<\/p>\n
One of the joys of social media is that it doesn\u2019t always follow the short attention span of the 24\/7 news cycle. If you follow someone who shares an article that\u2019s a few months old, suddenly embers of an old debate can flare back up and shed a little light, heat, or both.<\/p>\n
I keep a weather eye on Zen teacher Brad Warner<\/a>\u2018s blog and Facebook page, because beside liking his writings I got to scope him out in person at Starwood a few years ago and determine that he\u2019s not a cabbage<\/a> but an actual human being. I don\u2019t always agree with him, but I\u2019m interested in what he has to say.<\/p>\n He recently linked to an months-old entry at the blog of Ron Crouch, an insight\/Vipassana meditation teacher, regarding the blow-up between Ben Affleck and Sam Harris on Real Time with Bill Maher<\/i><\/a>. Brad\u2019s post ignited a long Facebook thread, and put me in mind of a few points about religion and identity that I think need to be addressed (and which also make for a good followup to our last episode<\/a>).<\/p>\n But since Harris is a controversy magnet I want to say a few things about him first. Sam Harris is a smart guy, and we\u2019re both atheists (after our own fashions) with an interest in mystical experiences and mediation and the martial arts<\/a>. I think he and I could have some interesting discussions over a few drinks.<\/p>\n But in some ways Harris is deeply confused about how the world works, and that makes some of his political opinions dangerous. One of these points of confusion is the social nature of religion, and this is a confusion that Crouch seems to share \u2014 though not to the point of crossing the line into Islamophobia as Harris unfortunately does. I don\u2019t get the impression that Crouch would claim that \u201cWe are at war with Islam\u201d as Harris has.[Harris]<\/sup><\/p>\n Anyway. Enough skirting of ad hominem. I\u2019d like to address the claim that Crouch, in defense of Harris, makes about religion and identity. According to Crouch, all ideologies are \u201ctoxic beyond imagining\u201d, in that they \u201chack\u201d the normal and healthy formation of psychological identity:<\/p>\n One does not just think that it is true that Jesus is the son of the creator of the universe, one becomes a \u201cChristian.\u201d One does not merely think that Mohamed met with an angel, one becomes a \u201cMuslim.\u201d One does not just believe that the proletariate will eventually seize the means of production, one becomes a \u201cCommunist.\u201d And in my own little corner of the world, one does not just believe that the Buddha discovered an exit from being born over and over again, had psychic powers or was omniscient, one becomes a \u201cBuddhist.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n It is not overstating the case to say that if we used the same critical faculties to evaluate such claims that we use to choose car insurance, all superstitious and utopian ideologies would disappear in a day. But because these kinds of ideas disrupt the process of identity-formation, taking it over, we refrain from saying, or even thinking, the obvious to avoid offending others or frightening ourselves.[Crouch]<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n When I look at my own experience, though, this is not what I find.<\/p>\n Now you may be surprised to learn this, but I wasn\u2019t born a Zen Pagan Taoist Atheist Discordian Transcendentalist. I was born into a Catholic household and raised Catholic, in the manner of my Polish and Irish immigrant great- and great-great-grandparents. (Though with a New Age twist \u2014 Dad had Edgar Cayce books on the shelf, and Mom believed she lived a past life in Atlantis. Have I mentioned I grew up in the 1970s?)<\/p>\n That Catholicism was a big part of my identity up until my teens or so. But I did not become a Catholic by intellectually considering and then accepting the doctrines of the Church. It was more the case that I learned to identify myself as a Catholic \u2014 not as a result of deliberate teaching and intellectual instruction, but in the same way that I learned to speak English and to root for the Orioles, through a process of imitation.<\/p>\n As I grew up I was taught that Catholics accepted a certain set of doctrines, and only later and vaguely was I taught some details of those doctrines. For a while I accepted those I found congenial and neglected those I did not. It was only when I was asked to make a formal acceptance of the whole shebang that, taking the prospect of Confirmation more seriously than my peers, I found it necessary to walk away, out to a space where I could start to think for myself.