National Coming Out Day

Welcome friends!

Certainly plenty of big issues to write about this week such as the Clown President’s most recent attacks on one of the foundations of our democracy and traditional way of life: the free press.  Yes, he apparently threatened to revoke the “license” of media outlets that don’t kowtow to his Orange Eminence in the manner of Fox “News” and such dishonest faux journalists as Sean Hannity.  No one really knows what license the man had in mind but that’s beside the point.  He often babbles nonsensically about things he clearly knows nothing about.  The noteworthy bit is just his obvious hatred for the free press.  But as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before with conservative nut jobs in the WH, dominating Congress, heading up all the Executive Branch agencies, and increasingly infiltrating the judiciary I could write something like that every week.  On the other hand, since we still do have a free press in this country at least for now maybe I can take a week off now and then and let others cover the long sad decline and quite possibly eventual fall of our American way of life under the Republican / Russian Party.  With that thought in mind I thought I’d set aside the news of the day and look to something a bit more lighthearted this week.  In case you’re not up on this sort of the thing for the past twenty-nine years October 11 has apparently been considered by some National Coming Out Day in which gay people (aka queer people or to be perhaps overly precise and prosaic homosexuals) are meant to dramatically announce their sexual orientation to the world or some carefully selected bits of it anyway.  I’ve been reading a lively debate about whether this practice is still necessary or even advisable.  It got me thinking about sexual minorities again and then as fate would have it I bumped into an article that seemed relevant to the topic about a teacher in the UK who was banned from teaching after making some homophobic comments.  Could be a coincidence I suppose but I choose to think the magical guardian fairies of Rainbow Land are trying to tell me to say a few words in defense of sexual minorities this week so let me just do that.  I’ll get back to the Conservative Menace next time or maybe the time after that.  No need to rush.  It’s going to be with us for a while.

Let’s take the latter story first.  Seems a science teacher in the UK named Joshua Onduso was recently banned from practicing his profession by some official organization known as the National College for Teaching and Leadership Panel.  Apparently a student had asked him about gay people during class at his school (incidentally for five to nineteen year olds) and he had explained they “have a disease” and “have something wrong upstairs.”  Later in the day he clarified his position by rephrasing his remarks to say gay people are “sick in the head.”  When he was eventually confronted by the head teacher over his remarks he explained that his Christian beliefs meant he didn’t condone “what gay people do.”  Now I know he might have been referring to any number of things such as holding hands or dancing or frequenting antique stores or drinking tea from fancy cups but I suspect he had something a bit more sexual in mind.  He apparently never saw any problems at all with what he had told his class and was eventually helped to the exit.  This is the sort of story that would have every red blooded conservative here in the USA up in arms.  How dare the powers that be prevent this teacher from expressing his Christian beliefs!  Oh the outrage!  Political correctness run amok!  Freedom of speech and freedom of religion both trampled under foot!  As I’m sure my readers will have already surmised I’m entirely with the authorities on this one.  Let’s break it down shall we?

While it’s perfectly fine for Mr. Onduso to follow his religious beliefs and not condone what gay people do it’s not perfectly fine for him to make up fake facts in a science class.  No mainstream medical organization in any advanced country currently considers homosexuality a “disease” and mental health professionals in such countries stopped characterizing the phenomenon as a mental disorder many decades ago.  When the student asked about the phenomenon in his science class one can only presume he or she was interested in the current science relating to the issue not Mr. Onduso’s personal code of ethics or his religious beliefs.  Indeed, as a science teacher one might have expected Mr. Onduso to well understand the conceptual difference between the positive and normative, that is, fact and value, and possibly even use the occasion to explain the difference. There is no requirement at all for a science teacher delivering comments on homosexuality to “condone” it or to repudiate his religion’s ethical stance on it or anything of the sort.  The only requirement is that a science teacher be prepared to tell the students about the science of the phenomenon.  Of course it’s quite possible given his rather obvious biases he may have simply avoided the science and not known the answer.  However, if he didn’t know the answer that would have been his best answer.  I don’t know.  Go look it up.  It’s always preferable in an educational setting to just tell people one doesn’t know something than to make things up or provide disinformation.  Anyway, one can well imagine the serious emotional damage this halfwit might have done to a young gay student wondering what current science has to say about his or her mental or physical condition only to be incorrectly informed he or she has a physical disease or a mental disorder.  If on the other hand some of his students wanted to discuss the ethics of homosexuality then they should have been directed to an appropriate venue for that sort of discussion: a course in philosophy if they were interested in discussing it in a secular context, or the local seminary, church, mosque, temple, or what have you if they were of a more otherworldly temperament and wanted to discuss it in the context of mystical beings and ancient texts.  Free speech was certainly never in any real danger.  Rather there are proper contexts to talk about certain issues in certain ways and those contexts are especially important to observe and maintain in any institution that purports to involve education.

