Meditations for the Humanist - Part 2 - Tolerance and DOMA

“The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened with convictions.” – Alexander Chase

An intolerant person is defined as one who “wishes others to live as the thinks they ought, and who seeks to impose his practices and beliefs upon them” (Grayling 2002, 7) True tolerance states that humanity thrives most by “permitting a variety of lifestyles to flourish, because they represent experiments from which might be learned about how to deal with the human condition” (Grayling 2002, 7-8).  Democracy has a similar aim in that a government run by the people, for the people, must include the voices and active participation of all demographics for it to flourish, especially if it is to afford the protect of minority rights. There is an inherent danger in democratic style government, namely majority oppression of minorities.

Grayling says,

Tolerance is, however, not only the centerpiece but the paradox of liberalism. For liberalism enjoins tolerance of opposing viewpoints, and allows them to have their say, leaving it to the democracy of ideas to decide which shall prevail. The result is to often the death of toleration itself, because those who live by hard principles and uncompromising views in political, moral and religious respects always, if given half a chance, silence liberals because liberalism, by its nature, threatens the hegemony they wish to impose.

Foreseeing this danger, the founders blessed us with the Bill of Rights as well as checks and balances in government. This was done in order to protect all citizens, especially minority demographics from majority oppression, including religious oppression.

The traditional republican platform has always had a foundation in states rights and a smaller federal government. The power of the federal government was seen as a threat to personal liberty.  However, when it comes to civil liberties and human rights issues, puritan morality seems to trump this age-old Republican value. This is becoming quite relevant with various contemporary social issues, especially homosexuality, marriage and the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act). 

Traditionally marriage has been a religious ceremony, and many prefer it to remain as such. However, in this country, in this secular country, marriage is a civil right. Vermont, Connecticut and New York, which all have legalized gay marriage, now content that DOMA is a violation of states rights. They contend that the federal government has not right or authority to regulate the institution of marriage. The civil rights granted by marriage simple have nothing to do with religion, such as social security benefits, child-care tax credits, family and medical leave to take care of loved ones and COBRA health care for spouses and children. By denying a citizen these civil rights, they are thereby being denied human rights. The fourteenth Amendment to the Constitutions provides all citizens equal protection under the law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also speaks to this issue in its first, second and seventh articles, which says “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law…”

DOMA is designed to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage at the state level. The LGBTQ community is being discriminated against as they are denied this equal protection. They are being denied their civil/human rights. Once more, they are being denied this right from the Republican Party that supposedly champions personal freedom and liberty and views the Federal government as intrusive and oppressive. This is a fabulous example of how the Republican platform has lost its way. It is no longer centered around small government and states rights, but it has been hijacked by moralistic, intolerant religious fanatics who at their very core are opposed to the liberalism, pluralism and democratic ideals that America is founded upon.

I am not saying that marriage cannot be a religious ceremony. What I am saying is that in a democratic, pluralistic society, those who do not wish to be religious, those who do not want religion to have any part of their civil/human rights, shouldn’t be denied their rights because it makes religious people uncomfortable.

By providing the same rights to all citizens, society will thrive and become more cohesive and functional. Chris Kluwe, the punter for the Minnesota Vikings said, “You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing…?” Chuck Norris recently said a thousand years of darkness will not ensue. And many prominent figures who claim that hurricanes and other natural disasters are Gods punishment for sanctioning equality are intolerant religious bigots who should not be tolerated, let alone be given a platform to spew their fear. Intolerance itself is merely a symptom of fear and insecurity. And this is what the Republican Party has become in my eyes, a political party based on intolerance rooted in fear and insecurity. The relevant question is….”Should the tolerant tolerate the intolerant?” And the answer is obviously no. Tolerance must protect itself. No one can force another to adopt a certain viewpoint or practice. The only coercion should be argument and honest reasoning, which is what we would expect from our government. Religious freedom does not entail the right to discriminate. Protecting minorities and civil rights is not an attack on Christianity. It is compassionate. It is based in identification with all of humanity, regardless of creed, sex, color of skin and any other label. It is based in ethics, an ethics encouraged not by religious discourse, but by secular discourse, which provides and equal footing for all. For a deeper in depth discussion please see my previous post “Tolerating the Intolerant.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/09/160840674/states-rights-and-doma-clash-on-a-shifting-battlefield?ft=1&f=1001

Grayling, A.C. (2002). Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Romney's So-Called Religious Freedom

Mitt Romney said, “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone…

“We are a nation under God, and in God we do indeed trust. We should acknowledge the Creator, as sis the founders, in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in the Pledge, and in the teaching of our history.” He delivered this speech at the George Herbert Walker Bush Presidential Library, in Texas.

I wonder what the nonreligious nations of Europe would have to say about this. Especially since those nations with the less religious affiliation and influence are also happier according to their gross national happiness index. And why is it that the more religious nations tend to be less free and are less happy?

