My Personal Hero For Today

...is Rebecca Vitsmun of Moore, OK. Anyone who puts Wolf Blitzer on the spot, and graciously identifies herself as an atheist, at a time of great personal stress, is worth celebrating.

No, it is not necessary to thank the Lord, in order to be happy (and yes, grateful) that one's family is OK.

h/t: article at Salon

Anti-atheist discrimination

Interesting article over at Salon about the discrimination faced by atheists. I've run into it occasionally. The first time I explicitly hit it was in junior high, when it was made very clear by my peers, and my teachers, that some opinions were simply wrong and should be kept to myself in any event. 

My views on religious issues have waxed and waned over the years since then, though I'm currently  back in my default strongly-doubting agnostic mode.  (Making the positive claim that something doesn't exist is much more difficult than the observation that there's a notable lack of evidence for something existing.) 

The only sort I've bumped up against lately is the informal variety. The sort that's perfectly legal, and that our society says is acceptable. So, for example, if someone informs me that I couldn't possibly be moral, that I'm not fit to stand in front of a classroom, that I'm not loyal to my country (and too dim-witted to understand what my country is 'really' all about), well, I'm supposed to just thank them for trying to help me be a better human being for pointing out to me how awful it is that I'm not like them. I've had all of those happen, by the way. 

On the other hand, I've also not had problems (at my current job) with people evangelizing me on the job, knocking my performance appraisal, or spamming me with "god will hate you if you don't forward this" emails.  Updating my filters has taken care of the emails from friends, former friends, people with whom I took high-school classes in the same building, distant cousins, etc. I've learned from experience, they won't take you off their "Emails For Jesus" list no matter how often you ask, so it's easier, and kinder, with less hurt feelings all the way around, to just update the filters so it's not taking up space in the inbox and be done with it. 

Incidentally...what made me question religion and turn to the more austere, but reality-based, appeal of reason in the first place? Reading the Bible. All of it, cover to cover. But that's another story, for another day.... 

On movie atheists

After some discussions with a friend, I've got some ideas bouncing around in my head, none of them original... in fact, I can't escape the feeling that I'm at least paraphrasing someone else. So, with that disclaimer:

There are 2 basic types of atheists depicted in movies.

The first is the person who used to have faith but lost it due to some personal tragedy; the death of a child seems a popular reason here. At any rate, there's no need to worry about this person, because by the end of the movie they will have regained their faith, and come to understand that it's not God's fault their child died, but was rather their own, that of an alcoholic/violent ex-spouse, or (more recently) the fault of dark-complexioned people who follow one of the 'wrong' religions. They will not hold God responsible in any way, and in fact may go so far as to say that it's all for the best, or that while they don't understand why it happened, they know there must be a reason, which they are apparently content never to find out.

(Insert rant here about the frequency with which 'divine justice' is presented as the explanation behind  "God kills a child, in order to teach an adult a Very Important Life Lesson.")

The other type of atheist is the sneering, condescending intellectual, most often a self-important professor, who openly and rudely (since atheists don't have good manners) mocks anyone with any religious belief whatever, and insults religion in general at the slightest excuse. At a critical point of the narrative, this person will either betray the heroes (because you can't have morals or ethics without religion, therefore atheists can't be trusted), abandon someone to a horrible fate in a shocking display of complete self-centeredness (because you can't have concern for other people or compassion of any kind without religion, therefore atheists only think of themselves) or reveal himself as a sniveling coward (because you can't have courage, moral or otherwise, without religion, therefore atheists crumble at the first sign of difficulty). This type of atheist is usually eaten by a velociraptor. Even in movies that don't otherwise feature dinosaurs. Their deaths will be presented in a way designed to make the audience cheer.

There are a few variations ("They only have about a dozen characters, but they mix them around a bit"), but those are the main two types. There might be exceptions out there, but personally I'm not aware of any popular movie that makes it clear that one character is an atheist while those around them are believers, that doesn't give the atheist a good solid comeuppance by the final reel. They're certainly never shown to have any moral strength.

