Ok I realize that so far most of the subjects of this blog have been of the more enjoyable aspects of life: music, art, architecture, design. I venture to change the subject for a moment.
There is a column in the New York Times today that I found disturbing, both for its content and its straight-faced appearance in the Times, written by Ross Douthat, one of its regular political columnists. The link to the column is attached.
Douthat reports that in 1962, Gallup reported that 22% of Americans reported having a "religious or mystical" experience. That number climbed to nearly 50% in 2009. Then he goes on to decry the "democratization" of religion in America, and the loss of focus on religions which "stand in judgment" over our lives.
WTF? What is this doing on the op-ed page of the Times under the byline of a regular political reporter?
And, the enormous percentage of Americans who are now reporting "mystical" experiences raises a question. Much is being written about the extreme partisan divide in America these days. Perhaps the divide is deeper than that. The Tea Party crowd seem to share not only a deep distrust of the goverment, but also an abiding contempt for science or an evidence-based life. They overwhelmingly reject concepts of climate change, evolution, and often much of modern medicine. Perhaps the deeper division in our country is between the half that is increasingly living lives that are more religious, more mystical, more anti-science and anti-evidence, and the other half that is becoming more secular, more evidence-based, more reality-based. If so, this is a difficult gulf to bridge.
If you have time read the column and let me know what you think. I apoligize if this offends anyone.
I also apologize for the typo misspelling apologize. I guess I should use the preview.
ReplyDeleteSteve: And I apologize for having missed the typo. As always you stimulate my thoughts and there's absolutely no need to apologize for that.
ReplyDeleteI noticed and read the column myself this morning and decided that doing so was a mistake resulting in "mystical" experience! In fact the whole piece was so convoluted that I had to read it twice before concluding that either I'm dense or Douthat is full of it. Probably both. WTF indeed. Same WTF words that I uttered when I stumbled on the scary subculture out there on ShellTube the other day (see my posting about To comment or not to comment).
If you ask me, then the only religious or mystical experience that the other half enjoyed in 2009 occurred when they were watching "Keeping up with the Kardashians" or similar. It's all just a terrible misunderstanding about terminology, I'm sure that's what Douthat had in mind. :-)
This is a great topic to ponder and discuss. Right now I'm in the middle of yet another deeply mystical experience at work - so I'll get back later. Sooooo many hungry ghosts out there that need to be pleased ...
Steve: Good to see see you get stirred up on a topic and offer it to the Matrix.
ReplyDelete“Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there.”
Christopher Hitchens quote
The red pill / blue pill dichotomy of believers/non-belivers, Democratic/ Republican, Liberal/ Conservative, MSNBC/ Fox is gaining volume and intensity by the unlimited mediums available to communicate uncompromising views.
In Hitchens book God is not Great, How Religion poisons everything the point is made: Christopher Hitchens has been hailed as one of the most brilliant journalists of our time' (London Observer). Here he makes the ultimate case against organised religion.With a detailed reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
I admit that I don't commit to either view, relying on a personal ill-defined spirituality.
Cristopher Hitchens is a smart guy, which makes his ardent support of the Iraq war difficult to understand.
ReplyDeleteSteve: just some incomplete and inadequate thoughts on this fascinating subject. Your posting somehow integrates many if not all issues that we’ve been discussing so far. I hope the posting and comments will continue for quite some time since we’re at least touching the tip of the ice berg.
ReplyDeleteFirst brainteaser. Is the divide really between the religious and the secular, between the “believers” and the “non-believers”? Descartes was not an atheist, last time I checked. Suppose I state that “God” created the universe. That’s clearly a belief statement, religious if you like. But as the intellectual that I am (not) I would hasten to add that I don’t believe that He had an arts and crafts moment with clay one day and out came Adam and Eve. I suppose that’s a non-believe statement, secular if you like.
Second brainteaser. “Believers” have a nasty property: their belief does not require any proof, in the worst case it deteriorates into dogma. But “Non-Believers” also have a nasty property, often equally dogmatic: they are unable to “belief” without proof. I can only conclude that believers and non-believers are remarkably alike, two peas in a pot.
