The Undemocratic Ideal

Reading Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational has gotten me thinking about popular opinion of the role of government in relation to social norms. Ariely advances the position that the government may have some power or responsibility to create or uphold social norms because social norms are are essential to personal happiness and welfare and are endangered by being replaced by market norms.

My own opinion on the matter aside, this strikes me as antithetical to democracy. In a democracy, the role of government is to reflect the will of the people--that is, to reflect the social norms. An attempt in a democracy to shape cultural norms means that the will of a minority is being exercised. (If it were the will of the majority, it would already be the prevailing norm.) Yet, it is an attractive and inspiring position: a lot of good might be created by manipulating social norms to promote helping, for example.

Democracy, of course, is a deeply-rooted American value. It is spoken of with reverance by politicians on the right and the left, and it is honored in civics classrooms.

Given this, I wonder what percentages of people would agree with each of the following two statements:

1. A government has a responsibility to enact the will of its people;
2. A government has a responsibility to promote social norms that will benefit its people.

And what percentage of people would agree with both statements? After all, the former represents government of the people and by the people. The latter is government for the people.

Which do you agree with? Or am I wrong about the antithetical nature of these statements?

Tempered Enthusiasm for Obama

I've been hearing whisperings of satisfaction with the new President among libertarians. In the blogosphere, Will Wilkinson echoes Radley Balko in praising Obama's first 40 hours of service. Of course, some are also discussing the possibility that the moves are merely symbolic gestures, leaving a lot of loose ends that could be tied up in any number of ways.

My opinion is that it seems like a good trick. Yes, I generally approve of the cited actions, but it is easy to start with a rush of items with broad popular appeal to set a high anchor. I am reserving judgment until I see a lot more.

Atheism is . . .

I've recently joined a few groups that are specifically atheist-oriented. Though I never previously sought atheist company, I'd often find out years after becoming friends with someone that she is an atheist. I don't hold any conscious attitude that atheists are better people or friends or that they even differ on average from non-atheists, but since whatever selection criteria I have for friends seems to implicitly select for atheists, when I decided to meet some new people, atheism seemed like a reasonable enough starting point.

I attended a meeting of one of these groups the other night (a lovely group of women gathered for tea and conversation), and I was surprised when one of the members commented, "I find it hard to imagine someone's being an atheist and not being a socialist."

One of the reasons I never previously sought atheist company is that I have never thought of atheism as a thing--or a belief--in and of itself, and I don't see how corollary beliefs could be founded on it. Atheism is a denial of a particular belief, but it doesn't inherently offer any alternative beliefs. The only thing that can be positively said about atheists is what they are not. They are not theists. They are not those who ascribe a high probability to theistic answers to questions of existence. Any further definition fails.

I've encountered the positive assertion that atheists believe in or look to science as an alternative source of knowledge to religion. While I imagine most atheists have a scientific outlook, this is neither necessary nor sufficient for atheism. It's not necessary because although science seems like an obvious choice for alternative explanations, it is possible to believe that a theistic explanation for life is false without believing that a naturalistic one is correct. I have known atheists who are disinterested in science, who have an intuitive sense that religion is man-made but who aren't particularly interested in questions of origins or purposes. Though some of them I'm sure tacitly accept that science holds or can find reasonable explanations for existence, they aren't particularly interested in what these explanations are. These are atheists who just don't ask questions about origins, and they don't need or seek an alternative to religion for answers to these questions. It is not necessary to believe, for example, that humans are products of naturalistic evolution to believe that they are not the product of divine creation. Even is a scientific alternative were necessary, that a scientific outlook is not sufficient for atheism is obvious from the many examples of theist scientists and lay persons with an interest in science.

Atheists are also not necessarily naturalists. Though many atheists are also a-supernaturalists, this is also not a necessary condition for atheism. (Sufficient, yes.) Though it strikes me as a contradiction, I have known at least one atheist who asserted a belief in ghosts and hauntings. The crux here is that atheism makes only one specific denial--of creative gods or forces. It does not explicitly address belief in other supernatural phenomena. Though I struggle to find consonance between denial of deities and acceptance of ghosts, I must acknowledge that a person holding such beliefs qualifies as an atheist.