Personally, I've known just as many manipulative creeps, cowards, and self-centered blowhards who happily mouthed bible verses the entire time, while looking down on anyone who didn't share their particular brand of belief, as I have obnoxious agnostics or arrogant atheists. But that's just me. Maybe I should be keeping an eye out for velociraptors, just in case.

Incidentally...

I couldn't let Andrew's latest hilarity pass without mentioning it...

Here's the setup:

I left the conversation hanging a while back, after my post about God being the most powerful force in the universe, rather than the anthropocentric notion of an old man with a gray beard in the sky. I left it because it felt like an impasse, with my view hovering in mid-air next to that of many readers, who insist that Christianity conform to what they think it must be (mythical piffle).

Yes, just because many, perhaps most, practicing Christians take their mythical piffle quite seriously and get rather upset when you try to point out the mythical-piffleness of it. And note that the problem is that his readers are insisting that Christianity conform to "what they think it must be," (emphasis mine), a nicely dismissive phrase that makes it clear that they just haven't thought it through like he has.

Here's the pitch:

But my view is certainly orthodox Christianity, as long as you ascribe consciousness andcaritas to the universal creative force. Anyway, that is a roundabout way of saying I read something this week that seemed more persuasive than my flawed efforts.

Then he quotes another source:

What’s true of us is true of nature. If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may be holding us out and turning us around like a crab does its eyeball. Whatever the reason, that thing out there, with the black holes and the nebulae and whatnot, is conscious.

And here's the punchline (still quoting that secondary source):

One cannot look in the mirror and rationally deny this. It experiences love and desire, or thinks it does. The idea is enough to render the Judeo-Christian cosmos sort of quaint. . . .It works perfectly as a religion. Others talk about God, and I feel we can sit together, that God is one of this thing’s masks, or that this thing is God.

And remember, gang, there's absolutely NO mythical piffle here! Because...because...well, there just isn't, because he said so. That Nature developed consciousness as a means of observing itself? An interesting idea...but hardly self-evident or impossible to deny, and it is by no means self-evident that Nature 'experiences love and desire.' Insisting it does, with no evidence (Nature seems to have an awful lot of random cruelty and wanton destruction as well) is...well... mythical piffle.

Moving the goalposts, again

Over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, there's a discussion about psilocybin and the mental states it can induce, including the degree to which such states mimic the 'spiritual awakening' states of deep meditation. Andrew concedes that such states might be purely a matter of brain function, but then follows it with:

But the ultimate source of that feeling of universal beneficence that seems calculated to make humans the happiest and kindest they can be remains a mystery. Perhaps it's all neurons and chemicals - but if they are part of God too, that argument fails.

GAAAAAH! So in other words, it's not brain states, it's God. Oh, there's evidence it may be brain state after all? Well, that's all from God too, so I'm right!

No matter what, there has to be an invisible man behind the curtain, and if you can show it's not where he said it was last week, then we'll just move the invisible man to somewhere else, where you can't find proof just as easy, and sit back smugly as if we've proven something.

No, that argument doesn't 'fail.' If you're the one arguing that the invisible man exists, then it's up to you to show he exists. At one time, the structure of the eye was considered a pretty firm rebuttal to the atheist. Greater understanding of evolutionary processes debunked that... so the definition moved. Every time he moves it, it's always to someplace where the claims are even less testable. Which would be fine, if he weren't making truth-claims about reality. And no matter what, even when he's wrong, he's really right.

Gah. I say again, Gah.

Myers 2, Sullivan 0.

Andrew Sullivan on the Michigan militia that had 9 members arrested for sedition:

Surely we can all assent to the notion that a Christian militia of the type now accused of planning domestic terrorism is not Christian.

PZ Myers, on Andrew Sullivan:

I'm afraid the Hutarees were Christian, real-live testifyin' preachifyin' Jebus-lovin' Bible-readin' Christians. They weren't Andrew Sullivan's preferred version of Christian, but then, a weird gay Catholic has about as much authority to define who gets to be Christian as an obnoxious and flamingly anti-religious atheist.

Then Andrew scores an own goal:

Well I defer to PZ on the spectrum of weirdness, but he ignores my central distinction between Christianity and Christianism.

