liberal in the classical sense is to accept intellectual variety--and the social complexity that goes with it--as the ineradicable condition of a free society." I think it is important for us to keep this in mind. In reading Dawkins, I am with him on virtually every point, until he suggests that parents should not have substantial control over how they raise their children. I think that in this singular area, Dawkins crosses a line from liberalism to illiberalism, and the New Republic author is right to call him out on it. The chance contingencies of being born in a particular place and time (Melborne in 1924; California in 1968 etc.), and the accidents of experience (parents as Buddhists; father who died in Vietnam; exposure to lead at a young age etc.) will all color how one thinks about and responds to the world, and how one wants to raise their children to think about war, religion, and life in general. For the state to step in forcibly, and try to socially engineer the multitude of contingencies that an individual life entails, with the purpose of directing the stream of society to a particular and singular goal, is a step away from freedom that I cannot support. Anytime we start thinking of the state in terms of gardening or cleaning metaphors (as a collective device for weeding out or purifying something from society) we are heading for trouble. Although I'm an atheist, I don't think the world would be a better place if there were no Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, or Christians in the world, anymore than I think it would be a better world if we all just spoke English, and all other languages died out. It is the diversity of narratives in the world that makes life crackle, and gives it nuance. I just think that we are not acknowledging that all languages--whether one speaks "Feminism," "Buddhism," "Freudianism," "Calvinism," or "Dawkinism"--bring interesting ideas and insights to the collective table, and that to wish for the permanent elimination of one or another "language" is not a way for making a better society, but one that is actually intellectually impoverished. Contending languages expose one another's intellectual blind spots, and strengthens a society's collective base of knowledge. I don't look forward to a world free of Baptist churches anymore than I would look forward to a world free of books by Robert Ingersoll and Richard Dawkins. I don't look forward to a world free of neo-conservative Republicans anymore than I look forward to a world free of postmodern pacifist Democrats. My half-ass figurings out about the world don't need to become a universal law that supercedes everybody else's half-ass contingent figurings out. We should want more crazy religions and wild intellectual theories in the world, not fewer. Our longing should be in the direction of freedom and diversity, and an insistence on free, unfettered speech. You should be able to worship Mohammad and raise your kids as Muslims, and you should be able to draw pictures of Mohammad, and mock religion, and teach your kids that religion is bullshit (if you want to). And who would say that the Greek pantheon of gods isn't a cool cultural and literary development in world history, and that the pagan gods don't give us an interesting archetypal language, with insights into the human condition? Likewise, I think that Scientology, Mormonism, Islam, and Christianity gave the world weird languages, but I also think that they can be reflected upon and worked with. I also think that the children born to parents who speak one of these peculiar languages have been given a foil in which to intellectually wrestle with for the rest of their lives. If many people never transcend the religion of their parents, it may be because the language worked for them. It may also be because they were weak or stupid. But whatever the reason, I can't help but paraphrase Blake: "Those whose desires or thoughts are restrained are weak enough to let their desires and thoughts be restrained." People can fight their upbringing if they want to. They aren't entirely helpless, and they don't need the state to jump in and assist them at every turn. Ayann Hersi Ali fought her way clear of her upbringing. And Voltaire fought his way clear. And when I was a teenager I fought my way clear of my fundamentalist Christian beliefs, fearing hell and the loss of family and friends every step of the way. Not everybody has the energy or inclination to fight the bullshit in their lives. A lot of people make peace with their situations, and stay where they are. Let's not pretend that the state can step in and make this part of life easier for everybody. All of life is a struggle against a lot of bullshit, conceptual and otherwise. It's not just a kid born to Amish parents who has to wrestle her way through a maze of illusions about the "real world," it's you and me too, everyday, because we are human and don't see the world whole, but in part, and from a peculiar contingent moment in time and space. Let's not pretend that the state can save us, or kids who are homeschooled, from this part of life, by passing a law that makes everybody sit in on a compulsory comparative religion class, or by making everybody learn more evolution in high school biology classes. Let's try to keep the state more Lockean than Hobbesian. Let's let freedom be first, not state coercion.

53. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63228 by Santi Tafarella on August 13, 2007 at 3:12 pm

I'm afraid I have to disagree with the above article. Like any piece of difficult literature, the Bible must be worked with and deciphered to be appreciated. Superficially, the Bible seems rather unliterary, and a quick reading of a story or poem may leave one shrugging. But prominent literary critics (Harold Bloom, Northrop Frye, Frank Kermode, and Robert Alter among them) have all taken rewarding stabs at reading the Bible as literature. One should really read, for example, Robert Alter's books on the Bible (such as "The Art of Biblical Poetry") before dismissing its literariness out of hand. I agree that there is a lot of horrific stuff in the Bible, and that most people who profess belief in the Bible do so, in large part, because they have never carefully read it or thought about it. But it is also true that one can get into the Bible (as literature) in the same way that one can get into other ancient literatures (such as the Odyssey or the Gita). The writer of the above article seems to be showing an impatience with literature as such, and would probably have similar opinions about reading James Joyce. I agree that the Bible is littered with cruel, sexist, and absurd passages, but this is different from saying that when it tells a story or charges its language with poetry, that it does so in ways that are not worth studying. And whatever else the Bible is, it is an undeniably powerful stylized world, one that has gripped the imaginations of countless people, both past and present.

54. The Empty Wager

Comment #33110 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2007 at 8:01 am

I appreciate Sam's attempts at consciousness raising, but I'd like to offer him a little of his own. Could somebody who knows him remind him that we live in the 21st century, and that it is annoying and archaic for a progressive-thinking person to exclusively use the male pronoun (when he is referring to humanity in general). Look again at the fourth paragraph in the above article. Would his girlfriend or somebody pretty puleeeese bop him on the head for all of us feminists out here?