Atheism just ain't enough: post-secularism and the future

Secularism and humanism and, to a large extent, atheism, are essential for the safe function of modern society. But they are not enough. They free us from the shackles of irrational thought and provide a philosophical framework for the intrinsic value of humanity as an end in itself, but they do not provide the structures of religion: answers to fundamental questions (why am I here? What is the purpose of life?) - usually embodied in a common myth and a community - which in religion's case is built around churches and regular attendance thereto.

This is not a criticism of secularism or humanism - it is simply an acknowledgment of the fact that they were never intended to provide these structures. But what, then, will provide them, if religious institutions are not to? One potential answer is that we don't need them - we are now so smart that we have outgrown the need for a common myth, and in our individualist, consumerist, Internet-addicted culture, churches and community centres are anachronistic and irrelevant.

I think this idea is wrong, that we need a common myth, and that we need to rebuild a sense of community. The school of thought that explores this I am naming (pace Clive Hamilton) post-secularism.

So, then, what are the characteristics of post-secularism? As I see it now - and I am only at the very beginning of thinking about this - the common trends are:

• Humanism, philosophy and science are of central concern and paramount importance. The post-secular common myth must be scientifically based and philosophically coherent.
  
• We may start using a 'religious night language' to talk about these concepts - to use words like 'divine' and 'god'. Michael Dowd does this best - an example of his writing is below. I am not yet sure if specific religious stories (Genesis, etc) can be co-opted to fit a post-secular model, although some people certainly think this is possible.
• In fact, it is probably necessary to use religious night language - otherwise we cannot provide a myth/narrative that will function as it must. In America, it makes sense to use Christian night language.
• Eastern mysticism seems to get introduced often - for example, by Sam Harris - though I am sceptical of its value.
• Secularism ceases to function quite how it does now. Post-secularism implies a move beyond religion, and what replaces it is based on science and naturalistic philosophy. Because of this, it would rarely if ever come into conflict with sound evidence-based policy. Or is this hopelessly idealistic?
  

On the topic of religious night-language, here is an example of Michael Dowd's writing, taken from his book Thank God For Evolution:

"I envision the day when facts are universally celebrated as God’s native tongue, when evidence is honored as divine clues, and when the thought of looking to the past, rather than the present, for our best understanding of words like “God,” “sin,” “salvation,” “heaven,” and so forth, will be unimaginable.

I long for the day when public revelation is valued above private revelation nearly everywhere, and when day language and night language thrive in their respective domains. Oh, would it come to pass that millions of people wait with eager anticipation for the next revelations from God that appear in journals like Nature and Science. May there come a time when theologians and preachers vie with one another to articulate the most inspiring meanings of such ongoing revelation"

Here is a list of the key thinkers in this area I have discovered so far:

• Clive Hamilton - author of The Freedom Paradox (subtitle: "Towards a post-secular ethics"). Clive's talk at the Sydney Ideas Festival was amazing - it was broadcast on ABC Radio National's Big Ideas program and is available for download.
  
• Reverend Michael Dowd - author of Thank God For Evolution. Talks of 'mythological evolution'. See also his interviews on Point of Inquiry.
  
• Sam Harris - see chapter 8 of The End Of Faith and his speech at AAI 2007. Sam moves towards Eastern mysticism, and would probably not be a fan of Michael Dowd's explicitly Christian post-secularism.

There are also people who set the groundwork for this movement by breaking down barriers between science and religion, which can open people to the ideas of the thinkers above. In this space, I see people like Hemant Mehta (the friendly atheist) and Bishop Shelby Spong working well.

What, then, is the end-game of post-secularism? How would a fully post-secular society look and function? As I see it, it might:

• Have "churches" - more, neighbourhood community centres - where "sermons" about life, ethics, science, and current events might be given, by "pastors" or "preachers".
• These pastors/preachers would most importantly be trained in ethics, counseling, and the history of religious thought. They would also be scientific and political generalists.
• These centres would help to break down the technology-driven individualism and isolation that I see arising in modern society (more on that another day).
  