It becomes apparent from examples like this that if atheism (though not necessarily atheists) does not offer an alternative explanation for the claims it denies, it certainly does not offer an extended philosophical dogma to replace the network of claims made by religions and religious philosophies.

It is even easier for me to imagine atheists who are not socialists than to imagine atheists who are not naturalists. This is because many of the atheists I know personally are right-wing libertarians. These people perhaps see libertarianism as an extension of atheism as strongly as my company at tea sees socialism as naturally following from atheism. If the latter believe that equality is the most salient feature of atheism (perhaps in reaction to the view some religions hold that their followers are in some way better than or at least different from non-adherents), a political system that enforces that equality is indeed a natural extension of that philosophy. The libertarian atheists may see individual sovereignty as the most salient feature (reacting against dogmatic prescriptions for belief and behavior provided by some religions), and so they naturally choose a political philosophy that attempts to grant just that. Neither is an incorrect view for an atheist, precisely because atheism doesn't offer any particular belief. It is not necessary to see all people as equal to be an atheist, and it is not necessary to believe in individual sovereignty to be an atheist: atheism does not offer a specific moral code or political ideology.

Atheism, in fact, offers nothing. It is only a useful concept in that atheists are a minority and that religion is such a large, pervasive, and powerful social institution. There are many beliefs I do not hold. I do not, for example, believe communism is viable or desirable--I emphatically believe the opposite, in fact. Yet, I would not intentionally seek out other a-communists, and I certainly wouldn't attend a tea to discuss my and others' non-belief in communism.

But I can imagine a situation in which I would. If I lived in a communist country and was an a-communist, I would seek other a-communists and form a society that provided validation for my a-communism and that perhaps sought to challenge the communist beliefs of others. Even if the members of the group had extremely divergent political ideologies, we would benefit from association based what we do not believe. This is, in fact, why I actively seek atheist company. It is not that I imagine atheists to share my political, moral, or philosophical beliefs or even my interests or hobbies. As a minority, we are a group, but as atheists, we have nothing inherently in common. And as a minority that opposes the existing social paradigm, we have a lot to gain from association--at least until declared atheists are of such great numbers that the social paradigm has shifted.

Despite its utility as a minority identity, I have to conclude that atheism is nothing. Atheists are not atheists. They are humanists, Randian objectivists, naturalists, or adherents of any number of other philosophies. They are socialists, libertarians, communists, Democrats, Republicans. But as a group they are nothing in particular.

How to Make an Atheist

This is a revised version of something I wrote in December 2002, explaining my atheism. Though throughout it I assert that I believed in God and Jesus, I don't mean this in the way a religious person would. This "belief" was never something I thought about, except as I mention below, or that influenced my actions.


Around this time of year, someone invariable asks me, “Does your family celebrate Christmas?” My usual answer is this: There is a tree, we get together, open presents, etc., but there is no mention of God or the Christ.

Then I tell them a story.

I used to sit next to my friend Kelly on the bus to elementary school. I was probably in third grade when she asked me what religion I was. I didn’t know; in fact, it had never occurred to me that I didn’t know. I’m not sure if I even knew that “religion” was a word that represented a multitude of beliefs. When I got home, I asked my mother what our religion was. She answered that we were Christians. I asked her what that meant. “It means that we believe in God and Jesus, and that Jesus was God’s son.” This answer meant little to me, as I didn’t know that there were people who didn’t believe that. Why would we need a name for that other than “religion”?
When I told Kelly on the bus the next day that I was a Christian, she revealed that she was Catholic. She explained that I was Catholic, because all Christians are Catholics. No, she realized, it was the other way around. Ok. I believed her.

That was all I learned about religion from my parents. I told my mother this story years ago, and she told me that even she didn’t believe it then, but you couldn’t live without acting like you did. So I was raised basically without religion, but believing that I had one. The rituals and dogma of religious were always something other people did that I never understood.


I learned about praying from my neighbor. She explained it this way: “If you tell God that you really, really love him, he’ll give you what you want.” This sounded a little implausible, but it didn’t cost me anything, so I gave it a try.

So, I believed in God and his son Jesus, and I prayed. At least for a little while. I never did get a pony, so I stopped praying pretty quickly.

