130. pococurante

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them:
that’s the essence of inhumanity. After all, my dear, if you watch people carefully,
you’ll be surprised to find how like hate is to love.

— George Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple (1901), Act II

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pococurante, noun: Caring little; indifferent; nonchalant. Adjective: A careless or indifferent person.

Denzel Washington loves his Jesus. He goes to church every Sunday. Allegedly he reads his bible every single day. But you know who he apparently doesn’t love? Atheists.

“The overwhelming majority of sociopaths aren’t violent. They just have a desire to win. They just don’t have a conscience — they don’t have it. The majority of them are atheists as well. So that was the book that was sort of my Bible if you will… in preparation for this part.”

The part in question is his role in the recently released film Safehouse, where he plays an ex-CIA agent turned international criminal. Denzel was talking in an interview (from which the above quote was taken) about his preparation for his part in the film. Now, to be perfectly honest, I think that this is a non-story. Here’s another interview where he talks about the movie:

Washington talks more about waterboarding than he does about atheism. Atheism is mentioned in passing, more as his own personal takeaway from Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door: The ruthless versus the rest of us.

Now, before we get carried away with media portrayals of sociopathy, it’s important to actually define what a sociopath is. Both sociopathy and psychopathy are classed under Antisocial Personality Disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual, fourth edition (DSM-IV), and are characterized as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.” Both sociopathy and psychopathy are characterized by (among other things) a noticeable lack of remorse, regard for the safety or well-being of others, deception (“as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure”), impulsiveness, and “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.”

This is not just a lack of guilt—it’s a complete inability to relate to other human beings. What’s probably most frightening about sociopaths is that they often look “normal,” and that’s part of the mask. The character of Dexter in Jeff Lindsay’s novels exemplifies this sociopathic trait: They don’t understand how other people operate. They’re often very intelligent and are able to study and emulate human behavior in the way that an actor takes on a role, but they don’t internalize.

Okay—back to Denzel.

Shortly after these interviews, the reference to atheists blew up in atheist circles. “Did Actor Denzel Washington Really Call Atheists ‘Sociopaths?’” goes one recent headline from this morning, which signals to me that this is yet another example of people needing some excuse to get bent out of shape. You see this a lot in the gay community too, although (to be fair) atheists don’t have a reason to hear anti-atheist slurs, whereas homophobia really is woven into the societal fabric to an extent. And atheists aren’t routinely harassed, bullied, tortured and beaten to death (or worse) for being atheists. Or being suspected of atheism.

But to be fair to atheists (and myself), we’re tired of having to defend our morality against those who say that you can’t be good without god. I’m not going to waste a keystroke on the various ways that nasty little question is thrown around, but I can make the jump that by even mentioning atheism in the same sentence as sociopathy that Denzel Washington is saying that atheists are sociopaths. But he didn’t. He’s an actor who was quoting from a book. If anything, we should be going after Martha Stout for writing that about atheists! And that would be a waste of time and energy.

So yes, Denzel is a very religious man. He has never made that a secret.

But you know who we’re not talking about in terms of sociopathy? Religious conservatives.

Now, I don’t think that Michele Bachmann, Tony Perkins, Rick Santorum, Tracy Morgan and any politician or celebrity who has made anti-gay remarks are necessarily sociopaths. Nor do I think that opposing gay rights or gay marriage should raise suspicion of a person being antisocial (although for some it should make us wonder about what other issues they’re potentially hiding). They hide behind their “traditional beliefs” and their religious arguments, and on the surface it appears that they genuinely don’t understand why people are so outraged at what they’re saying and doing.

However, many of these people (Tracy Morgan excluded) are just too intelligent to be that simple. If they were your average, church-going rube fundamentalists I might be willing to cede that, but these are educated individuals who have managed to get elected to fairly high political offices (although that in itself is not necessarily proof of intelligence—a certain former President comes to mind). You can’t get to that level without some cunning, or at least knowing how to surround yourself with the right people.

And regarding homosexuality, I think that if you were to pin every anti-gay politician to the wall or (the ghost of Christopher Hitchens forbid) waterboard them long enough, I think they’d all admit that it’s a MacGuffin that keeps conservative voters coming to the polls and voting keeping them in power. Most of them probably don’t personally care much what two guys or girls do in their bedroom.

However, what I do see in the eyes and speeches of Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and Kevin Bryant is indifference, be it genuine or willful. And when your political agenda trumps achieving equality for GLBT Americans, there’s something dangerously wrong with your moral compass.

So who’s the most sociopathical sociopath of them all?

