David Ernst Chats with the World

I don’t think it’s too much to say that I was thrilled by how many comments I got on my post last month about atheism. I replied to some of your comments in the comments section, so if you haven’t done so, some of you might want to check that out. But, after I’d done that, Dan submitted his comments.
Dan’s comments got me thinking, as they often do. I decided that rather than post another comment back there (which likely few people would see) I’d post my response here (giving me more justification for being verbose).

Dan said:

First, this is great if there weren’t a political aspect to the religious/atheist conflict. As long as political decisions are being based on the moral value set defined by a specific interpretation of religion, the debate is not just philosophical or even one of trying to convert. It affects people’s lives legally.

Right, this is an interesting observation. Most atheists seem to spend most of their advocacy energy on shoring up the separation of church and state. I’m all for that. I wouldn’t want to live in the jurisdiction of a government that promoted atheism any more than I’d want one to live in one that promoted any other religion. It’s at the level of civil society that I am having the quandry.

On another front, why is there need to convert people to atheism? If people want to believe whatever they want, fine. If a set of dogma becomes too unbelievable or the message of the existence of a god fails to resonate, then a person may develop his or her own atheist understanding of the world. In the mean time, what good would it do to confront people who have other beliefs? I think it would only act to strengthen those beliefs in opposition.

Right, I actually don’t have that much interest in converting people. If at some point in the future the percentage of people who were atheists was the same but the cultural acceptance of atheism had grown and the separation of church and state was strong, I’d be perfectly pleased.

Here’s a story for comparison: several years ago I was invited to the home of a woman who was very proud of her Jewish heritage. She wore in some manner (I believe it was a necklace, but I cannot really recall) a Star of David, and somehow the symbol came up in conversation, and she proclaimed with a sense of proud defiance that she wore it as a statement to everyone that “We are here”. Ok, I can’t swear that that was the quote, but whatever she said had the sense of trying to keep people from ignoring the fact that Judaism exists.

While I definitely support her freedom of religion and association, I also remember being taken aback by her comment, since I doubt she hardly ever meets anyone who doesn’t know that Judaism exists. But, on the other hand, the reason that people DO know that Judaism exists is because of people like her proudly proclaim their Judaism. Figures I’m seeing on the Adherents.com site, which are living on wikipedia (with far less contraversy than one might expect) suggest that there are ten times as many Atheists in the world as there are Jews. And that’s without including agnostics and “non-religious” people in the mix.
So, thinking about this, I feel like part of what I’m looking for is a simple way to say “I’m proud of my atheism” in a way that makes some people say “I love living in a diverse nation that prides itself on freedom of religion” and makes no one think anything worse than “well, there’s another poor soul that’s going to hell”. What I’m suggesting about the confrontational sound of the term “atheism”, though, is that some people would read such a message as “who are you to tell me that my religion is wrong?”

And, I don’t think I’m alone in this. Check out this section of the adherents.com page:

In most countries only a tiny number of people (zero to a fraction of 1 percent) will answer “atheism” or “atheist” when asked an open-ended question about what their religious preference. A slightly larger number of people will answer “yes” if asked pointedly if they are an atheist. A slightly larger number than that will answer “no” when asked if they believe in any type of God, deities, or Higher Power. A slightly larger number answer “no” when asked simply if they “believe in God” (omitting wording indicating more nebulous, less anthropomorphic conceptions of divinity). Finally, a larger number of people answer “none” or “non-religious” when asked asked an open-ended queston about what their religious preference is. Although figures vary for each country, average numbers indicate that roughly half of the people who self-identify as “nonreligious” also answer “yes” when asked if they believe in God or a Higher Power.

Hopefully when the copy of The Cambridge Companion to Atheism that I just ordered arrives, I’ll find out more about these “slightly larger numbers”. But, the story certainly suggests that there are a lot of people who actively disbelieve in God who don’t want to associate with the term “atheist”. I’m more interested in getting those people to rally behind a term than I am interested in convincing Believers that they are wrong. Why can’t we be atheist and proud, happy, and peaceful? I do suspect some of it is because people hear in the term “atheist” something contrary.

And, it’s not just the term. Most public displays of atheism that I see (T-shirts, bumper stickers, etc.) focus more on mocking religion than they do on celebrating religious beliefs. Amidst all of the writing of the “new Atheists”, the most exciting publication I’ve seen with a clearly atheistic slant recently was this Pop-Up book that Beth showed me. It doesn’t talk at all about God existing or not, it just talks about the current scientific perspective on how life and the universe came about. It’s awesome. Parents, check it out.

