Questions For Camille Paglia

I'm a fan of Camille Paglia.  I think that she's an honest and original thinker who is also a gifted communicator.  As such, I take interest in her recent comments at Salon - especially as they pertain to theology.   

Ms. Paglia is an atheist, but of the thoughtful and respectful variety.  She has no trouble identifying the positive contributions that religion has made to society.  As she says:

"I respect every religion deeply. All the great world religions contain a complex system of beliefs regarding the nature of the universe and human life that is far more profound than anything that liberalism has produced. We have a whole generation of young people who are clinging to politics and to politicized visions of sexuality for their belief system.  They see nothing but politics, but politics is tiny.  Politics applies only to society. There is a huge metaphysical realm out there that involves the eternal principles of life and death."

She also has scant respect for atheists who never really did their homework.  She was asked "what do you make of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the religion critics who seem not to have respect for religions for faith?"

She answered:

"I regard them as adolescents. I say in the introduction to my last book, “Glittering Images”, that “Sneering at religion is juvenile, symptomatic of a stunted imagination.”  It exposes a state of perpetual adolescence that has something to do with their parents– they’re still sneering at dad in some way. Richard Dawkins was the only high-profile atheist out there when I began publicly saying “I am an atheist,” on my book tours in the early 1990s. I started the fad for it in the U.S, because all of a sudden people, including leftist journalists, started coming out of the closet to publicly claim their atheist identities, which they weren’t bold enough to do before. But the point is that I felt it was perfectly legitimate for me to do that because of my great respect for religion in general–from the iconography to the sacred architecture and so forth. I was arguing that religion should be put at the center of any kind of multicultural curriculum."

Fair enough.  But it seems to me that there are questions that atheists should struggle with - ones that I would think would challenge much of the fascinating world-view that Ms. Paglia has developed. If I could, I would ask her:

1. As an atheist, you most likely don't believe in free will.  Do you believe that people should be held accountable for their "wrong-doings?"  If so, why?  Clearly, they have no choice to act in any other manner.
2. Do you believe in concepts like justice and morality which have no scientific or material basis?  What do you view as the source of these concepts? 
3. What is the origin of matter, life and consciousness?  Would our lack of explanatory ability in these matters cause you to suspend your judgement as to weather or not a creative intelligence could have brought them about?  If not, are you accepting your atheism on the basis of faith? 
4. If you believe that life (and as an extension, thought) are the results of blind and impersonal forces, how do you know that your mental faculties are reliable?  Do you have confidence that what your brain tells you (whoever "you" actually is) is coherent?  How do you know?
5. Are any ideas superior to any others?  Given that, materially speaking, ideas are nothing more than haphazard firing of neurons, and that neurons have no actual worth or meaning, how could an idea be said to have any actual value?  As such, should we refrain from all critique of ideas that we subjectively find displeasing? 

That should do for now.  Camille, if you happen to come across this, let's talk!  I would truly be interested to hear what you have to say.

Science Discovers Atheists Don't Exist

I was a little surprised to come across this link today: "Scientists Discover That Atheists Might Not Exist, and That's Not a Joke."  According to the article "cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged."  It's not new information to anyone that human beings are "hard-wired" for numinous experience - for having a specific sense or experience of something transcendent in their lives.  As a believer in spirituality I obviously have no issue with that as it would be absurd to imagine that the Creator would not have endowed us with the capability of recognizing His existence.  What I don't like so much are the "side effects" of the researchers conclusions and how they arrived at them in the first place.

The central premise of the findings is that in as much as we have no free will - we have no choice but to believe in transcendence.  As they state, "evidence from several disciplines indicates that what you actually believe is not a decision you make for yourself.  Your fundamental beliefs are decided by much deeper levels of consciousness, and some may well be more or less set in stone."  It's true that many atheists don't believe in free will but I would think that this is one of those areas for potential agreement between believers and non-believers.

If there's no free will, then naturally there is no morality and no reason to hold anyone accountable for their behavior.  Despite the obvious veracity of that idea we don't seem to find anyone, anywhere, embracing it or acting as if it's true.  To me that has always indicated that atheists actually do, deep down, believe in a transcendent morality (an absolute code of right and wrong) and they only pay a sort of intellectual lip service to the idea that there isn't and that we're truly not free.  As the article notes - people "are only aware of some of their religious ideas."  As I've noticed that atheists are (generally) uncomfortable with the idea that they are compelled into believing what they do (including their atheism), so am I, as it would make all of Jewish practice a ridiculous charade.  For a comprehensive take on the Jewish notion of free will have a look at Rabbi Akiva Tatz's new book on the subject "Will, Freedom and Destiny."

The piece then goes on to list many of the benefits that religion (which we have no choice but to embrace due to our lack of free will and which is programmed into us by evolution) that atheists knowingly or not participate in.  For instance:

• Some sort of ritual when a loved one passes on
• An abiding interest in morality 
• Belief in some sort of  "supernatural surveillance" (Karma, the Universe, God, etc)  in keeping people on the straight and narrow
• The recognition of an "unnamed, unidentified payback mechanism" that dispenses justice - and is frequently seen in books, films, etc.

In short, the piece, though I contest its free-will assumption, is making some good (and obvious) points:  A) Human beings need and depend on the transcendent, B) Atheists (being human) also depend on and function in the world of the numinous and C) "religion" is the best vehicle for meeting these fundamental needs.

As the piece correctly concludes "we might all be a little more spiritual than we think."