104. respect

Tonight on the Tuesday edition of the CBC’s As It Happens, a story was aired about an ultra-conservative sect of Jewish men who are creating a lot of controversy in Israel by demanding a return of sex segregation and enforcing strict standards of modesty for Jewish women. The story has been covered in the Jerusalem Post, amongst other places, but it’s caused something of a cultural clash between traditional conservatives and progressive secularists. (I’m not quite sure if “secularists” is quite how to describe the latter group, but it seems appropriate when contrasted with the more religious conservatives.)

The issue has struck a bit of a cord when, as the story on the CBC related, the men began protesting outside of an all-girl’s school in the city of Beit Shemesh, harassing and even threatening the children on their way to and from, and then even during, school.

This they do in the name of their religion. And their god.

The sect in question is known as Haredi Judaism. As the article on Wikipedia states, “According to Nachman Ben-Yehuda, ‘the Hebrew word Haredi derives from harada – fear and anxiety – meaning, he who is anxious about, and/or fearful of, the word of the Almighty.’ Nurit Stadler writes that the word ‘meaning those who fear or tremble, appears in Isaiah 66:5: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at His word’.”

There is also the unfortunate case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman convicted in 2006 of the murder of her husband (which carries a stiff prison sentence) but is being sentenced to death by stoning (now commuted to hanging apparently) for the separate crime of adultery. Not surprisingly the outcry from the international community and from amnesty groups has been vocal, but (also not surprisingly) Iran is stubbornly moving forward with the (dare I say it) execution of the sentence.

To modern eyes accustomed to a modern judicial system, this sentence makes absolutely no sense. Prison for murder—but execution for adultery? Where no one was physically hurt or killed, and the only crime is against a husband (which itself is a private matter)? This sentence only makes sense in light of the barbaric views on women still harbored within religious fundamentalism, where women are considered inferior to men by decree from Almighty God.

Even the Apostle Paul, whose writings (presumably) make up a large part of the New Testament of the bible, had this to say about women:

“Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” – 1 Timothy 2:9–15 (ESV)

The popular post-feminist interpretation of verses 11 and 12 of this passage is that Paul was not talking about all women but rather about one woman; that this woman rather was being disruptive and disrespectful of the entire congregation. Yet why would he bookend those verses with directives about women dressing modestly, and then with the reminder that it was Eve and not Adam who brought about the downfall of Mankind?

Yes, this was a different time and the views of the ancient world towards women were dreadful; yet those views have changed little in the Middle and Near East; in places where women often go uneducated, have few to no individual rights, and are themselves given as and considered the property of men.

This is the problem with religious fundamentalism, the kind that I was talking about in the previous article; the kind that is ultimately anti-human in nature. As Stephen Weinberg, who was often quoted by Christopher Hitchens, said, “If you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.”

(“But wait!” you might be saying (if you read my last blog, or have dialogued with me about ethics). “You don’t believe in good and evil. You’ve said so!” And quite rightly, I don’t. To expound on the quote, “If you want to make people, who under normal circumstances try to behave towards others in a kind and respectful manner, do things that even beasts would call beastly, you’ll need religion.” Things like:

• Gunning down a doctor who performs late-term abortions as he is serving as an usher at his church while his wife looks on in horror from her seat in the church choir;
• Blowing yourself up in a crowded marketplace along with numerous others who have done no wrong to you other than to hold differing beliefs;
• And protesting at the funerals of soldiers—who, ironically, died defending your right to protest—with hateful slogans like “Thank God for IEDs”, “Thank God for 9/11” and “Pray for More Dead Soldiers.”)

Fundamentalism not only loathes change: It rallies and often wars against it. It insists with a sharp finger jab to the chest that “the old ways were good enough for your grandparents, and it’ll sure as hell be good enough for you.” It screams, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” and sneers, “So, you think you’re better than us?”

Behind the black hats and the long beards of the Haredi; beneath the turbans, kufiya and the Pashtun dress of the Taliban; and the well-coiffed hair and tailored suits of men like Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann is fear. Theirs is a stern and unsmiling god, graven in their image, who looks down from Heaven with disapproval at anything that they dislike or feel uncomfortable around (which usually has to do with sex or sexuality, something god—even though he technically gifted us with it—is terrified of and detests). They fear anyone on the outside who thinks, believes or behaves differently, and cloister themselves, their families and their children away in guarded communities and schools (or home schools, in the case of many Christians).