Thinking as I type, I’m reminded of how much of this debate focuses on evolution right now. I think it would benefit atheism for science to be more upfront about its levels of confidence about things. The reason evolution should be taught to children is because the evidence for it is overwhelming and it has near-universal acceptance by all people who devote their lives to the study of biology. However, when we talk about evolution in these terms, we’re talking really about the ideas of heredity, mutation, and selection. Everything from animal breeding to children looking like their parents to genetically modified foods presents so much evidence that heredity and selection work as evoltionary theory describe that I can’t even understand how anyone could disbelieve it now. That being said, that mutation is purely random would be difficult to prove.  And the further into the past one goes, the iffier the ground is that evolution stands upon. To me it is perfectly reasonable to think that a God could have introduced selective forces that would have encouraged The Decent of Man [sic]. It’s even reasonable to me to consider that a God took some early humanoid and made it the first animal to have a soul (I’ve met Mormons who believe just this). To go much further back, the standard evolutionary explanation of the beginning of life (y’know, promordial soup ‘n’at) strikes me as basically an educated guess, and if anyone can think of a falsifiable experiment that would lend evidence one way or another to that theory, I’d like to hear it. If nothing else, consider the idea that a God could have created conditions where a primordial soup would occur and maybe even added a magic spark to the mix to make life happen. I suspect that this idea is consistent with the entire theory of evolution. It might also be consistent with the theory of intelligent design.

My point is that atheism is an active belief system. It’s more than just not believing in other belief systems. It’s a challenging proposition, and one will never grow to understand it without deep study and reflection. However, through understanding it, many of us find it a way to what many believers-in-God call “spiritual peace.” It offers answers to many of life’s most perplexing and disturbing problems. And it provides a foundation for strong moral and ethical systems. All of these are things that people seek from religion. But it isn’t widely regarded as a religion in this sense. I’m much more motivated to promote this understanding of it than I am in converting people to it. But I’m still seeking ways to do that.

Those of you who read (and maybe even enjoyed) my post on the resolution of human perception, please join me in thanking Michael and Michael for bringing this New York Times Article to my attention. David Pogue agrees with me, there’s a limit to how much resolution we can perceive, and by his argument, the maximum resolution for common purposes is even smaller than I expected… And he even ran experiments to back it up! So… wow. Not surprisingly, he’s less philophical about the implications to the relations between humans and machines, and more just about how to be a smart shopper. But hey, I’m in to that, too. :) What’s just a little weird is that he also alludes to that 640K comment falsely attributed to Bill Gates… Hmmm…

y’know, one of those days where everything just seems to go wrong… Which I am inspired to write about because I hope there is some humor to be had in here, not because I’m looking for sympathy…

It actually started last night. After dinner and attending Bill’s recital with Priscilla, we went to The Union for a swing dance. I was in a weird mood, and quite spacy… as we were about to leave I said “I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I’m going through my lists in my head, and I think I have everything.” I’m going to take away a lesson from this, that next time I have this feel/think conflict, I’m not going to let the “think” side have its way quite so easily.

Somehow, long after we left, I remembered “oh, I took of my undershirts before I started dancing, didn’t I?” Yes, shirts. I’ve taken to wearing a cotton undershirt underneath a ThermaSilk undershirt underneath my normal visible clothing (it’s quite cold here these days). “Oh, and the long underwear, too”. But it wasn’t until this morning that I realized “SH**T! I left my new, wonderful, high-tech North Face GoreTex waterproof shoes that were a Xmas gift from Sue, Michael, Steven AND Kellie!” Now it was panic. Replacing the underwear, not that big a deal. Those shoes would be expensive to replace, and there was sentimental value attached to them.

So, I schemed to meet the Swing Dance club as they were setting up for their workshop today (the Friday dance was the beginning of The Big Red Swing Weekend). That part worked. I was really quite surprised (and panicked anew) when they said that they hadn’t picked up anything like I was describing (by this time I realized that I’d also left a fleece jacket… I mean, someone could have literally (and I do not use the word “literally” casually) left the Union wearing literally nothing but the things that I had left there, and in addition to passing all US decency laws, could have been almost comfortably dressed for a jog in the single-digit weather we’ve been having… in fact, except for the lack of socks, I don’t think this hypothetical person would have even turned any heads.

Well, no sense dragging out the drama, I’m trying to be brief. Turns out the clothes were still in the room where the dance had been, right under the chair where I left them. Thankfully, some group of IU students were setting up for some function in the same room. I thought I’d have to explain that I had been there the night before and left some things there, but instead, they didn’t even seem to notice me. *shrug*

So, this is not such a bad day, is it? No, I was (and still am) REALLY happy that I recovered all of my things. So, I felt (and feel) lucky. I came home, ate lunch, and sat down to do some things on the computer. I’d recently heard some advice to start with the thing that you want to do the least, so rather than play with the things I was excited about, I decided to do something that could count as work except that I don’t get paid for it. Uh, yeah, I’m not up for the description of what I was doing. But suffice to say that the thing I’d hoped to get done in an hour took…

…well, the rest of the day. I got very frustrated with the software I was using. I must also admit, though, that I made a terrible mistake and deleted 500 separate configurations. I was able to restore from a backup, but I undid much of what I had done today. Bother…

But, the real “bad day” feeling came from other things. Smallish things. My washing machine overflowed. Why? I don’t know. The spin cycle has been inching it off its perch and it’s not quite level. Maybe that’s it? Maybe it’s because I had my winter coat in there, and that blocked a drain in there? Or, heaven forbid, a frozen drain pipe? All I know is that I went to go to the bathroom (having to dodge the ironing board that fell from behind a door) and the floor around the washing machine was all wet. So, I set up a fan.