One night, my parents friends were guests for dinner. I remember that when it was time for dessert, a conflict came up. There was some issue about me eating the pie she had brought. The controversy was this: if I didn’t eat the pie, I couldn’t attend her Sunday School. I don’t remember if I wanted to go to Sunday School or if I ate the pie, but I did go.

I don’t think I knew what Sunday school was when I made this deal. I remember being very confused in the class. After all, we were supposed to go to learn about religion, but everyone there seemed to know already what it was about. They could recognize paintings of Joseph, and they knew the parables, and other such things. I had no idea who Joseph was or what a parable was. So I was withdrawn from Sunday School. Probably because I didn’t like going. It was just confusing.

My Girl Scout troop met in a church. I think it was a Presbyterian (another word I don’t know how to spell), and I think the explanation for what that meant wad that Presbyterians aren’t Catholics. Once, one of the girls in my troop mentioned something about the difference in time it took to make the New Testament versus that it took to make the Old one. I had no idea what she was talking about. What were these Testaments? It seemed like she was talking a different language.


I was in eighth grade when my brother announced at dinner that he had decided to become an atheist. My parents didn’t seem to care, but the way he said it made it seem like a big deal. I had no idea what an atheist was, so I asked. I reacted quite strongly when I realized what he meant. He proposed something utterly impossible. Everyone knew that God existed and that Jesus was his son.

That night I had the only religious experience of my life in a dream. Mary couldn’t find her baby. I had to find him. I explored a huge, empty house until I found him. In a cradle, covered in blankets, beside a window, with light pouring over him. There was Jesus. This seemed like such an obvious sign that I needed to find Jesus and affirm my faith.

The next day I told my brother about my dream and tried to argue him out of his atheism. He told me that dreams pick up on events from your day and that explained why I had the dream. Since the dream was the only shred of reason I had to believe in God and Jesus and that Jesus was his son, I became an atheist almost on the spot.


People have asked me for years why I am atheist. I wonder how I could have avoided it.

Sensation

Music is such an important cultural and personal phenomenon that most of the people I know believe their lives would be vastly different--and significantly decreased in quality--if there were no such thing. I've never felt this way.

Music is enjoyable, but not something about which I am passionate, that informs part of my identity, or that causes me oodles of pleasure. My family seemed rather shocked when I mentioned this fact at Thanksgiving. After all, I used to go to local shows two to four times a week and attempted to play a couple of instruments. I even started a band. Despite these seemingly music-oriented tendencies, I feel like a bit of a deviant in my total lack of passion for music.

I've come to a tentative conclusion about why I am this way, but it's opened up some even more perplexing questions for me.

I realized recently that I don't experience any sort of passive sense of pleasure from aural sensations. Hearing music (or voices or nature sounds) isn't very inherently pleasurable to me--at least not in the way that other sensations are. When I smell or feel or taste something I really like, I automatically experience a pretty powerful sense of pleasure, with associated chest-tightening, shallow breathing physiological responses. Eating a fresh, ripe peach at the end of August is just about as pleasurable to me as anything could be.

Sounds just don't do this for me without some sort of active engagement. I have to consciously activate cognitive processes to get anything like that same pleasure from aural sensation. Right now, I am listening to Weezer's "Only in Dreams," which is a pretty awesome song, but it is only when I stop writing and begin thinking about the song that I gain any pleasure from it. Otherwise, it is just pleasant but ambient noise. The smell of basil wafting through house, however, would be enough to completely disengage me from whatever I was doing and prevent me from returning to it. It has an incredibly intense automatic effect. To enjoy "Only in Dreams" in a way that even approximates my enjoyment of the smell of basil, however, I would have to choose to abandon my writing and actively focus my attention on the song, and I could switch back to writing just as easily as I abandoned it, without being distracted by the music. The basil, on the other hand, would make continuing writing very difficult.

I don't miss music when it is not there. I do miss delicious foods, soft fabrics, and aromatic candles when they are not there. Aural stimuli affect me at a cognitive level; if I think about it, I can enjoy it. Tactile, gustatory, and olfactory stimuli affect me at a physiological and affective level; I enjoy them without intending to.

This makes me wonder if I am handicapped in enjoying music. Do those who passionately love music experience the same kind of pleasure from it that I get from eating a peach or smelling basil? Does hearing music make them involuntarily experience intense sensations of pleasure?