It is this fundamentalism that presents the greatest threat to civilization and to progress. It’s the kind that demands that the whole world stop whatever it’s doing and bow down to its god and to its inexorable ethics. It craves the suspending of all human rights, of all human wants and desires, and of all human emotion and need. It demands worship and unwavering devotion, transforming people into mindless hordes marching unquestioningly into the yawning maw of its ravenous god, much like that iconic scene in the silent film Metropolis, where the main character sees a dynamo transformed into the god Moloch.

That’s a bit of a melodramatic description, yes, but no less true. These are the religions that demand that all females subject themselves to males as their superiors, to do with as they please, and as their god permits them to do. These are the religions that mutilate bodies according to the decrees of an ancient holy book. These are the religions that execute homosexuals for the supreme crime of loving someone of the same sex, but also the religions that brainwash gay teens and adults into believing that they are broken, diseased and in need of curing. These are the religions that promise that no matter how awful and unbearable life is on earth, that no matter how much you suffer, if you can hold out long enough, that Heaven is just around the corner, with a bright, shining afterlife.

In a scene from Tony Kushner’s Perestroika, the Angel delivers this prophesy to Prior:

YOU HAVE DRIVEN HIM AWAY! YOU MUST STOP MOVING!
Foresake the Open Road:
Neither Mix Nor Intermarry: Let Deep Roots Grow:
If you do not MINGLE you will Cease to Progress:
Seek Not to Fathom the World and its Delicate Particle Logic:
You cannot Understand, You can only Destroy,
You do not Advance, You only Trample.
Poor blind Children, abandoned on the Earth,
Groping terrified, misguided, over
Fields of Slaughter, over bodies of the Slain:
HOBBLE YOURSELVES!
There is No Zion Save Where You Are!
If you Cannot find your Heart’s desire
In your own backyard,
You never lost it to begin with.
Turn Back. Undo.
Till HE returns again.

This is what all fundamentalist religion demands of humans.

It’s what evangelical Christian parents demand of their gay sons and daughters, that drives those children to despair and sometimes to suicide.

It’s what Haredi men demand of Israeli schoolgirls in Beit Shemesh.

It’s what Iran demands of its people when it puts women to death for adultery, but not for murder.

Or when an Afghan court tries to force a raped woman to marry her attacker to spare her family the shame.

Evolution by nature moves forward. It progresses. The question is: How long before humanity lets go and progresses with it?

103. sucre

Let dreamers dream what worlds they please;
Those Edens can’t be found.
The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

We’re neither pure nor wise nor good;
We’ll do the best we know;
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.
— Richard Wilbur, Candide (based on Voltaire’s work of the same title)

The past few months I’ve had chats that begin like this, or include questions like these:

• “Can you be good without God?”
• “Without absolute truth, you can’t really believe in good and evil.”
• “Doesn’t that just mean that you define what’s ‘right’?”

The first thing that pops into my head when dealing with questions like these is—did I sound like that when talking to atheists back when I was a Christian? Not that I really ever recall talking to nontheists that much, but I’m sure that discussions like that were had. There were several times when we went out witnessing or having “spiritual conversations” with non-Christians, and I’m sure that something like that came up.

This brings up the issue of what I actually believe now as a non-theist – as a post-theist. In blog post 99, I expressed my frustration with the current flavor of atheism, which can best be described as neo-atheism: the sort of aggressive, in-your-face, denialist movement that has characterized atheism as more of a negative worldview than a positive one. It’s the kind that loudly denies the existence of any supernatural being under any circumstances, and seeks to destroy all belief in god or gods the whole world over. It’s also the kind the kind that has no qualms insulting the religious faithful by calling them weak, small-minded, superstitious, gullible, and… well, you get the picture. [Insert insult here.]

And, of course, the two high priests of atheism – the Anti-Popes, if you will – are Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Or rather were, since Hitch is no longer with us. But their voices defined the movement in ways that few others have. Their vehement, shrill and oftentimes rude confrontations with monotheists (and fundamentalists specifically) and their call for all people to throw off the shackles of belief in favor of reason, science and intellect has been persuasive for many, and off-putting for others, including many atheists.

So some of us are left wondering: All right, now what? Rather than stand and define ourselves against a whole belief, what do we stand for?

Well, for starters, the first Humanist Manifesto, followed by the second manifesto (more fleshed out and developed than the first), is a good starting point. As the authors of the second manifesto wrote in their preamble, “Traditional moral codes and newer irrational cults both fail to meet the pressing needs of today and tomorrow. False ‘theologies of hope’ and messianic ideologies, substituting new dogmas for old, cannot cope with existing world realities. They separate rather than unite peoples.”