Christianity flees power as Jesus did; Christianism seeks it above everything else.

Except, of course, that even a casual reading of history makes clear that the Church has not renounced worldly power, but has in fact reveled in it. Andrew's idea that "true" Christianity eschews temporal power is very much a post-Enlightenment idea. Which, clocking in at about 300 years old or so, makes it a relatively new feature in the history of Christianity. One that is by no means settled among those calling themselves Christian, by the way.

If he'd said he didn't like their theology, thought they were wrong, were out of step with the majority of American Christians (or Christians worldwide), that's one thing. But simply defining something he disagrees with and intensely dislikes (for good reason) as outside of "true" Christianity is... well, rather remarkable.

Addendum: Unless, of course, he declares the Church he loves so much to also be outside of "true" Christianity. Which I doubt is going to happen anytime soon.

Slavery is OK, God Says So

Today's stumbled-across-and-wish-I-hadn't. You see, slavery is only bad because humans corrupted it, but Biblical slavery was entirely beneficial and not at all exploitive...

This is what happens when your standard for rationality becomes "does it support a self-contradictory bronze age text."

And can we put to rest once and for all that the correlation between religion and morality is statistically significant?

Lest Anyone Doubt...

...that for some, religion is used as a tool to serve neo-con/GOP-style political ends, we present:

The Conservatising the Bible Project.

Here's the whole thing. Read it if you dare.

Wow. Just... wow. But it's nice to see the reversal of priorities being presented in such an up-front manner.

(H/T: Andrew Sullivan.)

Evolution, Purpose, & Bad Arguments

I'm just now getting a chance to write about this post yesterday by Jim Manzi, who's filling in at Andrew Sullivan's, on The Evolution of God and Manzi's defense (or at least argument for plausibility of) the thesis of divine purpose behind evolution.

On the most basic level, he's right, of course. The existence of God can't be disproven any more than Bertrand Russel's Teapot can be disproven. But Manzi claims something else; or rather, implies it rather than making an explicit claim.

Manzi begins with an explanation of genetic algorithms as a way of introducing concepts of genetics, including the idea of using evolutionary functions as a way of optimizing on multiple dimensions at once. And while I'd have a minor quibble or two with his wording, his explanation is correct; he clearly gets it.

However. He observes that genetic algorithms are used to find the best combination of 'genes' (which may be data inputs or weights, settings on controls...almost anything, really) for a given purpose. Yes, that's true, according to some externally defined fitness function, a way of boiling everything down to a definitive way of determining, for any two arbitrary members of the population, that this one is a better fit than that one.

In biological systems, of course, the "fitness function" is whether or not the organism survives long enough to breed and for its offspring to reach breeding age. (If it gives birth to a hundred young, and eats 99 of them, that's less fitness than one that gives birth to 3 offspring and carefully nurtures and protects them to adulthood.)

Manzi claims, correctly, that genetic algorithms can select the "best" combination. But: In biological systems, the real world, the "best" combination is determined by survival. This can include high-level activities, especially in social species--if I'm a good neighbor, my children will be taken in and raised even if I'm eaten by a bear.

Manzi seems to be making the implicit assumption that if there is a purpose to it all, the purpose must be to develop a mind capable of apprehending God.

(Which is terribly anthro-centric... Even if there is a purpose, why should it have anything to do with us? Why shouldn't the purpose of creation be to develop the perfect jellyfish? Using Manzi's own logic, this hypothesis can't be disproven.)

But evolution doesn't select for apprehension of the Divine, it selects for survival. Therefore, unless such apprehension, or its precursors, conferred a survival advantage on our ancestors, evolution wouldn't select for it. Is there any evidence that apprehension of the Divine, or its precursors, increased survival? Not that I'm aware of. Yes, religious belief is widespread, and was so in the ancient world, but that doesn't mean it's genetic. A study mentioned in Newsweek a few weeks back found that religious beliefs plummets in advanced societies with low levels of social dysfunction (poverty, crime, etc). If it was genetic, it wouldn't fade out so quickly. On the other hand, social dysfunction was ripe in the ancient world.