Are non-Mormons, non-Christians and non-theists still Americans under the vision Mitt Romney has for America? And what kind of America is Mitt Romney envisioning? What kind of freedom does his religion create and allow? He speaks of freedom and religious liberty, of family values and moral vision. Yet he would cut all funding for Planned Parenthood because a fraction of their public health services include providing abortions, and even when they use no public funding for those abortions. He wants to enact a federal law that would ban gay marriage. Yet this is in no way attached to his Mormon beliefs right? He speaks of “moral pollution.” He says he is “concerned with the drug culture, the pornography, the violence, sex and perversion.” He says every computer sold in the future should block all pornography. He says he wants to enforce obscenity laws. This is ironic considering that multiple studies have shown that “conservative religious type, especially Mormons, are more likely to use porn.” – Adam Greenwood (March 2, 2009).

Mitt Romney lives in his religious bubble. He will make public policy decisions based on his limited and exclusivist idea of morality and social order. It was not long ago that George Bush Sr. said, “I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, or should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.” Those with no religious affiliation, whether atheist, non-theist or agnostic, represent 19% of the American population.  It’s time to get religion out of politics. Its time to take religion completely out of the public sphere. It’s time for nonbelievers to come out of the closet! It’s time to acknowledge and celebrate our secular heritage, our pluralistic heritage. It’s time for those with so called religious values to stop pushing their views onto other people. It’s time for a secular ethics that encourages dialog and conversation to take the place of misguided and outdated moral certainty.

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2009/03/are-mormons-crazy-for-porn/

http://skepticism.org/timeline/december-history/8317-mitt-romney-freedom-requires-religion-one-nation-under-god.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/08/mitt-romney-will-put-an-end-to-porn-somehow.html

Agnostic Buddhism - Buddhism Without Beliefs

Stephen Batchelor, in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs, describes an agnostic Buddhism. He does not describe Buddhism as a religion per se but as a method. Buddhism, he says, is not so much something to believe in, but is something to do. It is an activity, a lifestyle and a practice that we can integrate into every aspect of our experience. To be a Buddhist, do you have to be someone who believes certain propositions such as the four noble truths or reincarnation? According to Batchelor, the answer is no. He says Buddhism is not particularly religious or spiritual in the usual ways we understand these terms. It is simply a way to be in the world. Rather than being focused on deities, beliefs and supernatural claims, Batchelor claims Buddhism is founded in the agnostic tradition.

T.H. Huxley first coined agnosticism in 1869. He explained it as a method “realized through the ‘rigorous application of a single principle.’” This principle has both positive and negative aspects. The positive aspect exclaims, “Follow your reason as far as it will take you.” The negative aspect asserts that one should “not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. “ An agnostic Buddhist would not regard Buddhism as a source of answers to questions of where we came from, where we are going or what happens after death. Batchelor says an agnostic Buddhist would seek knowledge in the appropriate domains such as science. As for supernatural claims and questions about the origin of the universe or what happens after death, the Buddha himself remained silent. These questions were seen as distractions, as irrelevant to our human condition, irrelevant to the reality of suffering.

Buddhism however can become a dogmatic system when we elevate the matter of fact-ness of the four noble truths to holiness. They can become propositions to believe in. (Western scholars even superimposed the term Buddhism. This label allowed Buddhism to become a creed, which could be then compared to other creeds around the world. It can be easy to reduce a tradition and a religion such as Buddhism to a list of beliefs and practices that obscures its agnostic heritage and complexity.) Supernatural questions are seen as mysteries, not problems with answers that can be solved through meditation or prayer or through belief in a set of doctrine. Arbitrary answers to supernatural questions that are not demonstrated or demonstrable are simply irrelevant.  Strategies such as prayer and beliefs in doctrine merely replace mystery with beliefs in an answer that are often clinged to with such fervor that they distract from true ethical conversation and can even cause a great deal suffering, hatred and divisiveness.

Batchelor makes an important distinction between existential confrontation and existential consolation. Most of what we understand as religion can be seen as consisting of condolatory elements such as assurances of a better afterlife. Buddhist practice can be said to start not with belief in a transcendent reality but through embracing the “anguish experience in an uncertain world.” This is the essence of the first noble truth. We must have the courage to face whatever life throws at us without recourse to supernatural claims or consolations. To accept whatever comes with equanimity, and the humility to learn from every situation. Agnosticism shifts concern away from the future life and supernatural dialogue and brings it back to the present moment. Agnosticism is not passive. Instead, it is a dialogue, an ongoing encounter and existential confrontation with the unknown and mystery of our existence. Buddhism in this way, Batchelor says, might have “more in common with godless secularism than with the bastions of [western] religion.”

