Rachel’s Musings

In A Guide to Personal Happiness Albert Ellis and Irving Becker suggest ten rules for achieving personal happiness among them:

1. Decide to strive primarily for your own happiness.
2. Decide to put other people’s happiness a close second to your own.
3. Decide that you largely control your own emotional destiny.

Essentially, we are responsible for our own happiness. Yet, society seems to suggest that we can find happiness best through marriage. In her book Singled Out, Bella DePaulo debunks that myth thoroughly but, of course, it remains pervasive.      Continue reading this post » » »

Reading on the Frame Problem about yet another attempt of sneaking ID into classroom reminded me of a discussion I watched yesterday. Akeel Bilgrami, a philosopher at Columbia University, raised an interesting question during an interview on the Humanist Perspective (a show put together by the Center for Inquiry; also see this comment for another link): What is it about the US that makes it such a fertile ground for things like creationism, ID, and other non-scientific nonsense? New Zealand supports evolution. In Europe, evolution is not under attack (as far as I know). So, there might be something rather unique about the US. Bilgrami suggested that a possible reason might be the lack of any social democratic tradition in the U.S. (he mentioned unions in particular that were not offering a secular community). The attitudes that have prevented such things as universal health care might tie in there as well.

Bilgrami calls on us to investigate questions like this rather than spending our time to point out irrational thinking (he says it’s very obvious that ideas of God are irrational). Religion bashing doesn’t get us anywhere. We need to start looking at the needs met by religion and religious institutions. I think answering these questions is an important next steps in making secular humanism a viable option in the U.S..

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart have written about religion in Europe and contrasted it with the US. They touch on similar themes as Bilgrami.

In the latest issue of free inquiry, Paul Kurtz published an editorial about his idea for multi-secularism. Now, I know that Kurtz is a very important figure in the secular humanist movement. I certainly appreciate all the work he has done for us. But what is he trying to say in this editorial? It is a rather confusing read - and I must admit I read the piece in parts, so maybe I missed the connections. As far as I can decipher he is distancing himself from atheism, or what he calls negative atheism, and he is arguing that we should reach out to moderately religious folks to build a multi-secularism. These two themes are intertwined to a point where the message is becoming muddled, which is Kurtz’s call for multi-secularism:

However, secularism needs to be adapted to diverse cultural conditions if it is to gain ground. [...] Accordingly, multi-secularism seems to be the best strategy to pursue: that is, adapting secular ideas and values to the societies in which they arise.

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Apparently, there’s a debate going on in the non-religious community about what we ought to call ourselves: atheists, humanists, freethinkers, brights, somethings… Since I’ve never really been too keen on labeling myself as something forever, I usually take the labels more lightly. So, I am an atheist. But that’s not all I am. I am also a freethinker (sometimes freely associated thinking). I am also a secular humanist. However, I realized that there is more to a label. Take “atheist” for example: I am an atheist - I think there is a very, very low probability that there is a God or any supernatural force/being/something. However, if I am just that, I am stuck in defining myself in opposition to something (theism in this case) and I might end up simply with religion-bashing. While that is probably an important step in my human growth, it would be sad to get stuck there. Bashing something might be fun but it is not very constructive. That’s why I like the label “secular humanist.” This implies the search for answers of the fundamental human questions (e.g., what is the purpose of my life, what happens after death). Rather than bashing someone else’s answers, we are looking for our own answers, knowing that the answers from religions, for example, are not meaningful to us.

Note: I removed the label of a Bright from my original post: I think that the danger of implying “brighter than you” is just too great. I agree with those who think that we just can’t redefine how others call us, especially with a term that already has a clear definition. I don’t see any reason why I can’t say that I am an atheist (and many reasons for doing so as outlined above). To me, there is no need for a new term, especially not an umbrella term coined by two people (which seems a contradiction in itself).

The New York Times reports on Susan Jacoby’s book “The Age of American Unreason.” It is interesting reading the book review - even though it is a rather dumbed down version of a book review - after watching “Friends of God,” a documentary about Christian Evangelicals, which portrait nicely their naive happiness and ignorant bliss.

According to the Times review, Jacboy notes that “anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (”the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.” A scary combination indeed… I would argue - based on my impressions from the documentary - that this fusion has been propagated and encouraged by evangelicals, including, of course, the US president.

I don’t believe in God or gods. I don’t believe there’s some sort of pulsing energy in the universe that is making life possible. In fact, I am starting to have my doubts about consciousness (thanks to an excellent article in Skeptic, “Consciousness is Nothing But a Word” by Henry D. Schlinger). However, I am intrigued by life. Obviously, there is some sort of force that keeps life alive (and I am not talking about something supernatural here!). Every organism contains survival mechanisms, not only for itself but also for its species. Life wants to remain alive - is that a driving force or is that just something that developed because something that isn’t alive cannot reproduce?