• Weirdly, my future post-secular society seems to imply a backward-looking conservatism - I want people to turn up to secular "church" each week - which is a conservative backlash to a religious time.

It occurs to me that this sounds a little like 'scientism' - the worship of science itself. I am not sure what I think of this - perhaps 'scientism' is simply a pejorative term for a concept that I actually support. Perhaps not. More overanalysing to do, I suppose...

Underpinnings of society: thoughts on elections and the democratic process

With the impending American elections and current NSW turmoil, I've been thinking a lot about elections and democracy. In this post, I outline four elements of these that seem clearly true. As always, I'm far from a political scholar, and am always open to new information, debate and general abuse.

Disclaimers aside, my thoughts:

Every vote must be equal

Every person's vote must have as much sway in the results of the election as any other. This is necessary to align the electoral process and candidates' electoral commitments with the best interests of the populace.

The necessity of this becomes clear by even a trivial examination of the status quo in Australia - a vote in a marginal seat is worth far more than a vote in a safe one. As a direct consequence, public money is disproportionately spent in marginal seats; instances of this are now so common that the practice is almost accepted as normal, but this is clearly not a desirable feature of any democracy.

Representation must be proportional

If 51% of the country vote for a party, that party should form government. Bill Bowtell's recent article on electoral reform excoriates our current system, showing that no less than five elections have thwarted the will of the people and that in doing so it has distorted our deepest understanding of how Australians think.

Moreover, if The Greens get 9% of first preference vote in The Senate, they should have seven senators, not two. Proportional representation opens the door to a multi-party system, not our monolithic two-party (and sometimes single-policy) system. This would promote real debate on real issues, not the disappointingly close-minded policies we see presently.

Voting must be compulsory

Voting must be compulsory. This is not simply because we must force people to make a choice (we don't do that anyway), but because of the consequences of not at least strongly encouraging them to do so. If voting is optional, the nature of political campaigns changes: they cease to be primarily about aligning a party's interests with those of the nation, and become about taking whatever stand is required to make your fan-base turn up and vote on the day. This in turn means that you must:

1. Adopt whatever position encourages your team - in the US, Republicans or Democrats - to turn up. This typically means being more extreme and less centrist - therefore less representational of the 'average' citizen.
2. Not annoy any one-issue voters that would otherwise support you. It is for this reason that Obama tip-toes around anti-vaccinationist loonies. If voting is compulsory, members of this group will turn up on the day and will probably vote for a guy they know is best for their country. If voting is optional, they'll stay home and make tin foil hats.

The populace must have the capacity to make an informed decision

This is the kicker. Democracy fundamentally rests on the ability of the populace to make informed, considered choices that have their best interests - and those of their families, communities and country - at heart. It depends on a sufficient number of people to:

• Be educated enough to understand the issues.
• Be interested in the issues - to care about them.
• To have the time to absorb and consider the issues.

The pessimist in me worries about the latter two in particular - though the former is by no means satisfactorily resolved at present. In my generation, I rarely meet people who I think genuinely consider the issues at hand. Many do not seem to care others do not have the time. Work hours are increasing, priorities shift. Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason chronicles the decline in intellectualism; I expect that Maggie Jackson's Distracted (subtitle "The end of attention and the coming dark age") will assist in furthering my pessimism.

The necessity of history

I have just battled my way through two books and am part way through a third. The first two are The Theocons and The Age of American Unreason; the latter is John Gray's "Black Mass". At a general level these books all have a common feature: they are all historical and social analyses. At a personal level there is a second commonality: I found them all very hard to understand.

This difficulty lies in their nature: they all assume their reader has a solid, pragmatic understanding of modern history, and they proceed to narrate the history of an idea or movement within the context of this knowledge. The Theocrats is a history of and commentary on American fundamentalism; Unreason similarly analyses anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism; Black Mass is on utopianism.