Religion, as I have come to realize (and let me be clear—I’m talking about the extremist and fundamentalist varieties that I’ve known, that I grew up with, and that most people associate with “religion”), is a distinctly anti-human enterprise. It puts human beings at the bottom of a hierarchy of importance, existing at and for the pleasure of a supernatural deity. It grants other human beings who supposedly hold the “Truth” permission to use and abuse others for their own benefit—or, for the truly devout, for the sake of “God.”

Why would I want an “absolute morality” like that—of a beneficent, celestial dictatorship? Hitch was fond of calling it a celestial North Korea in his talks, where “the real fun begins after you’re dead.” (“But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea,” he says in that video. “Does the bible or the Koran offer you that ability? No!”) Why would I want to pattern my life around such a system in terms of what I do and don’t do?

But that’s getting sidetracked slightly away from the original question: “Can you be good without God?”

The answer is: Yes. Millions of people do it every day. Is the only reason that you don’t rob, cheat, rape, lie and murder because of your fear of divine punishment? And is that the only reason for a theist to do good—because God’s watching? If so, that’s a pretty bankrupt morality, in the opinion of myself and other nontheists.

Morality seems to be a strictly human invention. While there is a rudimentary morality among some of the higher primates, the rest of nature seems to be a completely amoral place. It’s survival of the fittest. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote. Our human morality seems derived from our deepest, most tribal, and most primal being that values getting along and cooperating over total anarchy. As tool-wielders, and through trial and error, we’ve worked out a code of immutable “laws” for human survival:

• Don’t kill other humans.
• Don’t steal from other humans.
• Being selfish is bad.

It seems to come from our ability for empathy, which evolved from emotional connections that were necessary to form bonds with other members of our tribe. We learned to see things “from the other chimp’s perspective.” We realized that if we don’t like the other guy beating us up, he probably doesn’t like me beating him up either. And it’s that ability to see through another person’s eyes that gives us our “moral” code.

I see morality as being essentially a complex equation of sorts. Most of the calculating we do automatically, as one segment on “chimp morality” shows on an episode of WNYC’s RadioLab that was about morality. In fact, if you want to really know what I believe about morality, stop reading this and go and listen to that. Then come back and read.

It’s a sort of three-dimensional cost/benefit analysis, where various potential choices are compared side by side, and the possible outcomes are weighed against each other. The solution is usually the one that does the least amount of harm to everyone, and carries the most benefits for everyone involved. It starts with the individual, then moves outward to others in the immediate circle of influence, and then goes further and further out until we can look at the potential benefit/harm done to something as large as the planet.

Doesn’t that sound like a better alternative than blindly following what your 3,000 year-old Bronze Age holy book tells you to do? Such as if it tells you to stone your wife to death for adultery? Or cut the foreskin off a newborn baby boy? Or tells you that homosexuals are disgusting perverts who are going to hell and deserve the abuse they get?

My morality boils down to the line from the closing song of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (lyrics beautifully penned by Richard Wilbur, which is itself an adaptation of the last chapter of Candide’s novel): We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; we’ll do the best we know. Play nicely with others, treat them how you want to be treated, and leave the planet better than you came into it. What reason do I have for believing this? Absolutely none, aside from my own deeply-held convictions.

Supposing these ancient “moral codes” are merely humanity’s first attempts at describing what it means to be human? Explore and examine how we can live together in community? To try and put these deep and primal desires within us into words? We don’t really need a god to have handed those down to us.

Could I be a selfish bastard and try to get as much as I can from life while I can? Sure. But would it make me happy and contented? Would others benefit from my selfishness? No, they wouldn’t. (“What does that matter,” my theist friends will postulate, “if this is all there is?”) My humanity allows me to look at it through the eyes of my neighbors and decide what the best course of action is.

I don’t know if there is a God or not. I can’t disprove it any more than I can prove it. I take the last verse of “Make Our Garden Grow” to heart: Let dreamers dream what worlds they please; those Edens can’t be found. Ultimately, we don’t know, and speculating only makes things more complicated. It’s fun to think and argue about; but if there is a personal god out there, from the sort of universe it brought into being I think it probably considers belief in it—and all of the myriad of locks and fences we’ve built—pretty pointless.

Even ungrateful.

“Go outside!” it seems to be saying. “Get some sun—but in moderation! Enjoy nature! Enjoy yourself. Enjoy each other. Do good work.”

The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

We’re neither pure nor wise nor good;
We’ll do the best we know;
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.