I know what you’re thinking.  Funny story but how does it relate to National Coming Out Day?  Well, the debate on this whole “coming out” issues seems to involve on the one hand the ostensible benefit to gay people of letting other people know they exist and are not unusually diseased or sick in the head and so on and on the other hand the potential personal cost to the person coming out and on a more general note the potentially unfortunate consequences of accepting the implicit assumption that one’s sexual orientation is anyone else’s business and that sexual minorities have a choice of either hiding themselves away in the proverbial closet or making an announcement to the world.  Seems like a tough one to me because I see merit in both sides of the debate.  I certainly remember the ugly and repressive olden days here in the USA during which one would never have willingly identified oneself as gay or even spoken up in defense of a gay person for fear of being branded gay oneself and mentally or emotionally or legally or even physically attacked so I can well understand the perceived need to avoid that trap.  However, I don’t think any gay person in that sort of imminent danger should come out to anyone even now and I mean particularly young people who are not financially and emotionally secure and also people whose heads are wrapped up in the unfortunate belief systems of certain religious or cultural groups (or who have parents and friends with heads wrapped up in that sort of thing).  As Mr. Onduso’s comments serve to remind us there is still a lot of ignorance and hatred directed at gay people most of it generated and nurtured by religious ideology.  If one is not in a position to adequately defend oneself against this sort of persecution the more sensible approach would seem to me to remain mute or deny, deny, deny but of course express oneself as best as one is able in one’s private life.  That’s how gay people survived in the bad old days wasn’t it?  But did nothing really improve until gay people stopped doing that sort of thing?  Or did the more general intellectual climate change in a way that made that sort of thing increasingly unnecessary?  I don’t know.  But anyway I think if there is a case to be made for gay people coming out I think the people in the best situation to do so are gay people with educated, open minded, secular friends and family who can reasonably be expected to be able to deal with the information in a reasonable way or strong secure mature people who are prepared to sever ties with the haters in their lives possibly forever.

But on the more general question of whether this sort of coming out is even necessary or advisable these days I just don’t know.  I wonder if we’ve moved past this point at least in the USA.  Everyone and certainly gay people would I’m sure prefer to live in a world in which one’s sexual orientation was like any other aspect of one’s personality.  We don’t have days on which we’re meant to proclaim if we are or would like to be married, have or would like to have children, are more physically attracted to blonds or brunettes, are partial to the missionary position or doggy style, or anything else of a relational or sexual nature.  If one wants to find out about such things for some reason such as perhaps one is looking for a suitable mate or to start a family then I suppose one can always ask someone about them.  Might be a bit rude or obnoxious to ask random people simply to assuage one’s curiosity.  Perhaps we’ve reached that stage for sexual orientation?  Perhaps gay people can just live their lives not in the proverbial closet but freely and openly and yet also not feel a need to announce their presence to all and sundry?  Perhaps we’ve reached a stage where young gay people can simply look for other young gay people if they want to form relationships with one another and if they’re unsure can simply ask one other people if they’d go for it?  Or will the stultifying and oppressive weight of religious conformity and hatred toward sexual minorities descend the moment gay people put away their rainbow flags and stop making announcements and marching and just in general making a fuss?  One would certainly hate to have to go through the whole thing again.  A year ago in the USA I would have leaned toward supposing political gestures were no longer necessary in this country.  Today I’m not so sure.