The topics are diverse (though interrelated), but in each case I have found the books painfully difficult to digest. Examining the first two in hindsight, I certainly understood part of each. However, I am dimly aware of a haze of potential misunderstanding: although my eyes touched on each word on each page, I am near to certain that I missed out on some of the most salient points in each book. I can see that my reading of the third is unfolding similarly.

The reason for this is clear: I have a very poor knowledge of history. I don't think I'm unique in this regard - virtually all of my generation (at least, those with whom I've discussed this matter) are worse off than I am. I am ashamed that the phrase "New Deal" entered my vocabulary only two weeks ago and that before May this year I had no clue that the German Democratic Republic was not remotely democratic. I have found that even this trivial knowledge is beyond most people of my age and background.

It is clear to me that a deep knowledge of history is absolutely essential for anyone staking a claim on reality. History is the empirical study upon which politics is based - a theory of social organisation can be justified only with an understanding of its antecedents through the ages. The philosopher is similarly burdened: though philosophical theories can be contended in absence of historical knowledge, the philosopher is constrained by the framework of the culture in which s/he lives. This is true of all philosophers, of course, and this is in fact the point: only by study of history can one's contextual bias be understood, and understanding of this constraint is a first step towards liberation therefrom. (I make this claim with some hesitation, since I am only at the beginning of my study. I shall gladly rewrite this idea if I come to find it false.)

While I am extremely unhappy with this personal revelation, I take only partial personal responsibility for it: I am very critical of both Australia's formal education system and the lack of value it places on the classic liberal arts. As much as this serves to assuage my sense of responsibility, it does nothing to fix the problem: I need to know more history. Do you?

Thank the lord, it's over!

Perhaps there is a god: World Youth Day is finally over. No, wait a minute: this is proof that the Catholic idea of god is wrong! If god really loved all that sycophantic caterwauling, he'd have kept the event going for a good few centuries, right? Smackdown! WYD disproves god.

Sydney Atheists, then, can rest easy, knowing that our work is done. God is dead, and we've expressed our rational worldview eloquently and succinctly to all who would listen. (This puts us in stark contrast to certain ahem, slightly less conservative movements - I'm looking at you, Raelians and Socialist Alliance).

Of course, as curious, open-minded people, we also got out there and explored! Here's a video of the Atheists Day Out, starring Ty and yours truly:

The video was put together by Anthony from Sydney Atheists, who has worked tirelessly leading up to and throughout WYD. It was Anthony who edited the video, neatly cutting out the embarrassing bits, including a really awkward moment for us atheists when a pilgrim explained in unambiguous naturalistic terms both the eucharist and the trinity. Of course, us conspiratorial atheists would never let such theistic blasphemy get out! I'm also very grateful to Ansgar, who captured a large chunk of the action. Ansgar also had tact to remind me of when I was about to do anything too inappropriate in St Marys. (Nothing like that, sickos...!)

Anthony also put together a video from Saturday's protest and pre-protest action:

I was rather disappointed at the day, as were a few other faithful nonbelievers. I can sum up why by quoting one sign from the day: "UFOs bring love". That, folks, is the sort of coherent, targetted message the Raelians thought was appropriate for World Youth Day. A painful (and painfully obvious) truth quickly became apparent: at any protest, only the loudest, crudest message really gets through. The rest is lost at best and grossly distorted, amplified and broadcast at worst. We live, we wear offensive t-shirts, we learn...

Of course, us protesters retained the moral high ground: one protester was attacked by a pilgrim. Check out the video. I will also use this small and fragile soapbox to point out that Stefan was rather pissed off at being labelled a "gay activist protester" by the SMH. Lucky the cops kept the situation under control. You know what it's like with those Catholics - they'll go from mildly annoyed to setting up an impromptu Inquisition faster than you can say "the pope touched me down under".