(Yes, this is the 'opiate of the masses' theory. Or, if you prefer, the "give me sense of being in control or at least a way to tell myself that someone's in charge" theory. Something can be universal or nearly so, and not biologically determined, if the environmental conditions that foster it are universal as well.)

So. If there's a purpose to it all, evolution probably isn't selecting for it. If you remove the assumption that if there's a purpose to it all then obviously the purpose of all creation is to result in us, you're left with...not much.

(Contrary to what some seem to think, evolution doesn't result in an "ascent" toward higher species... that sort of categorization is something popularizers put on it, but actual people working in the field don't. It's more like a bush branching out in all directions at once, not a tree climbing higher and higher.)

Also, a curmudgeonly point but one that needs consideration: We've existed as a species only about a million years or so, hardly a blink of an eye in geological time, and much less than many other species that were once dominant. Given how rapidly we seem to be making the planet uninhabitable and that we may yet succeed in wiping ourselves out, I'd say the long-term survival value of intelligence is still something that awaits definitive demonstration.

At any rate, Manzi seems to have some recognition of the difficulty he's in here. He then falls back on some unseemly hand-waving, simply declaring it out of bounds for science, in bounds for philosophy, and therefore he'll believe whatever he pleases:

A scientific theory is a falsifiable rule that relates cause to effect. If you push the chain of causality back far enough, you either find yourself more or less right back where Aristotle was more than 2,000 years ago in stating his view that any conception of any chain of cause-and-effect must ultimately begin with an Uncaused Cause, or just accept the problem of infinite regress. No matter how far science advances, an explanation of ultimate origins seems always to remain a non-scientific question.

Now consider the relationship of the second observation to the problem of final cause. The factory GA, as we saw, had a goal. Evolution in nature is more complicated — but the complications don’t mean that the process is goalless, just that determining this goal would be so incomprehensibly hard that in practice it falls into the realm of philosophy rather than science. Science can not tell us whether or not evolution through natural selection has some final cause or not; if we believe, for some non-scientific reason, that evolution has a goal, then science can not, as of now, tell what that goal might be.

That's right, there's nothing for Science to do but throw up its hands and believe in teapots!

The combination of a constantly changing fitness landscape and an extraordinarily large number of possible genomes means that scientists appropriately proceed as if evolution were goalless, but from a philosophical perspective a goal may remain present in principle.

And having decided that it "may remain present in principle," Manzi assumes it into being. But he runs into other problems as well.

But in fact, even the “random” elements of evolution that influence the path it takes toward its goal — for example, mutation and crossover — are really pseudo-random. For example, if a specific mutation is caused by radiation hitting a nucleotide, both the radiation and its effect on the nucleotide are governed by normal physical laws.

He's apparently never heard of quantum physics. Those "normal" physical laws include fundamental limits on what's knowable or predictable. We don't call them random, especially an event such as a nucleus ejecting a beta particle, i.e. a bit of radiation-- just because they're too insanely complicated for us to understand--they really are random. This has been taught in any college-level physics course for decades. He seems to admit this a paragraph later, but obviously hasn't thought through what it implies. Yes, statistically we can talk about half-life, which is an average, because we don't need to know which precise nucleus broke down--but when a phosphorus atom inside a DNA strand decays and is suddenly something else, it does matter which precise atom decayed, and which direction the beta particle was heading.

The theory of evolution, then, has not eliminated the problems of ultimate origins and ultimate purpose with respect to the development of organisms; it has ignored them. These problems are defined as non-scientific questions, not because we don’t care about the answers, but because attempting to solve them would impede practical progress. Accepting evolution, therefore, requires neither the denial of a Creator nor the loss of the idea of ultimate purpose. It resolves neither issue for us one way or the other. The field of philosophical speculation that does not contradict any valid scientific findings is much wider open to Wright than Coyne is willing to accept.

Well, only by shifting definitions enough to keep them that way. Of course, the beauty of this particular dog-and-pony show is that the goalposts can always be moved. If we work out, for example, why pi has to have the exact value it does or why our physical laws are the way they are--perhaps no other set of laws would be stable--Manzi can always say "Yeah, but why is that?" and then declare that to be the 'ultimate' question. And when it's answered, he can find another. The problem isn't that "we don't care about the answers," it's that the question is poorly posed.

