The apple's proximity to the tree

The apple and the tree: seeds of secular liberalism planted by parental example?

The Parent As A Child

Planted pinks on the parent’s graves last week. Both died in May, 30 plus years apart.  Usually I go with geraniums. Couldn't find any. Too early, or out of fashion, I guess.  

This post is about Mom, who died just shy of 87 years old. She was a life long Republican, but oddly, something of a social liberal who leaned left as she aged, who admired Hillary Clinton.

For 25 years Mom worked as what they now call an "admin" at a state police troop and then when they moved that troop out of town, she worked for a few years at a second one that was closer. She was a discrete and loyal an employee as they could hope, never spoke about work things at home. There was a little hint once.  

While working at the barracks she got a call for jury duty, Years afterwards she said the case involved a motorcycle accident and she relayed a few of the jury selection questions. Had she ever ridden a motorcycle or knew anyone who had? Why yes, her husband. Before they married they rode around on an old Indian machine until they were hit by a car.  Hmm. Because of her job, they asked another question.  Would she always take the word of a police officer over anyone else's?  That would depend, Mom said, on which police officer.  She was dismissed, not sure which side objected.

 Mom had a regular New Years Day Open house and invited relatives, friends and associates from work to stop by. Among the annual attendees was a police dispatcher named Minnie who was usually the only black face in the crowd. Minnie commented on this each year, and she was pretty comedic about it.  To help us see it from her point of view, Minnie invited Mom to a summer barbecue at her house in Bridgeport where Mom would be the only white face in the crowd. Mom agreed to go and asked me to drive.  We were indeed a minority of two. And we were treated  as all Minnie's friends and kin were treated: with mint ice tea and welcoming smiles.  We stayed all afternoon and went away slightly changed.  

It wasn't the first time Mom surprised me. Years before there had been a gay member of the police auxiliary who invited folks from the barracks over to his house for lunch. This was many years ago, another time really and not one of the officers  agreed to go, so the boss asked Mom and the troops only police woman to go. On the day, even the police woman backed out. Unwilling to be so rude, Mom went to his luncheon by herself. 

I was in my early 20s maybe - and I'm afraid I didn't even know what gay was at the time..  She explained without fuss or judgement, very matter-of-factly that it was when certain men liked other men instead of girls, that this man lived with a male friend, and it was like they were married.  She said he was a lovely man, lunch was very nice and she was sad for her host that no one else went. 

There was another thing as well - Mom never voluntarily went to church unless there was a wedding or funeral involved.

I asked her about this several times over the years. She always told me she didn't know what she believed. In later years I pressed her and she said she didn't know if she could know if there were a god or not. Maybe there was maybe there wasn't.  Yet she told me didn't want to fight about it or even think much about it. If someone said 'pray for me,'  she would nod sympathetically.  She would never tell them. And now that she is gone, none of them really believe me. Oh well.

Happy Openly Secular Day!

The work below is a recent SpinArt mandala. I like its bright colors and eccentric sort-of symmetry.

However, Nothing magical is involved in the mandala. Here on earth, as in the fictional realm of OZ - there is often a human "behind the curtain" of change, a human who is imagining things could be a bit different and manipulating, enhancing or wreaking havoc to make it so. Even so with the architectural beauties of a cathedral, a work of sacred music or art - behind the curtain is human imagining.
I believe in wonder which is really a form of imagination. Take a long look at trees waving their gorgeous limbs, clouds ever-changing, the sky or a puddle or stream or the ocean or the cat, or a work of art or some human being, smiling at the wild, random universe.. Those are the natural views that transport me, with nothing "supernatural" in the picture at all.

And so I am posting this picture and wishing you a happy "Openly Secular Day"

Walking away from religious belief - my story

I grew up as a quasi- Episcopalian, sang in the junior choir. When I was 14, I was invited by a classmate to a baptist vacation bible school where I got “SAVED” i.e. born again as they say. I was an over-imaginative and socially alienated teen, happy to hear somebody loved me.... And when I say over imaginative, I was the sort, who as a child of three or four years old, had conversations with an imaginary species of “pookiebell,” a sort of small fairy creature that tended the ferns. It wasn't so much delusion as a strong creative streak that needed guidance.

In my teenage loneliness I conjured a deep emotional connection to Jesus and to god as I imagined their love for me. And this was the attraction.  I started going to a baptist church, and felt accepted there, and began writing christian folk songs. This belief conveniently kept me from having to make the usual teenage decisions about sex and drugs, gave me a ready-made group of people who were supposed to care about me and another far more  authoritative imaginary presence to talk to. After high school, I went to Philadelphia College of Bible as a music student. (Subsequent name changes include Philadelphia Biblical University. and now Cairn University)

The first chink in the old armor came one day when I was out passing out "Jesus Saves" booklets in Rittenhouse Square. I met a Hindu man and we spent some three and a half hours trying to convert each other.. My mind churned. We couldn't both be right, one of us had to be wrong, I thought. But he was every bit as sincere and devout as I was, knew his own holy books just as well...

The summer I got a job as a camp counselor at a religious “ranch” I was brought up short again when a fellow counselor told all the children that their mommies and daddies would burn in hell unless they came to believe. The terrible anguish of these children, who assumed the words of that counselor to be literal, immediate truth - starkly framed the barbarism inherent in the concept of hell.  It was the beginning of the end of fundamental evangelical Christianity for me. I no longer could believe in this version of god. Despite this, I returned to college in the fall - I needed to figure out what to do instead, how to change direction.