I will close out this post with another example of just how any sane message was lost on Sunday. In fact, this action stepped far beyond any remotely useful message into a wholely questionable realm. It is, in fact, a quote: the t-shirt that won Saturday's annoying t-shirt competition read "Mary was only a Catholic if you don't count anal".

(Not had enough WYD ranting? Check out my interview with SX magazine...)

Who on earth thought...

...that I'd be worth interviewing??

Well, Reg Domingo from SX for one. He wrote a rather kind piece on me (as a gay atheist) in this week's SX. I say 'kind' because he generously filtered through my ineloquent verbiage to find the bits that were vaguely coherent. Thanks, Reg! From my take, I sounded neither as confused nor demonic as I thought - perhaps not even demonic enough! Two points I have to make, though, just to clear my name:

• I'm very ashamed that I used the phrase 'no-brainer'. For this I apologise profusely. Don Watson would lynch me, I'm sure.
  
• The second is a rather large philosophical mistake, certainly a consequence of my lack of eloquence rather than anything else. This was use of the word 'certainty' in one particular point. Us atheists (the ones I know, anyway), are not certain of anything - just convinced by a lack of evidence and sound philosophical reasoning. (We are all 6.5 on Richard Dawkins' 7 point scale - see chapter 1 of TGD for an explanation).

I was also by accident wearing a t-shirt wearing 'disfcuktional' in the photo. There's an amusing discordance - not quite irony - there, I guess:

For future interviews (as I'm sure there are just thousands coming up...), I will:

• Give shorter, clearer answers.
  
• Be better prepared for questions I can reasonably predict.
  
• Have a mental list of key points I want to get across.

Not exactly the hardest task in the world, but hey, you try it!

WYD fashion parade - protesting in style

UPDATE: My face is out there! I confess my crimes on:

• SBS.com - photos three and twelve.
  
• Livenews.com (Click through to photos and videos. My distinct lack of media skills are on show in the video...)
• SX Online

There's more coverage of the event on the ABC, SMH, Associated Press, the UK National Secular Society, and the Irish Times.

Being a concerned atheistic citizen and having been envious of the glamorous lifestyles of such fashion icons as Elton John and Sigfried and Roy, I was delighted to hear of the WYD Annoying T-shirt Fashion Parade. Clearly, this was just meant to be my debut into the fashion world.

My aim was to question both the wonderous new annoyance and inconvenience laws and to make Catholics question the rich liberal, democratic, scientifically minded history of their church.

Allow me to present my sleek, sophisticated, pointed and political textile creation. From the front:

(Photo credit to Reg Domingo of SX)

...and from the back:
And my caption made the news! I haven't found a picture of myself anywhere yet (those damn pesky Raelians were far more photogenic than me), but my caption is mentioned in this AFP article.

The fashion show was held outside NSW State Parliament today. It was a blast - us rationalists sure know how to party! It's been on the news, but here are a few of my happy snaps:



I was also interviewed by about five people - including SBS TV and radio - but in hindsight I realise I didn't speak particularly eloquently. Next time I will present a calm and serene face, with just hints of my hellishly fiery atheist core peeking through.

"This looks like fun!", you say. "How can I get involved?" Glad you asked - there's plenty more coming. Head on over to sydneyatheists.org and notopope.com to check the upcoming events.

WYD: Abraham Lincoln got it in one

In 1738, Abraham Lincoln wrote:

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power."

Or, as it is popularly paraphrased:

"He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither."

An apt quotation given current events, I hope you agree.

Update: Goodness, it was Benjamin Franklin, not Lincoln. Thanks Anonymous for pointing this out. I should have realised it wasn't Lincoln, as he wasn't born until 1809 - born on the same day as Charles Darwin, in fact.

It's nice to know that someone is checking me on these rants. And I suppose it's best to not post while eating breakfast at 7AM...