So what’s the answer?  Sorry.  No idea.  Sometimes I just talk.  I guess if you’re gay and you want to make a public gesture in support of equal rights for gay people and you’re in a position to handle any haters then knock yourself out.  If you’re gay and you or your partner have relationships with people whose minds have been twisted into knots by religion or other unfortunate belief systems and you want to maintain those relationships as long as possible then maybe no need to rush to come out to anyone.  Maybe just keep things on the down low. I can’t recommend a closet though.  Too stuffy and confining.  If people can’t be bothered to remain purposefully ignorant and meet you halfway and it’s either you or them then I suppose you should probably choose you.  It’s always nice to be nice to other people but living solely to uphold the values of other people and not speaking up for your own rarely works out well in the long run.  Other people come and go but you will always have you.  Best wishes to you all my brothers and sisters.  Happy Coming Out Day!

References

Thatcham teacher Joshua Onduso banned over homophobic comments.  October 11, 2017.  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-41581774.

Singapore Conservatives Repudiate Free Speech

Welcome friends!

I read a recent news item on current events in Singapore and it occurred to me I’ve been so preoccupied with the comic stylings of Trumpo the Clown I’ve been neglecting the obnoxious antics of conservatives in other parts of the world.  Let’s take a quick look this week at what some foreign idiots have been up to recently shall we?  The story that caught my eye involved government authorities in Singapore tossing a seventeen year old kid named Amos Yee in jail on the charge of posting online videos and comments critical of Christianity and Islam.  Yes, it seems they determined such criticism might prove more than their feeble minded compatriots can handle.  Technically they found the kid guilty of “wounding religious feelings” and noted by way of explanation his unwelcome brain activity could “generate social unrest.”  Apparently it’s Mr. Yee’s second jail term in as many years.  The government of Singapore just can’t get the kid to shut up.  He was previously booked into Hotel Singapore on the charge of insulting a former ruler of the place.  Don’t you just love and respect countries like that?  I shudder to think what might have happened had he insulted the current ruler.  I’m having a mental image of some martial arts nut whacking his bottom with a great bamboo pole or something like that.  Wait, did that happen to some other kid?  Can’t remember.  But someone was beating someone, that’s for sure.  Anyway, that’s one brave kid, right?  He certainly deserves the respect of liberals and humanists everywhere.

Social conservatives are always trying to pull something like this aren’t they?  Clearly they believe their noxious claptrap can only flourish if no one is allowed to discuss or criticize it and you know I think they might be on to something... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

GOP Joins ISIS To Foment Discord

Welcome friends!

I actually had something else lined up for today but unfortunately events intervened once again and I decided to instead say something relating to our many Parisian comrades who were gunned down a few days ago in the latest CMA (i.e. crazy Muslim attack).  Before anyone gets unduly annoyed and starts running after me with the cutlery let me just clarify that the correct way to parse that phrase in my opinion is “crazy Muslim” attacks; not crazy “Muslim attacks.”  Yes, it makes a difference, which I’ll discuss shortly.  Of course, my blog is mostly about ideas so it wasn’t entirely clear to me what I should say.  I started out well enough, “murder bad,” but then found myself at a bit of an impasse.  You know me.  I need something to unravel or work through or clear up or confront or rebut.  Fortunately the group commonly known here in the US as the Stupid Party, the by now mind numbingly conservative Republican Party, managed to get it twisted and start talking about refusing Syrian refugees, closing mosques, conflicts between civilizations, etc.  Not exactly a fitting tribute to our fallen brothers and sisters in my opinion.  A bit irritating really.  Hey, now we’re getting somewhere!

Let me start out by acknowledging the small kernel of truth in the conservative argument, which is that Islam (by which I mean the Islamic religion as opposed to the collection of people living in various Middle Eastern countries) seems to be having a bit of a problem with violent interpretations... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Ideas and People Revisited

Welcome friends!

I was just sitting here thinking mostly of ideas and a little bit about people and it occurred to me the famous difficulty conservatives tend to have distinguishing the two can be expressed in two rather different ways one involving other people and their ideas and the other involving conservatives themselves and their own ideas.  I’m quite sure I’ve discussed both separately before but I don’t think I’ve ever remarked on the fact they’re actually two sides of the same coin.  So let me go ahead and do that this time around.  Should only take a moment or two.