After one more year (three total) at bible collage, going through the motions, trying to understand - I dropped out and became an avid non-christian, interested in whatever I could read about religion(s). For many years I told the census takers I was a pantheist, a pagan, a  heathen. For a short while I I was into a sort of new age mumbo-jumboism & reincarnation,  and then dabbled in home-styled American buddhism & insight meditation. My religious opinions were further fleshed out by six years working for churches as a mezzo-soprano, including four years working for a Roman catholic church. I was a non-christian, quasi-atheist at the time, and my immediate musical bosses knew it.

Over the years I have done a lot of thinking about religion and it's creator - the human mind. At the core of each religion, there is always a set of people called mystics. When you read about their experiences they are remarkably similar even in religions that call each other heretics and infidels. I think the similarity is because a “mystical experience” is a brain-state that can happen to anyone who's brain chemistry gets bent in a particular way. It is a state accessible through mediation practice BUT it is a physical phenomenon, not a revelation of a god or gods and not a product of any supernatural process. Religious states of communion, thankfulness or “oneness” that often accompany prayer or meditation are also brain-based and beautiful even apart the common religious labels applied to them. They are natural states of the human brain.

Apparently, I have a atheistic and naturalistic view which excludes divinities as well as the supernatural.. Naturalists see no evidence for the supernatural, and no need for it either as all things, both interior and exterior, arise from the natural physical world. I am also a secular humanist. Secular humanists think that human beings should, without a god or a religion, try to live the best life they can using the power of reason to realize their unique abilities and thereby contribute to the good of society, mankind in general and to the life and history of the planet.

- Mar Walker

Tom Flynn of Free Inquiry Magazine spoke on statistics of unbelief

When someone rattles off statistics 
ask about source and method

Information - on the demography of unbelief -was exactly what Tom Flynn (shown in my rather blurry picture) was sharing at a meeting of The Humanist Association of Connecticut this past Monday evening. Flynn is editor of Free Inquiry magazine, and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. Flynn is a lively speaker and gave a very interesting talk with lots of laugh lines as well as some terrific insights into the meaning of statistics. He looked at multiple sources, and also looked into their methods.

I came away with two things: 1) the number of unbelievers is indeed growing and 2) comparative statistics don't mean anything unless the methodology by which they were created is objective and consistant. This brings to mind a story I've heard from a administrative assistant for a statewide organization whose representatives were sometimes called on to speak before local civic groups. After typing up a speech for one - this admin asked where his statistics came from. "Oh I just make them up - people don't question...."  he said adding he'd never been challenged. The lesson is when someone, even someone who should know, rattles off statistics:  ask about their source and its method.  People are free to say whatever they like - that does't make it true.

Thanks to Tom Flynn and to HAC for the opportunity to hear him speak.   Flynn is author of a number of books, among them a debunking of modern Christmas traditions called The Trouble with Christmas and two science fiction sagas: Nothing Sacred and Galatic Rapture. He is also editor of the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.

"Science is the poetry of reality" - from Symphony of Science

Another tuneful statement from Symphony of Science.com:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cd36WJ79z4&w=560&h=349]

Interesting talk on the inner grammar of human moral decision making

Interesting thoughts on morality in religious vs nonreligious persons:

http://www.youtube.com/v/KiUqBKGHp8o&hl=en_US&fs=1&


http://www.youtube.com/v/zpqFTuD_5nU&hl=en_US&fs=1&


http://www.youtube.com/v/1qiaJ0myd2U&hl=en_US&fs=1&

"Glorious Dawn" from Symphony of Science

"Glorious Dawn" - I think this was the first music video posted at  http://SymphonyofScience.com which is a very cool site.  Check it out! You can find the Lyrics there as well. I have two other of their videos embedded here also.  You can see by watching their videos that outdated concepts of the supernatural are not needed for awe, wonder or mystery in this amazing universe of universes in which we live.

http://www.youtube.com/v/zSgiXGELjbc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

"We Are All Connected" - a music remix from SymphonyofScience.com

This is a part of a series of videos from http://SymphonyofScience.com - watch the video and checkout their website. I will post more of this series here also.

Coming out heathen

In case you missed it, I am an atheist. That is not what I believe - merely what I lack a belief in...

Being an atheist  means I do not have a belief in a god or gods. By inference it means that I regard religion as a vestigial organ of human culture best understood as psychological metaphor. I think that human beings invented gods and god-appeasement rituals, partly in an attempt get protection and control over a dangerous natural world beyond their understanding. And partly in an attempt to get control over their own impulses for the good of the tribe. And often to get and keep control over each other....

As a possible hanger on of the brights movement ** with a naturalistic world view - I am interested in living in this world, this universe, and in this present life. I believe that everything that is, both within us and without us, arises from the natural physical world. That what most folks refer to as the soul is merely the amazingly intricate human brain. (I suggest a book called "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks which shows how our very core changes when the brain is injured...)

I think when we die, that we are gone forever - so cherish this one life you have. Never throw it away as few folks I know have done. Cherish it. You only get this one, so live it well.

For those of you who think an Atheist is an immoral angry monster - well, you are suffering from a stereotype - a prejudice - a form of bigotry. I am just a human being, with a catalog of merit and defect, just as all you religious folks are. Nothing more, but nothing less. A human being. As a secular humanist, I believe that each human being should endeavor to live a good and moral life using his or her individual talents for the good of society, life in general, and for the life of the planet. Living toward this ideal does not requires the assistance, inspiration, commandment or hellfire threats of various gods and religions.

** the brights movement is a loose internet-based alliance of people with a naturalistic view of the world, who see life in terms of the testable, beautiful physical world and who do not find it necessary to cobble imagined gods or goblins, spirits, ghosts, supernatural powers, fairies, what have you, onto a reality that is already complex and amazing.