Third brainteaser. Proposition: The root cause of all conflicts and battles to date is that believers and non-believers insisted for whatever good or bad reason to accept each other as they are and hence were forced to fall back on the only other available alternative: deny each other’s existence. Sint ut sunt aut non sint. No proof required, both sides agree at least that this much is true.
Fourth brainteaser. You ask if the divide is deeper than just the partisan divide? I’m not sure if “deeper” is the appropriate attribute. IMHO the partisan divide is just a symptom, the belief versus non-belief divide is bringing us much closer to the root cause. The root cause has always been there since Day One, regardless of Who or who started it on Day one. I don’t think the divide is any greater now than it was before, no matter what the media want us to “believe”!
Fifth brainteaser: The vituperative :) media are just like sharks on a $$$-driven feeding frenzy: whatever they can do to sharpen the divide is bound to sell more papers to their “uninformed, stupid and spectacle-addicted” audiences and is therefore definitely “fit to print”!
Sixth brainteaser: As the over-educated “intellectual” that I’m not, I’m constantly sitting in the middle of all this and observe what’s going on. Sometimes with patience and humor, sometimes with anger and indignation. I have both “beliefs” and “non-beliefs”. My challenge is to recognize which are which AND to accept that I am imperfect: in several instances “beliefs” and “non-beliefs” can and should not be readily separated. Nothing wrong with that. No one ever claimed that life should be dull. Fun sometimes, miserable sometimes, but never a dull moment.
I’ll leave it at this for now. Time to return to the safe confines of my Hungry Ghost realm. Can someone let me out of that cage, please?! :))) – Job.
My turn for apology for typo in third breainteaser. Two words dropped out:
ReplyDeleteThird brainteaser. Proposition: The root cause of all conflicts and battles to date is that believers and non-believers insisted for whatever good or bad reason to REFUSE TO accept each other as they are and hence were forced to fall back on the only other available alternative: deny each other’s existence. Sint ut sunt aut non sint. No proof required, both sides agree at least that this much is true.
Seventh brainteaser/proposition: Uninformed and spectacle-addicted people are highly unlikely to recognize a religious/mystical experience even when they stumble over it.
ReplyDeleteMan will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on. – Winston Churchill.
Regarding the second brainteaser: "Proof" is not the right word; the right word is "evidence." Belief in the absence of evidence is faith, which clearly provides comfort to many. However, I do not believe that the refusal to believe "facts" in the absence of any evidence that they are true is a nasty or dogmatic property.
ReplyDeletei'm wondering about the meaning of the term "mystical". is it really about religion. i think not, despite what i read on wiki.
ReplyDeletedid you pick it up in the keith jarrett interview on improvisation? about when it becomes music, or something to that effect.
some experiences are spiritual, mystical transcendental - keith plus gary plus jack moves beyond the sum of the parts and finds it self in a new place, well beyond the sum of the parts
i see this as an overlay on what is rational, not a contradiction. haven't you ever been there, where the experience is perfectly sublime?
haven't you gone to pick up the phone and the phone rings just before you pick it up and it was the person you were going to call - your old best friend that you had not talked to in years?
why do we apply probability theory to rational problem solving?
mystical is not religion, religion is a manipulative external thingy
...and btw, not sure about this, since i only looked into it after an email comment from steve hanks a few months ago, but i am not sure that man-made global warming is not a religion...in the truest sense of The Prince
...got to meet up with the guys for dinner.
perhaps some more thoughts afterwards
ps. i'm improvising, so no preview, no spell check, warts and all ;-)
Job you are wearing my brain out.
ReplyDeleteThis conversation does relate back to the Zen concept of we are one.
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
Check this site out for some interesting reading: http://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)
Ok we have to watch out for semantics here; perhaps mysticism is a poor choice. If mysticism is a sense of awe and wonder at the natural world, of course we all share that. Many parts of the world and of my personal life induce feelings of euphoria. But, every event we observe (so far) has a physical cause, period, and when more Americans believe in ghosts than in evolution, that is not mysticism, but rather delusion.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, all of these perceived experiences, whether religious, mystical, secular, whatever, are just chemicals and neurons in the brain.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=belief-in-the-brain&sc=DD_20100309
...no doubt steve hanks, that is the rational explanation, and one that i accept...