The typical manifestation of the first expressions of this phenomenon, the one involving other people, is the tendency of conservatives to oppress and quite often physically assault people who express ideas they don’t like.  I was thinking about this the other day while reading a little news item involving the murder at the hands of Muslim religious zealots in Bangladesh of an American atheist author and blogger named Avijit Roy who was apparently visiting the old country in a rather misguided albeit noble attempt to introduce his former compatriots to more modern modes of thinking.  All joking aside let me just say I take my hat off to the man.  He died a martyr to the liberal humanist cause of promoting human reason and secular ethics.  A few more people like him and some of these more backward countries might actually get someplace someday.  Anyway, it seems Mr. Roy was attacked as he walked home from a book fair with his wife by a group of men wielding what one article described as meat cleavers and another as knives and machetes, although since we’re apparently talking about an entire posse of violent goons I suppose they may well have been armed with meat cleavers, knives, and machetes.  I wonder, what is it about Muslim religious extremists and edged weapons anyway?  When they’re not chasing someone down the street with a meat cleaver they’re chopping someone’s head off with a sword.  I suppose their choice of weapon doesn’t really matter, it’s all murder after all, but it just seems so damned weird and foreign to an American.  What do they have against guns?  Too modern?  Too Western?  I know they have them.  When I see news from the Middle East it often seems to involve footage of a jeep or truck of some sort careering through town with an unruly mob of bearded men in robes hanging onto the sides yelling incoherently and shooting AK-47s in every direction.  And didn’t we have a story just the other day involving some Islamic terrorists gunning down some random tourists at a museum in Tunisia?  But I digress.  My point is this is the sort of thing one expects to see whenever conservatives encounter ideas they don’t like.  We have examples of this sort of thing nearly every day.  Need another one but you can do without the bucket of blood?  Well, how about the recent case in Egypt involving a young college kid named Karim al-Banna who wrote a blog post supposedly promoting secularist ethics and atheism and was promptly sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting Islam.”  It’s ironic in a way because Egypt’s constitution ostensibly protects freedom of belief but it turns out they’re only talking about beliefs involving so-called “Abrahamic religions” such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and so on.  The only freedom associated with other beliefs such as humanism and secularism in Egypt is the Egyptian authorities’ freedom to cart one off to prison.

But enough of that.  Let’s move on to a typical manifestation of the second expression of this phenomenon, the one involving conservatives and their own ideas, which is the tendency of conservatives to portray themselves as unjustly put upon by people who reject or criticize their ideas.  This is a very common form of argument here in the US.  The conclusion is generally that liberals and humanists are intolerant jerks (“like Nazis” as most populist conservative windbags would phrase it here) because they criticize conservatives’ ideas.  You also see this sort of thing with conservatives abroad.  Witness for example the many foreign Muslim persons “insulted” by people who fail to abide by their religious prohibitions on cartoons, depictions of Mohammed, and all manner of other things.

Maybe I should just go over this whole idea versus people distinction one more time.  Being tolerant of other people is good.  Politeness is a virtue.  Being tolerant of what one perceives to be a bad idea is not good.  We needn’t be polite to bad ideas.  Why?  Ideas aren’t people.  One isn’t doing anyone any favors by not calling out a bad idea as soon as one sees it.  Of course when one is calling out a bad idea it’s always preferable to at least try to be polite to the people who might support that idea and confine one’s arguments to the actual idea itself.  This can sometimes require a bit of attention because our language has an unfortunate tendency to personalize everything.  For example, when one encounters a person spouting off some bad idea the best way of expressing one’s disagreement is to say what that person is saying is wrong.  But how easy is it to slip into saying instead that person is wrong as though the person were a proposition that could be right or wrong?  And who doesn’t get annoyed when someone personalizes an intellectual discussion like that?  The emphasis is all wrong.

Now I wouldn’t have thought this whole idea versus people distinction would be particularly difficult to grasp so why do so many conservatives seem to have so much difficulty with it?  Well, since you ask, I think there are two things going on.

First we have some conservatives who are anti-intellectual in the sense of not being interested at all in entertaining ideas that are different from their own and who simply lust after power over their fellow man and woman.  These people aren’t confused about anything in particular.  They just don’t want people contradicting whatever they happen to be saying, which is more often than not something of a religious nature.  If they could climb into one’s head and control one’s brain they’d be happy to do that but failing that they’d at least like to control such outward manifestation of mental processes as what comes out of one’s mouth.