Eventually I ate dinner and gave myself permission to do whatever I felt like. I had to admit, though, I felt motivated to tame this computer problem. So I kept at it. Eventually it got done, but the day was gone. I had pictured myself calling some friends to see if anything fun was happening tonight, but it was after 8pm before I made any calls, and not surprisingly, no one was around. I folded my laundry and while hanging up a towel, I knocked over a glass candleholder in my bathroom and shattered it.

You get the picture. I was even starting to laugh about it at this point. “One of those days”.

Well, I made the best of it. Got away from the computer for a good long while and did some low-risk house cleaning while listening to some music. It’s funny, I don’t listen to music at home all that much, but sometimes it’s really powerful in influencing my mood. Tonight’s selection (Blossom Dearie followed by Queen) definitely lifted my spirits as I did some disgusting drudgery cleaning. I paused and thought about music being like a mood-altering drug, and wondered if most people who listen to so much more recorded music than I do are always getting that kind of reaction from it. I doubt it. But is that because they’re essentially addicts with high tolerances?

I don’t really believe that, but musing about this kind of thing was a good antidote to the trials of the afternoon… say what you want about scrubbing a refrigerator, but you can’t say it feels much like struggling with poorly written computer software. If you scrub, it gets cleaner, you don’t get intellectually “stuck” very often with this kind of work.

So, as I get ready for bed, I’m feeling pretty happy really. I’m lucky to be able to feel that way after one of my bad days. I’ll count my blessings…

I was please to see that my Natural Gas company, Vectren, has expanded their eBill service to include actual real DATA about consumption patterns. As one who thinks a lot about things like “what is the most efficient way to keep my house a comfortable temperature in the winter?” I love to see that they are drawing me this graph. I hope that in the future it will go back further in time. But I’m particularly pleased that they give the option of downloading the data as a spreadsheet. It’s pretty simplistic, just the dates and numbers in a chart, but… still, I love it! Thanks, Vectren! And I see that it really is using more gas for me to be working at home instead of being at work with the house turned down to 55 F.

Years ago I wrote an email to Kroger suggesting that they make the information that they make collection with their Kroger Plus Card (you know the type) available to the customer in question. I would love to see a history of my shopping. I would love to run queries such as “how much of my food budget am I spending on produce” (or, dare I question it, beer and wine?). They never replied. And they certainly aren’t offering this service. I think it’s a shame. I’m sure they are thinking “we don’t want to give consumers that kind of power, they might change their buying habits. Perhaps. But I suspect most people would never use it. And some of us would probably lean towards buying things at Kroger so that they could include it in their data analysis. So, I present it now publicly as a challenge to all you big SuperMarket companies… the programming should be trivial, simple queries of your huge database. Some of us would really love it. Thanks.

Meanwhile, thanks Vectren.

A while back, my friends at the Indy Contra dance asked if I’d be interested in calling a dance before a performance of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. What?? Apparently the ISO was doing an outreach program and was in to having other arts organizations give performances before their concerts. Hey, ok.
I’m not sure it’s a good idea for them, but I certainly don’t mind calling, and it’d be fun to get a free admission to an ISO concert, I’ve never seen them live.

So, last night was the night! And, I gotta say, I think it was a good idea on their part. While we certainly aren’t polished for presentation (contradancing is for dancing, not for watching) people definitely seemed interested and we had quite a crowd gathered around us (including from the balcony that encircled the space we were dancing in). I didn’t have my camera :( but Beth did so I’m hoping to get some pictures from her. Tom and Fred played a great selection of music for this event, and Priscilla and John (who both drove up with me from Bloomington) and all the other dancers did great.

The concert was also very nice. This Boris Giltburg fellow is really good, and it had been a while since I wrapped myself up in the world of professional orchestra performers like that. This turned out to be highly intensified by having John along, because he’s studying to be one (a trumpeter, no less) and had plenty of opinions and gossip to share about this unusual professional culture. Anyway, good concert, I especially liked the Shostakovich.

And… it was fun to be in Indy right before their long-awaited first appearance in the Superbowl. The city is really excited. Actually, I didn’t see a lot of riotous behavior or anything, people in Indianapolis are pretty mild mannered. But what was so striking is that EVERYWHERE had some “Go Colts” type stuff up. Seriously, as we walked the two blocks from the car to the concert hall, I’m not sure there was a single store front that didn’t have something Colts related in the window. Certainly there was no view of anything downtown without several Colts logos in them. And it was topped off by the orchestra projecting a Colts logo on the wall behind them during the warmup periods and the intermission (they turned it off while they were performing). Classy!

And, well, I’m with them! I don’t think I’ve ever cared as much who won the SuperBowl as I do this year. The Colts are a great team… highly skilled, smart, and nice! And, of course, the regional allegiance plays high. So, looking forward to the game tonight! Go Horse!! :)