-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
On a recent show of Soul to Soul, Oprah interviewed Diana Nyad, the long distance swimmer who, at age 64, swam from Havana to Key West. During the interview Oprah mentions that Nyad told the producers that she (Nyad) is “not a God person.” Nyad responds: “I’m an atheist.” Oprah responds incredulously: “But you’re in the awe.” Oprah just can’t believe that an atheist could feel awe. While atheists often use reason to understand reality, they have the same emotions exhibited by non-atheists. Atheists just don’t feel the need to affix the “God” label to their feelings.
Nyad saw no contradiction between her atheism and her ability to experience awe, or as she calls it: “weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity.” Oprah was having none of this when she said “I don’t call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is.”
Nyad, maybe sensing Oprah’s uneasiness, offered a concession to the faithful by saying that her “definition of God is humanity and the love of humanity.” That an atheist would make a theist uneasy indicates the theist’s lack of confidence in their worldview. The comfort of theists is not a primary concern for those who advocate reason.
Nyad also went on to explain she’s a “spiritual” person and believes in souls that live on after death. While atheism is not a set of beliefs, it is simply not believing in any god, most atheists don’t accept the other beliefs that accompany God belief. For all the reasons that belief in God unreasonable, belief in the soul is also unreasonable. Nyad’s beliefs freely crisscross the atheist-theist divide.
Oprah’s prejudice against atheists reinforces negative stereotypes. Her viewers will see Oprah’s prejudice as a trait to be imitated and the cancer will spread. For her viewers who already hold anti-atheists biases, those biases have been validated.
Many Christians have characterized Oprah’s beliefs as a form of pantheism, where the universe, or nature, is identical with divinity. While Oprah calls herself a Christian, pantheism is generally not accepted as part of Christian theology. Oprah’s promotion of Eckhart Tolle and his books has done nothing to ingratiate her with Christians.
Overt displays of bigotry against non-believers are tolerated if not encouraged by our society. Studies show that atheists are among the least liked people. This dislike keeps many atheists in the closet. The anonymity of the internet allows atheists to come out on-line while maintaining their disguise at other times. On the internet, people can learn counter-arguments to theological claims and use their own mind to decide which is more compelling.
H/T: Dave Niose, JT Eberhard, Jerry Coyne, Mano Singham, Hemant Mehta, David Edwards.
davidbluefish: I’ll try to unravel that for you.
For one, “conscious” and “conscience” are different concepts.
Being “conscious” of something is open to interpretation, and some question whether self-awareness is a necessity. Is a dog “conscious”? It seems obvious to me they are, but I am less certain about their self-awareness (say, for the sake of argument, an ability to see themselves as an independent body under the control of their thoughts).
By that standard, an infant is not “self aware” until it has been born and learned enough about the world to “model” the things in it, including persons, and then realize IT is a person too and their model of a “person” applies to THEM. On the other hand, I think an infant is “conscious” when it is awake and mentally reactive to stimuli, just like I think the dog is conscious.
Becoming “conscious” of “conscience” requires the ability to mentally model what “conscience” consists of, so again this depends on definitions. A useful one for me was presented in my previous post; I think having a conscience means having the self-restraint to forgo “winning” by unfair means. Unfair means includes causing harm, even to strangers.
I would add that a “conscience” also includes some element of self-punishment for unfair acts; when somebody says an act of theirs “weighs on my conscience,” it is an allusion to the scales of justice, which itself is a metaphor for fairness. A weight on my conscience is an imbalance, an injustice, a moral crime committed by me for unfair gain, for which I castigate myself or feel shame.
That is a lot of organization for an infant to discover and learn; I don’t think children develop even a rudimentary conscience until they are four or so (and child psychologists might have a better estimate than me). The signs would be voluntarily accepting a loss of something they want in the name of fair play (which means some never develop a conscience).
To be “conscious” of a “conscience,” even without possessing one, they would have to build a mental model for themselves of what a conscience is (and what makes it uniquely a “conscience” as opposed to some other form of awareness, like “love” or “disgust”). I don’t think THAT happens, in my personal experience with children, until the child approaches the third or fourth grade.