Second we have some conservatives who actually are interested in ideas but who want to discuss ideas in popular venues where some entertainment value attaches to personalizing otherwise dry intellectual debates by introducing gratuitous ad hominem attacks and an underlying us versus them narrative.  I find this sort of conservative relatively benign.  To be perfectly frank this sort of thing is practically a requirement if one intends to engage in any sort of political discourse here in the US.  One would like to think most people would be above such things but the reality is many people are not.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned before this is where all my talking about “conservatives” come from.  To state the obvious: what I don’t like are conservative ideas; I don’t know beans about the people holding the ideas beyond that for one reason or another they appear to be attracted to bad ideas.  But that doesn’t stop me from going on about conservatives, does it?

So if everyone is doing it then what’s the big problem?  Well, I suppose it must involve the presence or absence of some sense of proportion.  One doesn’t want to get lumped together with the sort of person who might brandish a meat cleaver or throw a college kid in jail for writing an essay.  If you feel you need to personalize things a bit to keep some people interested in what you’re saying then go for it but proceed as quickly as possible to the substance of your argument.  Don’t just sit there and blab on and on about how horrible you find The Other.  Say something sensible.  And by the way it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of humor about these things.  I suppose you must realize when one makes ad hominem attacks one is basically making a complete ass of oneself, right?  Hopefully one is at least being a funny, entertaining, or engaging sort of ass, but an ass nonetheless.  When it’s time to get serious forget the person and take up the idea.  But just so you know in my experience talking about ideas can be a lot more difficult and confusing than talking about people.  Some people just don’t have the patience for it.  One will necessarily lose some percentage of one’s audience.  So what’s the optimal mix of ass and philosopher to function effectively in a popular American context?  Well, I don’t know.  But I’m working on it.  I’m always working on it.  I’m working on it right now.

References

US-Bangladesh blogger Avijit Roy hacked to death.  BBC.  February 27, 2015.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31656222.

Police arrest man in hacking death of Bangladeshi-American blogger Avijit Roy.  Farid Ahmed.  CNN.  March 2, 2015.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/02/asia/bangladeshi-american-blogger-death/index.html.

Watchdog: Student jailed in Egypt’s crackdown on atheism.  Eliot McLaughlin.  CNN.  January 13, 2015.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/us/egypt-student-atheist-jailed/index.html.

Merry Christmas 2014

Welcome friends!

It was a dark and stormy night.  Well, dark and cold anyway.  Yes, the winter solstice is upon us once again and that can only mean one thing: spring must surely follow.  Winter first of course.  But when the days begin to grow longer flowers and bunny rabbits are sure to arrive sooner or later.  Always a nice feeling, right?  Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Yuletide season or as I guess they say now Christmas.

Yes, Christmas.  Such a complicated time for adults of a certain age and even more so for adults of a certain age who are humanists... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Religion and Nature: The Template Problem

Welcome friends!

I was just contemplating why religious people tend to have such a rigid, simplistic, intrusive, and ultimately obnoxious relationship to other people, which is an issue that is often on my mind these days, particularly whenever I read the daily news.  I reviewed one of my previous posts on the subject in which I suggested part of the problem may arise from religious people’s egotistical infatuation with their own intellect and storytelling ability, which I linked to a concomitant preference for relatively simple and stylized narratives over messy reality, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with what I said there.  (Religion and the Great I in the Sky.  August 19, 2011.)  I wouldn’t necessarily say I’ve changed my mind.  I still think that’s very likely a significant part of the problem.  But it did occur to me we might be talking about something operating at an even more primitive or subconscious level than the ego, which I suppose would already be pretty primitive and subconscious, so you know we’re going back a ways.  I’m now wondering if we might be talking about religion’s power to shape the entire way one thinks about the world.  It’s a somewhat interesting issue to me because it gets to the nexus of the positive and normative, which is where I think all manner of confusing but interesting things tend to happen.  You say it doesn’t really sound all that interesting?  Well, OK, let me break it down into two posts so I can keep things moving.  In this first post I’ll address this issue in the context in which the religious mode of thought tends to put an ethical spin on things that strike secular humanists as really outside the scope of ethics per se, which I think is the more straightforward and obvious case.  In the next post I’ll address this issue in the context in which both groups tend to agree we’re talking about ethics.