Might there be a purpose to it all, even if there's no evidence of such purpose? Sure. It can't be disproven. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. But that's no reason to take it any more seriously than hen's teeth or orbital teapots. If someone wishes to believe there's a purpose to the entire universe, and they're it, that's their business, but "you can't prove it isn't!" is also no proof that it is. If you're claiming such a purpose exists, in the absence of any evidence, then you need to produce such evidence, or solid reasons why the lack of evidence doesn't matter. Unfortunately, Manzi has done neither.

Why must I define myself by your criteria?

A reader at The Dish speaks the truth:

I do not identify myself as an atheist, because it is an entirely negative word -- it doesn't really say anything about what I do believe, only what I don't. And it continues to frame the discourse in the terms of the believer. I understand that for believers (or many believers, anyway) questions about the existence and nature of God are very important. But they are not important to me. I think the question of God's existence is just not very interesting, and my lack of belief in God is not a foundation of my moral or philosophical identity (however much believers want it to be). How could it be a foundation? How could I build a moral and philosophical view of the universe predicated on what I don't believe?

What's important to me is what I do believe -- and that's what I'd rather talk about. The mysteries of science and philosophy -- particle physics, genetics, phenomenology, neurology, astronomy, Camus' struggle with absurdity. There is so much there to talk about that is fascinating and unknown and worthy of study and speculation, that to be constantly dragged back to this obsession with "God" is really just kind of dull. That's one problem people who don't believe in God run into -- all anyone wants to talk about is their non-believing. It keeps the ball entirely in the believers' court, and the discussion entirely on their terms. (When non-believers are allowed into the discussion at all, of course.)

Exactly. I've had more discussions than I care to that fall back to me being called on to justify why I don't find someone else's holy book convincing, when it was obviously written by the Big Guy Himself, and we know it was because it says so, right there on the cover...

Or being told that I cannot appreciate wonder, or beauty, or really love anyone...

Which, of course, isn't exactly the case.

[Note to self: Don't start blog posts 15 minutes before class. More later....]

Credit where it's due dept.

I certainly don't agree very often with the Southern Baptist Convention, about anything, but it's hard to improve on this statement about torture (specifically including waterboarding) from Richard Land, of the SBC ethics & public policy conference:

"It violates everything we believe in as a country," Land said, reflecting on the words in the Declaration of Independence: that "all men are created equal" and that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

"There are some things you should never do to another human being, no matter how horrific the things they have done. If you do so, you demean yourself to their level," he said.

"Civilized countries should err on the side of caution. It does cost us something to play by different rules than our enemies, but it would cost us far more if we played by their rules," Land concluded.

Given how much the GOP is in the pocket of the SBC (and vice versa), that's a risky statement to make. All the more reason to applaud it.

[h/t: Andrew]

"And they will know we are Christians by our love..."

So it turns out that those who attend church most often, are also the most comfortable with torture.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Note: There were problems with sample size, so this may not be particularly generalizable. The problem isn't bad enough that I'm prepared to flat-out call bullshit on this, but it may be a mistake to read too much into it.

But how does that "religion make you better person" thing work again? Granted, this is only one questionable data point, but still...

[h/t: Paddy]

Tolerance is not immunity to criticism

Noah Millman on religious tolerance:

[C]orporate bodies to exist at all must define their boundaries: this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is how we behave. And this requires an implicitly if not explicitly excluded “not that.” This being the case, if freedom of religion means, most fundamentally, the freedom to be a heretic, it equally means the freedom to declare that the other guy is a heretic. In a very real sense, a social environment that is hostile to religious intolerance must necessarily be hostile to religious freedom.

But this is only true if that intolerance calls upon the power of the state for its enforcement.

If someone says, "OUR magic sky-fairy only accepts white, heterosexual, blonde-haired blue-eyed worshippers who make at least $50K," fine. Go for it. Have fun. But when you run around telling certain "other" people that the magic sky-fairy thinks they're no different from pedophiles, that the magic sky-fairy says they're evil disgusting sub-humans, and the magic sky-fairy wants the gummint to make sure they aren't treated equally under the law--you're going to be criticized for it. Politicians who give you a platform are going to be criticized.