We must also make a distinction between ethics and morals, or more specifically ethical integrity as being distinct from moral certainty. A priori certainty about right and wrong is simply at odds with a changing and unreliable world. An ethical question should not be framed as ‘what is the right thing to do?” but “what is the compassionate thing to do?” This question can be approached with integrity but not with certainty. Likewise, agnostic Buddhism demands ethical conversation rather than moral claims based in supernatural hope and fear. This dialogue inevitably forces an encounter with our moral conditioning, which is based largely in psychological and social habit. We tend repeat the gestures of parents, authority figures, or religious texts. And while this sort of moral conditioning may arguably contribute to some aspect of social stability, it is nonetheless inadequate as a paradigm of ethical integrity. Encountering our socialized norms of morality, ethics, and supernatural claims and assumptions is precisely the type of encounter that agnosticism and Buddhism seek out. It is a creative and ongoing process that can be said to be the very basis of a genuine religious lifestyle, of genuine ethical conversation, both as individuals and collectively. Moral certainty based in supernatural claims that are not demonstrated or demonstrable, also inevitably lead to fantasies of moral superiority. As Batchelor said, “Instead of creatively participating in a contemporary culture of awakening, we confine ourselves to preserving those cultures of a vanishing past…we repeat the clichés and dogmas of other epochs.” We have seen many times how fantasies of moral certainty do not foster compassion or ethical dialogue, but usually result in arrogant, elitist and confrontational perspectives.

Our definition of religion itself is being challenged and expanded. Publishers Weekly, in reviewing Batchelor’s book said, “Buddhism is not strictly a religion, since it does not adhere to a belief in God; that the Buddha did not consider himself a mystic or savior, but a healer; and that Buddhism is less a ‘belief system’ than a personal ‘course of action’ that naturally instills morality, compassion, and inner peace in the practitioner.” The problem with this quote however is that it equates religion with theism and having a belief system. Buddhism is better said to be a nontheistic religion. After all, a tradition can be a religion even if it does not believe in a God or gods or have supernatural beliefs. Buddhism instead, can be thought of as a method. It is continuously evolving and adapting to the needs of the human condition without recourse to supernatural claims and without belief in a god or deities. Agnostic Buddhism is at its core, a confrontation and dialogue with our human condition. For further elaboration on the definition and understanding of evolving religion, see my previous post on Ken Wilber. 

Batchelor, Stephen. (2008). Buddhism Withouth Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening. Riverhead Trade.

Meditations for the Humanist – Part 1 – Moralism

Oscar Wilde famously said, “a man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite.” According to A. C. Grayling, a moralizer is a “person who seeks to impose upon others his [or her] view of how they should live and behave.” It reflects a coercive and exclusive worldview that is inherently opposed to democratic and pluralistic ideals.

Moralizers want others to conform to their views. They do this through coercive measures such as social disapproval as well as their more preferred option: legal controls. You can see this reflected in our nations history with blasphemy laws as well as more contemporary, hot button, issues such as gay marriage, abortion, religious symbols and text in public areas and prayer in public schools. 

Attacks on liberal policies such as these are expressions of hostility towards lifestyles moralizers personally dislike. Their hostility is brought into the public sphere, often through declarations of religious freedom, and manifest aspects of insensitivity, intolerance, ignorance of alternative interests and needs in the human experience and arrogance in believing there is only one acceptable way of living. They claim to have a “monopoly on moral judgment.’” We can recognize the familiar rhetoric of those claiming to defend the “traditionalist fantasy of ‘family morality’”. But the true attitude underneath moralizers is fear. The moralizer fears policies and practices that allow and encourage diversity in lifestyle and the freedom of choice.

Justification for their rigidly and arrogance comes from so-called religious doctrine and values. This is a pure reflection of exclusivist religion, which I’ve spoken about plenty in previous posts. This fear and its effects are inherently anti-pluralistic and anti-democratic. Diversity of thought is not allowed or encouraged. The demand conformity to lifestyles they see as personally acceptable. The external world, others, must conform to their internal preferences. Compromise is shunned and viewed as weakness. Their religious anxieties compel them to prevent the rest of society from “thinking, seeing or doing what they are afraid to think, see or do themselves.”

Secularism has become the enemy. Atheists and humanists alike are seen as being deviant and unworthy of any serious dialogue. Christianity is seen as being under attack. But secularism, in actuality, does not attack religion just like an umbrella does not attack rain. It provides a platform and foundation for diversity of thought, conscience and lifestyle. It protects all citizens’ right to have equal protection under the law, to have equal opportunity, voice and representation. Secularism encourages an ongoing, ever-evolving, creative process in public policy and societal norms. It sees culture and values as something malleable and dynamic, not fixed and rigid. And most of all, secularism, is not coercive or exclusive. All have a place at the table. Unfortunately, it also allows for the voice of the intolerant and the fearful (See “Tolerating the Intolerant” post).

Grayling, A. C. (2002). Meditation for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.