ReplyDeletedo i believe in ghosts - no
do i believe that when one dies there is nothing left?
how long does it take to die? could it be instantaneous to the obserever, but infinite to the participant?
i mean it is only a perception in our brain anyway...chemical reactions
the universe is a continuum...a control volume...no net in or out...
Likewise. I mean: my brain is also wearing out, especially if this turns into a discussion about semantics.
ReplyDelete“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein.
So tell me: I trust that we’ve all used our imagination once or twice. Was that a religious/mystical experience or a secular/rationalistic experience?
Wes walks to the phone, planning to call me, and before he gets there and it’s me calling him. Bummer. Give me the “proof” or “evidence”: Was this a religious/mystical/whatever experience? Or can we secularly and rationally explain it away by means of the theory of statistics which tells us that this is just one of those unfortunate shit happens events, because its likelihood of occurrence is very small?
I have a Ph.D. in mathematics. The only reason why I can live with rationalism is because I BELIEVE in its potential. But I can’t provide you with any evidence whatsoever that rationalism and rationalism has all the answers.
Missed this one earlier. "Just" chemicals and neurons in the brain. Want me to tell you the (pathetic) story of my life? Or shall I just publish it in "Scientific" American?
ReplyDeleteI definitely do want to hear the story of your life! Ultimately that's all that any of us have, the stories of our lives.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Steve. I overreacted. Misfiring neurons and imbalanced chemicals are the pathetic story of my life and the damage I've caused to myself and, worse, to others. Nothing personal, and I never thought for one second that you mean it like that! Doesn't make it less painful sometimes. :-)
ReplyDeleteNo worries. Now that's a story for another time but I would like to hear it.
ReplyDeleteEvidence? Remember Renatus Cartesius (Descartes)? Founder of rationalism. Cogito ergo sum, and all that jazz. Reason he spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic is that (at that place and time) people cared little about religious beliefs and very much about about secular ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe religious beliefs of René Descartes have been rigorously debated within scholarly circles. He claimed to be a devout Roman Catholic, claiming that one of the purposes of the Meditations was to defend the Christian faith. However, in his own era, Descartes was accused of harboring secret deist or atheist beliefs. Contemporary Blaise Pascal said that "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God."
Religion, mysticism, secularism, we won't be confused after this episode of ...
On an architectural "intelligent" design note: one of the more interesting inventions from the hay days of the Dutch Republic is the so-called "Schuilkerk", literally "Hiding Chuch". Take an existing home along a gorgeous canal in Amsterdam or Delft. Tear down everything except for the facade. Then put up a church for whatever minority religion right behind the facade. "Secular" on the outside, "religious" on the inside ...
So, Job, is there going to be a minaret ban in the Netherlands as was voted in Switzerland?
ReplyDeleteWho knows. A couple of weeks ago the Dutch government fell over some Afghanistan mission related "ethical" issue or whatever. As in: Whatever! Last week local elections were held with a spectacular voter turnout of barely 10% ... Elections for a new parliament will take place shortly. Predicted winner is indeed some scary freak who wants to dump everything that's not the "Dutch uebermensch" - now there's an oxymoron! The ahole has already dubbed himself the next prime minister. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteCounting on you guys to support me if I decide to apply for polytical asylum in the good ol' USA (:which doesn't know any of these problems of course:). Hope I can evacuate my daughters in time - the youngest ones are US citizens and therefore "safe". So it's just the other two who are "grown-up", or so they claim.
P.S. In all fairness: Unlike Switzerland which has only 5 minarets, Holland nowadays counts more minarets than windmills. :))) Never bothered me - secular/religious/mystical, it's all the same to me. But some seem to disagree ... If it's up to me, the more diversity the merrier. I've never believed in "countries" and "borders". Bring it on, never a dull moment, always something to watch, to hear and to learn.
Although raised as (and therefore always) roman catholic, nowadays I attend services (about once a month) at about a dozen or so different churches, including synagogue, catholic, protestant, mosque, you name it, the whole enchilada. Always something new to discover.
Congratulations Steve, your blog has the current record for comments.
ReplyDeleteAn incentive to contribute more often.
Job: A PHD in Mathematics?
Four Daughters????
Far out.
Learn something new about you every day.
FE