That's only "hostile to religious intolerance" in the sense that public statements and public actions are open to public criticism.

As far as I'm concerned, the Saddleback Church is completely within its rights to exclude gay members. I wish they wouldn't, but they certainly have the right to do so and there's no particular reason they should listen to me on the subject--after all, I don't claim to follow their magic sky-fairy or to be an authority on magic sky-fairies in general. Rick Warren is perfectly within his rights to say everything he's said. And I'm perfectly within my rights to point out the hateful bigotry in those statements. It's not the religion that's the problem here, it's the bigotry. Bigotry on behalf of a particular magic sky-fairy is still bigotry. If his magic sky-fairy tells him to be a bigot, that's his business, not mine. When he starts organizing and fundraising to take away my civil, secular, legal rights, it becomes my business.

A religious body is perfectly free to be intolerant. But when they express their intolerance through public discourse and the political proces, they become subject to public criticism. If your religion tells you to be intolerant toward certain things or certain people, fine. If you're too cowardly to face criticism from others who don't share your belief, keep them to yourself.

But religion doesn't give you the authority to run around criticizing everyone else while being immune to any such criticism yourself.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

Roger Ebert on Ben Stein

A wonderful take-down of Stein's awful creationist movie. Here's a sample:

This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.

And there is worse, much worse.

For the entire buildup, to see how he reaches that point, go read the entire thing.

[With a big h/t to Princess Sparkle Pony!]

Quote of the day 2

If we never question our religions or their motives, they will ultimately destroy our freedom to do so.

William H. Reynolds, Creationism: The Fossil Record and the Flood

[h/t: PZ Myers]

Snarky Atheist Video of the Day

Why God Seems Nonexistent.

Nothing brilliantly original here, but well-executed.

And check the comments out. Poe's law still holds: No matter how over the top it is, someone will take it seriously.

[Hat tip: PZ Myers]

Embezzlers (?) For Jesus. Well, self-enrichers, at least.

PZ has the details.

It seems a small bank tried to do everything just as God wanted, including praying before all their meetings and giving 10% of their income to charity. (The article doesn't say whether that's gross or net income.)

It also seems they paid themselves exorbitantly well -- five or six times what bank officers at banks that size usually make.

I know there's something there about the workman being worthy of his hire, but isn't there also something about rich men, camels, needle's eyes, etc?

(Though actually the reference was to a very narrow gate in Jerusalem, called the Needle's Eye, that merchants had to go through. A loaded camel wouldn't fit; thus the camel had to be completely unloaded, with the friendly tax collector conveniently close by. This concludes today's historical aside.)

The FDIC is looking into things.

We have gone hopelessly astray

Kathleen Parker has an excellent column pointing out just how fundamentally wrong and profoundly un-American the Saddleback Church meeting with the candidates was. Rick Warren is trying to insert himself into public life under the guise of "it's all about worldview," which is a codephrase for "evangelical Christianity."

Of course, the next day, he said flat-out that no Christian could vote for anyone pro-choice. Which sends a pretty clear signal about how he thinks everyone should vote.

Neutral, my ass. And expecting candidates to go through this is undignified, demeaning, and pandering of the worst sort.

Warren used to be someone I may not have agreed with but could at least respect. That's changing rapidly.

And though I'm sure he'd call it "anti-Christian bigotry," I think his insistence on bringing religion, faith, whatever you want to call it, into the political realm and making it a political issue is wrong. And I'm sure he'd deny any such bigotry. While also saying he would never vote for an atheist, no matter what that person's policy positions are. So you see, it's only bigotry when other people do it. When he does it, it's just looking for people who share his worldview. In other words, at least pretend you believe in the same magic sky-fairy he does, or at least in some magic sky-fairy, and he'll condescend to pretending he respects you.

Go read Parker's column, it's worth it.

Quote of the day

God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power.

Robert G. Ingersoll, "Gods," 1879

[h/t: Pharyngula]

Definitionses

In my facebook profile, I call myself an agnostic. I recently got a question about it from a friend of mine, who noted that I used to identify with a particular religion. What happened? Here's an excerpt from my reply, with minor edits for clarity.