I’m sure I must have mentioned many times before I think the central theme of the liberal ethos is that we really have no business getting involved in another person’s affairs unless that person is doing something that has a significant effect on other people, in which case we have an interpersonal conflict we need to think about how to resolve because we’re going to become implicated in its resolution one way or another, either through our action or our inaction.  One way of thinking about this idea is that there is a realm where the actions of other people present ethical problems we need to address and another realm in which they don’t.  Now as I’ve said before I don’t think restricting the scope of what we mean by ethics in this way implies one has to be agnostic with respect to what one might choose to do in isolation, that is to say, without significantly affecting other people.  One can still think a particular course of action is preferable to another.  It’s just that it might be more useful to think of this situation as involving something other than ethics, per se, maybe preferences.  For example, one may think one ought to respect one’s own health and given the choice of a glass of beautiful life sustaining wine and a glass of that noxious mixture of sugar, gas, and water known as soda pop one should really always choose the wine.  However, it seems a little funny to your average humanist to think about that as an ethical issue, per se.  Yes, we can argue back to first principles very much as we do with ethics, and it certainly involves what one thinks one ought to do, but in some fundamental sense it doesn’t really involve other people in the way more serious ethical issues do.  We can try to hash out which drink is preferable but in the end I don’t really need to get involved in whatever you decide to do.  No one but you is being harmed and being a free man or woman you can harm yourself if that’s what you want to do.  Now I suppose we could also think of it as a sort of ethical issue that is just a different sort of ethical issue than the sort that involves resolving interpersonal conflicts.  However, I think it’s clearer to give that category of issues an entirely different name, such as preferences.  You may prefer soda pop and I may prefer wine, and we might both have our very cogent reasons for our preferences, and we could always get together and discuss them, but I think in the end you should drink whatever you want to drink and I would hope you extend the same consideration to me.

Now I’ve noted before religious people tend to have trouble seeing the significance of this whole issue of having or not having a significant effect on other people and hence typically don’t have much appreciation of the liberal ethos.  They see behavior in isolation as every bit as much of an ethical matter as behavior that affects other people.  The interesting question is why do they think that way?

Well, I suspect part of what’s going on is that religious people have been trained to view the world as having been created by a supernatural entity operating with a sort of perfect template or blueprint and that the essence of ethics is trying to bring things into alignment with this template of divine perfection.  In other words, for religious people there’s a best and most correct form for everything.  And when you think like that all manner of peculiar things tend to get imbued with ethical significance, although diversity is generally not one of them.  In contrast, I think secular humanists tend to view the external world more in the context of nature and of course nature thrives on variation, mutability, and change.  Indeed, life is such a powerful force precisely because it is forever changing and mutating to fit any niche and take any advantage.  It’s something that was really driven home to me a few years ago when I happened to visit the very high quality San Diego Zoo but really I suppose visiting any major zoo would do the trick.  Just spend the entire day surveying our fellow creatures and you’ll see what I mean.  Such an astounding profusion of life.  I had the impression I must have seen every possible permutation of limbs, hides, sensory organs, body shapes, colors, sizes, abilities, and everything else.  You know, if something works at all then nature will try it and if it doesn’t work right now nature will be sure to try it again later.  When you start from this more outward looking and naturalistic perspective it just doesn’t really make sense to think of everything in terms of its correspondence or lack of correspondence to some template of perfection.  Were the dodo bird and the dinosaur perfect?  Well, yes and no.  They were perfect in the same way we all are.  They were fine until they weren’t, then they died.  From this more naturalistic perspective diversity, variability, and mutability is the natural order.

I think this difference in fundamental perspectives is particularly noticeable in two areas where religious people tend to find a great deal of ethical content and secular humanists tend to think we’re not really talking about ethics at all.  The first area is the theory of evolution.  Secular humanists tend to see this theory as simply what it is: a scientific theory that explains rather well the observed development of species over time.  There’s nothing particularly ethical or unethical about it.  Like the external world, it is what it is.  You may have noticed many religious people on the other hand tend to find that particular scientific theory rather troubling and challenging, which I think one can fairly surmise comes from the notion that the theory of evolution is corrosive to the religious way of thinking about the world and indeed about ethics.  I think it’s just very hard to maintain a belief in an ideal template if everything keeps changing all the time.  I suppose you could have a dynamic template of change, but it’s just not really the same, is it?  And for religious people once you’ve gotten rid of the ideal template you’ve gotten rid of the basis of ethics, and you know that can’t be good.