Even people without a conscience (no regrets, guilt or self-punishment for their moral crimes) can recognize it in other people, as a construct that explains their behaviors and can be exploited. People with a conscience believe in some level of fair play in the long run; and the way to exploit that is to manipulate their perceptions so that what appears to be fair play is actually a deception that will benefit the manipulator at the expense of their “conscientious” victim.
Pete,
Were those few minutes the only thing that Carlin ever did, he would rank as one of the great social commentors of this, or any other time.
Thank You OS.
dbf,
Rescued.
Does excessive blather clog the word press filter? Because I’m sure my last post did. It is not very refined, or too cohesive. But I did like the part about the gardener, the flower, and the fertilizer. :o)
I am conscience that my consciousness is mine alone. At some point in time I must have begun to experience sensation in the womb. I posit I had no ability to be conscience of this, however I was THE conscious of it. My vaguely forming neurons and synapses reacted to the stimuli of the wombs environment. My brain was organizing, but far from organized.
I was simply a gazillion piece jig-saw puzzle, being formed by the evolutionized rules of DNA. My consciousness, began as sparks reactant to stimuli.
The stimuli increased, the sparks increased, my consciousness increased. When does the fetus become conscience of it’s consciousness? When does the newborn? or simply WHEN and HOW do we become conscience of consciousness? .
My consciousness is every moment, every flash, every spark, every stimulus, that ever occurred between my ears. My conscience is the awareness of sparks & flashes I have been able to assemble into logical thought patterns. …… logical thought patterns to me./ We can share thoughts through language, actions, signals etc. We can teach each other thought patterns discernible from chaos.
The evolutionized rules of DNA has somehow allowed our human brains, to ignore, to suppress, to forget 99% of the stimuli that has created our consciousness.
We are conscience of just enough that we can individually handle. If an individual wants more they can look without to the established shared knowledge of others, and also look within to the chaos of pure personal total consciousness and pull out new jig-saw pieces of self and try to fit them into conscience logical thought patterns.
….. of course it is possible I just pulled this out of a somewhat lower part of my anatomy. …
…… Flowers need fertilizer, and sometimes gardeners confuse the two.
Elaine: There is that; and thanks to my father (my real biological father) for raising me to question authority (including his own) from the start.
Tony C.
I think you have already been saved…from religion.
David: I assure you I will never be saved; if the personality inhabiting this body is ever saved, it will have deteriorated to a point that it has nothing left in common with me but appearance. The person I am now, me, will have already met my end. I am an atheist without qualm or doubt, and anybody that thinks I can be “spiritually saved” insults me by implying I am lying about my convictions.
davidbluefish: I don’t think conscience is a worry that somebody may be looking, and to me I find that a derogatory way of thinking of conscience; because it suggests that if one is sure nobody is looking nothing would stop them from performing an immoral act. That isn’t true, there are many times I am certain I could get away with an immoral act, both legally and without anybody knowing, and I still refrain from them.
My morality, at least, is not based on any fear of what other people think of me. It is based on how I feel about me and about how I feel about others, and I do not want to be the people I despise, I do not want to be a thief, or a fraud, or a cheat, or a backstabber, or so greedy I am willing to harm or coerce others into unfair deals, particularly when they are desperate and have no bargaining leverage.
My conscience is about fairness, and one aspect of fairness is that I must judge myself by the same standards I use to judge, praise or condemn others, without excuses for either of us.
Tony C wrote: “My morality, at least, is not based on any fear of what other people think of me. It is based on how I feel about me and about how I feel about others, and I do not want to be the people I despise, I do not want to be a thief, or a fraud, or a cheat, or a backstabber, or so greedy I am willing to harm or coerce others into unfair deals, particularly when they are desperate and have no bargaining leverage.
My conscience is about fairness, and one aspect of fairness is that I must judge myself by the same standards I use to judge, praise or condemn others, without excuses for either of us.”
Tony, you express a better ethic than most in religion. Somewhat close to the teachings of Jesus. Perhaps you are one of those atheists that the new Pope said could be saved.