Well, for a start, I haven't practiced in years. I did for a while after my divorce, and considered myself religious for quite a while after that. As I drifted away from organized religion, my beliefs gradually shifted, becoming less and less denominational, less and less specific...and, as time went on, less and less theistic at all. Today I'm not even sure I'd qualify as a Deist.

Mostly , it was a process of "Do I really believe this? Not 'do the people around me believe it,' not 'do I get patted on the back for saying I believe it'--do I really and truly, deep down, believe this?" And more and more, the answer came back, no, I don't. And while I've never been a literalist (well, not past the age of 10 or so, but that doesn't really count, does it?) the more I thought about it, the more skeptical I got.

Partly, I think, because so many of the arguments in favor of belief are so awful. I'm enough of an intellectual and skeptic (and all-around horse's ass, at times) that anything I claim as a belief is going to have to stand up to some fairly rigorous scrutiny, and most of the arguments for belief don't come close. And heck, even if Jesus Himself Touched My Heart And Gave Me New Eyes To See, all that would prove would be that I'd had some kind of emotional experience. See any number of previous blog posts for deconstructions & fiskings of various stupid arguments for God.

So, I've pretty much given up on any idea of a magic invisible daddy in the sky who loves me as his very own. It would be a comforting belief, but "Believing it makes me feel better, so I believe it" isn't a satisfying argument. (Though if someone else says they believe something because it comforts them, well, I can't very well argue with that, and need only respect their right to be irrational. When they say believing something comforts them, therefore *I* must also believe the same thing and am a rotten commie traitor who hates Baby Jesus if I don't--that's when I part company with them.)

I went with "agnostic" rather than "atheist" because I'm also not convinced of the atheist position. There's a difference between I don't know what's there and I know for sure there's nothing there. There's no conclusive rational proof of God, but disproof is also impossible. The most you can say is there's no evidence for it, therefore we shouldn't assume it's there unless we have some other good reason to. That's my beef with the Intelligent Design nitwits: "God did it" is not the simplest, most parsimonious, least-assumption explanation. I'm willing to be persuaded, but haven't heard a convincing argument yet.

So how do I reconcile that with active participation in a 12-step program that puts emphasis on reliance on a Higher Power? Almost 20 yrs sobriety has taught me, sometimes painfully, that if I do certain things, life tends to go a little smoother; if I do certain other things, I get a little crazy, and if I keep doing those other things, I'll probably get drunk. Whether or not there's a deity behind them, following certain principles keeps me on an even keel. "God" is a useful metaphor for something pulling me toward those principles, and regular prayer and meditation has put me into the habit of taking a few minutes and calmly reviewing my day before setting out in the morning, and again at the end of the day, and promptly trying to clean up any messes or unfinished business before it festers. It's put me into the habit of thinking of other people rather than myself first (at least, not thinking of myself first all the time), and evaluating my actions by whether I'm living up to the values I'm professing--values that don't necessarily need a magic sky-fairy to be legitimate. Am I being honest with others and myself? Can I disagree with someone without being disagreeable? Am I treating others with respect? Am I meeting my responsibilities as an employee, as a family member, as a citizen? If not, what can I do about those things? If I can't change everything at once, what can I change today? At the end of a meeting, I don't need to go off on magic sky-fairies while everyone else says the Lord's Prayer--that would be rude and disrespectful to their beliefs, even if I don't share them, while maintaining silence costs me nothing.

At the convention last weekend, I talked with a woman whose (non-12-step, no need for one) brother works for Anheuser-Busch in St Louis. They just got bought out, and no word yet on who's keeping their job and who isn't. She asked if he was worried about it, and he just shrugged and said, no, nothing he can do about it either way, so he's just doing his job until he hears otherwise. And she (and I) were boggled--how do normal people do that? How do they get it that simply? We have to bang our heads against the wall several times before we remember the serenity prayer about accepting what we can't change and all that.

So, yeah, "agnostic" is about the most accurate description of where I'm at now. Further bulletins as things develop.