Writing the previous post about religion reminded me that I never did comment on the two student panels on religious matters that I went to a couple of weeks ago. The details aren’t terribly important, but they provide some local anecdotal support for Sean’s demographic point.
(Alternate post title: “I Believe the Children Are Our Future”)
The two events were panel discussions featuring students talking about “Growing up X in America” where “X” is a religion of your choice. I missed the first two (X=”Muslim” and X=”Jewish”), because they fell during a hellishly busy part of the term for me, but I made it to the last two, X=”Atheist/ Agnostic” and X=”Ethnic Catholic.”
The Atheist/ Agnostic panel was entirely made up of students, and mostly consisted of stories about how they had wandered into atheism at some point in their lives. The exception being a history major who delivered a ten-minute rant about how religion was historically a tool of class oppression, and we must smash the state, yadda, yadda, yadda. The Ethnic Catholic panel featured a group of students, but also the college Catholic chaplin, who held forth for far too long about Catholic doctrine, before the students took over to talk about the role of faith in their lives.
As you might expect, the two panels were mostly very different in tone, but thinking about them together, I’m struck by the implications of the answers they gave to some questions.
In the case of the Atheist/ Agnostic panel, the interesting element was that all of the students on the panel came from families of mixed religious backgrounds– one parent Christian, one Jewish, or one parent Buddhist, one Christian, etc. When I pointed that out, they speculated that this left them with a sense that there were other options, and noted that their parents hadn’t really pressured them to pick one or the other. One of them said “I asked my parents about it, and they said ‘What were we going to do? Flip a coin?'”
In the case of the Catholic panel, the interesting response came when another faculty member asked the students whether they preferred to hang out with other Catholic students, or date other Catholic students. They had just gone on at some length about the vital role their relationship with the Church played in their lives, but every one of them turned out to be currently involved in a relationship with somebody of another faith. None of them were particularly bothered by this (though most of them admitted they hadn’t told their parents).
Now, of course, “anecdote” is not the singular form of “data,” but it strikes me that both of these are sort of indicative of a loosening in the way people view religion. My parents’ generation wasn’t allowed to be quite so casual about that sort of thing– there’s a story on my father’s side of the family about the time one of my uncles had the temerity to start dating a Protestant, and Uncle Tony had to lay down the law. (It’s not quite as ominous as that description makes it sound…) My grandmother considered it a huge concession to allow all three of her sons to marry Irish girls, but non-Catholics would’ve been completely out of the question (she did concede that the Irish thing worked out all right…).
Now, granted, I’m dealing with an effete liberal elite Northeastern private college demographic, here (though three or four of the students involved were children of recent immigrants), but I find this a hopeful sign. Given the increased prominance of fundamentalist Protestants, it’s easy to forget the degree to which most of our society has become more relaxed about religion over time. Forty years ago, the relationships they take for granted would’ve been much less casual, while today, they looked at the faculty asking questions like we were some sort of space aliens for finding it worthy of comment.
So, the answer to the question I mentioned in a previous post, “How do we make atheism more acceptable politically?” may just be “Wait until the old people die– their kids are much more sane.”
“Wait until the old people die– their kids are much more sane.”
Not down here in the bible belt. Sometimes I have hope, but there are lots of otherwise intelligent people who think Answers in Genesis is a good place for biology information.
You mean like some of my relatives? I have a degree in physics, and I’ve been told by relatives that Answers in Genesis is a much better source of information than I am.
Sadly, I must back Mark up here. The number of otherwise intelligent, reasonable young people with backward, pig-ignorant attitudes about religion down here is nothing short of appalling. There’s still plenty of folks with more modern ideas, but it’s a real pain having to second guess how much of a loonie on the subject any given person might be…
The claim is not that all young people are sane, or that there are no loonies among the young. That would be silly, as the only young-Earth creationist I can recall meeting personally lived down the hall from me my freshman year in college.
The claim (insofar as you can even call it a claim– it’s mostly just an anecdote) is that statistically speaking, members of the younger generation are likely to have a more relaxed attitude toward religion than their parents.
Chad, although that might be true in other parts of the country, I see no evidence of that where I live. The educational system is fairly backward in many ways (see the Georgia general assembly enabling teaching the bible, with loudly-stated intentions to teach only the historical and literary aspects). The tendency toward fundamentalism is very strong in the south. I certainly hope the current trends in the south are temporary, but my anecdotal evidence tends not to support that hope. Maybe I will be proven wrong. Maybe it’s just that the fundies are make more noise.
When I was a kid, it seemed perfectly obvious to me that a civil public space, a secular humanist marketplace for ideas and commerce and education, was the best possible frame for people of good will and diverse religions to live according to their various faiths. I am a religious person from the midwestern US. I don’t think I’m much older than you are. (I’m 37.) Sometimes I wonder what the hell changed.