The second area in which this template problem becomes rather obvious is the differing perspectives on the ethical significance of homosexuality.  For secular humanists like me homosexuality itself just does not seem to present an ethical issue.  To me it’s more in the realm of natural variation.  Where does it come from?  How should I know and why should I care?  It doesn’t make any difference to me.  I suppose human sexuality is complicated.  Maybe it’s just random variation.  Or maybe it’s related to something else that has proven useful in an evolutionary sense.  I’d suggest it might have something to do with our oversized craniums getting in the way of the impulse to procreate but I think they’ve observed homosexuality in many species that are less gifted in that department than we are.  So let’s just say I have no idea.  But since I’m not really thinking in terms of a template of ideal sexuality I really don’t see any need to worry about this type of variability.  The fact some people are or anyway seem to be homosexual doesn’t imply to me everyone must be homosexual at some level or if I don’t denounce it then I’m implying everyone should be homosexual, any more than the fact that I recognize there tends to be relatively more straight people implies to me everyone must really be straight or everyone ought to be straight.  It’s fine with me if people differ in this way.  You know, some people seem to be really, really straight; some seem to be really, really gay; and some people seem to be a bit more flexible in that department.  What difference does it make?

Now religious people famously have a rather different take on this issue.  As in the case for everything else in this world religious people believe there’s a correct form of human sexuality and an incorrect form or really I suppose a multiplicity of incorrect forms.  According to their philosophy, God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.  It’s the template that matters.  Adam can’t have been straight and gay; we have to choose one or the other and whatever we choose will have to be the best and what we should all aspire to.  And since bringing the world into correspondence with this ideal template is for religious people the essence of ethics the idea some people might be gay and thus diverging from the template becomes a matter of great ethical significance.  It doesn’t take very much imagination to see the same general phenomenon at work in other forms of intolerance of human diversity such as racism, culturalism, nationalism, and even sexism.  You know, Adam must have been one race or another.  God didn’t create a white Adam, a black Adam, and an Asian Adam.  Adam, and hence God whose image he supposedly recreated according to Christian doctrine, must have looked a lot more like some people than other people.  God didn’t create a fair haired and a dark haired Adam, a tall and a short Adam, a thin and a fat Adam, an intelligent and a slow Adam, a cold and an emotional Adam, etc.  As for behaviors, well Adam either did or did not shave, sport a mullet or an Afro, eat bananas, and whatever else one might choose to do or not do in a fantastical garden of the imagination.  And as far as sexism goes, well, God’s image must correspond to either Adam or Eve.  It can’t very well correspond to both or we’d end up with a great Conchita in the Sky, and you know our Russian friends would never stand for that!

Things get a little different when we start thinking about intellectual artifacts like ethics.  We pretty much have to have some sort of ideal template in our minds in that case or it’s hard to know what we mean by acting ethically.  But notice I said in our minds, not in the world, and that’s rather a big difference.  You want to get things in the right order or you won’t know which way to go.  And where the mind meets the world in the context of what we all agree are ethical issues, well, that’s where things can start to get a tad confusing.  But let’s save that for next time, shall we?

A Secular View On Death And The Afterlife

Welcome friends!

I bet you thought I was going to talk about the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down limits on donations to political campaigns thus ensuring beleaguered rich folk an even more disproportionate influence on our otherwise rather democratic political process.  And when I say the Supreme Court I mean of course conservative members of the Supreme Court.  Do conservatives ever sleep?  But I’ve been getting so heavy recently I thought I might change it up and do a lighter topic despite the depressing news of the day.  If I tried to confront every outrage perpetrated by conservatives as soon as they perpetrated it I’d never have time for anything else.  I’ll get it to next time.  Or maybe the time after that.  Anyway, what set me on my merry way this week was a little visit I had the other day from one of my dearly departed.  I’m talking about in my dreams, of course.  Yes, you may or may not have lived long enough to appreciate it but an unfortunate byproduct of aging is that some of your loved ones no longer appear in the world of the living but come to you only in your memories and sometimes in your dreams.  Well, I guess that can happen at pretty much any age but at some point it becomes all but inevitable.  It got me thinking a bit about life and death and the idea of an afterlife and that sort of thing, which led me in turn to contemplate the role certainty and uncertainty play in religious and secular thinking about death.  Well, OK, maybe that doesn’t sound all that light, but it’s all good.  We all have to die some time, you know, to make room for the young and to discharge our debt to nature if for no other reason.  Doesn’t hurt to think about it now and then... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!