I don’t want to keep prayer out of public schools because I’m an atheist. I want prayer out of public schools because such prayer would almost certainly be Christian (these days, maybe even fundamentalist Christian), and I would consider it idolatrous to participate. Secular humanism and enlightenment values in public space don’t try to convert anyone — everyone is free to go off to their churches or synagogues or temples or groves or homes, and pray as they wish.
Somehow, the fundamentalist Christians who are trying to take over my country made enough progress that people are trying to oppose them with militant atheism. Trying to force biblical creation stories into science curricula is scary, and scared people behave irrationally in opposition. I don’t know if the opposition strategy will be effective, or if it will do more harm than good in damaging the whole idea of a humanist culture where individuals can practice any faith, or none, freely.
In a sense most of America is athiest. Like you said in a previous post, most people go to church for social reasons and if they respect a certain tradition its usually just to pay respects to their parents and so forth. And when you compare athiests to say “agnostic” or “lapsed catholic” they are pretty much the same in terms of behaivor.
I think its a good sign that people don’t really much care what your religion is in most cases. But of cource, there still are some problems. Even saying you are atheists in front of people you don’t know could cause many problems, while saying I go church causes almost none. Two steps foward one step back so to say.
(I’m techincally roman catholic but my mom never practiced and she let me choose what I wanted to be. I would like to say that atheism is naturall, but the fact is my mom was an athiest and so am I, so I guess that doesn’t make me better than a Christian son from a Christian family. Stupid humanism)
Instead of calling yourself an atheist, and triggering panic in many people who have been indoctrinated to react to atheism as a pejorative label, as if you had called yourself a racist, rapist, or nazi, just tell people you believe in facts, and on everything else, you avoid forming beliefs until all the facts are in.
If they ask what a “fact” is, illustrate with some examples, such as “It is a fact that you are a person and you are standing in front of me,” and so on. Explain the difference between facts and imagination. I don’t have to imagine you (the person before me), because I can see and hear you, and if you are cute and willing, I could feel you too. All the evidence from my senses points to one inescapable conclusion: you really are a person, and you really are standing before me. My imagination is not powerful enough to predict exactly what you will say and do next, so it is obvious to me that I cannot be imagining you. Nothing I can imagine is exactly like the experience of having you here. You keep surprising me, so you are not merely a figment of my imagination. (Of course it is hypothetically possible that nothing is real and I’m just dreaming everything, but nobody behaves as if that is really true. I don’t, for example, cut my hand off.)
Most people, if they are sane, will quickly realize they agree with your sane approach to believing in facts, because they believe in facts too. (A favored weapon of Fundamentalist Muslims is the AK-47, a fine automatic rifle which came from the godless Communist nation called the USSR. Muslims embrace this atheist invention because it quite clearly works. Even Muslims can process facts.) Then the burden is on them to explain why they believe in some things which are not facts (for example, the supernatural claims of one specific sect/school/schism within one particular religion), while simultaneously rejecting the supernatural claims of all other existing and possible religions. Invariably, they won’t do a good job of explaining why they do that. The explanation will always be circular, and will always boil down to nothing more than “Well, that’s what I do.”
After all, if any religion could prove its claims from facts, there wouldn’t be any more religious debate, just as there is no more serious debate about whether the Earth is flat. (Apparently there may be a small group of Flat Earthers who really are serious, but I have never met one of them.)
It’s important to have an answer for all the stereotypical objections and accusations you will get from religious people. For example, when they chide you for having no basis on which to construct an absolute morality, point out that they don’t either. For example, ask them if they have a moral obligation to report child molesters to the police, if they should happen across one committing an offense. Most will say of course; it would be a sin not to report it. Then ask them if God sees all the child molesters. Yes, He does. Why does God not report them to the police? Is God sinning by remaining silent?
God cannot sin; therefore, it is not a sin for God to fail to report child molesters to the police. But that means there is no absolute morality, because the same inaction which is a sin for man is not a sin for God. Morality is therefore relative depending on who you are.
It’s fun to play these logical games with religious people, because every religion is inherently illogical. The only logical conclusion we can draw from the facts is that we simply don’t know whether or not Jesus really rose from the dead, or whether the Muslim suicide bombers really do wake up in Paradise to 72 virgins, or whether Santa Claus delivers presents around the world every year. Every religion teaches people to believe more than they actually know, and it’s not difficult to find many instances where a religious person is overstepping his or her knowledge. But that won’t shake a religious person’s faith, because faith is an emotion and has nothing to do with logic. Every successful religion is already fully waterproofed against facts, for example by telling its marks that at some point in the future, God will appear and explain everything which doesn’t seem to make sense now.