<\/p>\n In other words, the casual chain was exactly backwards from the story that Crouch is telling. I did not accept the proposition that the poor old carpenter-rabbi known to history as Jesus was the son of the creator of the universe and thus become a \u201cChristian\u201d; rather I became, through an almost osmotic process, a Christian and thus learned to nod at the accompanying doctrine. (For a few years, at least.)<\/p>\n \u201cBut you were just a child!\u201d one may object. Well, yes, but that is how most people absorb their religion. Carl Sagan wrote that \u201cMany people have inherited their religion like their eye color,\u201d[Sagan p 339]<\/sup> and that really is an on-target analogy. But even when religion is not inherited that way, when there is a conversion, the cultural<\/i> aspects of a religion usually come first, the dogma later.<\/p>\n Consider the famous conversion of Sammy Davis Jr. to Judaism.<\/p>\n He did not sit down with Huston Smith\u2019s The World\u2019s Religions<\/a><\/i> and read up on the doctrines of various faiths and choose Judaism as a set of intellectual propositions. Instead he met a couple of rabbis who impressed him with their attitude toward life and their cultural customs. \u201cJews have become strong over their thousands of years of oppression and I wanted to become part of that strength\u2026.I wanted to become a Jew because the customs of Judaism held a cleanliness that no other philosophy on this earth can offer.\u201d[Davis]<\/sup><\/p>\n We might argue that it ought not<\/i> be that way. Certainly some of us, through whatever combination of circumstance, have found ourselves distanced from our native cultures and without another one ready to grab on to; we were sufficiently alienated to step back and consider the matter intellectually. Those of us who have been though that process might consider it a superior way to form a relationship with religious practice, that everyone ought<\/i> to do that.<\/p>\n But it is a dangerous confusion to base our politics on ought<\/i> instead of is<\/i>.<\/p>\n When people like Harris make arguments of the form<\/p>\n they have mistaken how most people experience religion, right at step 1, confusing how people ought to form their religious affiliation and personal identities with how they in fact do so.<\/p>\n And when people call for armed conflict on the basis of such mistaken reasoning, it\u2019s nothing less than tragic.<\/p>\n Crouch suggests that if we applied critical thinking to religion the same way we apply it to consumer choices, supernaturalism would quickly fall. But I think he is mistaken in believing that critical thinking plays much of a role in our consumer choices! If it did, surely all the money and energy put into the black magic of advertising<\/a> would be a waste. Critically thinking profit-oriented companies would stop useless appeals to emotion and culture in favor of intellectual arguments about the suitability of their products for various applications.<\/p>\n But the \u201crational consumer\u201d is a mostly a myth found in economic theories divorced from reality. People don\u2019t shop like that.<\/p>\n And they don\u2019t worship like that either \u2014 the \u201crational adherent\u201d is a character in sociological theories that aren\u2019t reality based.<\/p>\n Crouch, Ron. \u201cIn Defense of Sam Harris, Sacred Cow Butcher\u201d. Aloha Dharma<\/i>. 28 Oct 2014. http:\/\/alohadharma.com\/2014\/10\/28\/in-defense-of-sam-harris-sacred-cow-butcher\/<\/a><\/p>\n Davis, Sammy, Jr. \u201cWhy I Became A Jew.\u201d Ebony<\/i> Feb 1960. http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=F9umweXiDtgC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA62<\/a><\/p>\n Harris, Sam. \u201cMired in a religious war.\u201d Washington Times<\/i> 1 Dec 2004. http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2004\/dec\/1\/20041201-090801-2582r\/<\/a><\/p>\n Sagan, Carl. Sagan, Carl. Broca\u2019s Brain.<\/i> New York: Ballantine Books, 1980.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Zen Pagan\u201d appears every other Friday. You can keep up by subscribing via RSS<\/a> or e-mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be presenting at PantheaCon, February 13-16 at the San Jose Doubletree Hotel \u2014 if you\u2019re there, say hello.<\/p>\n If you do Facebook, you might choose to join a group on \u201cZen Paganism\u201d<\/a> I\u2019ve set up there. And don\u2019t forget to \u201clike\u201d Patheos Pagan<\/a> over there, too.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Crouch suggests that if we applied critical thinking to religion the same way we apply it to consumer choices, supernaturalism would quickly fall. But I think he is mistaken in believing that critical thinking plays much of a role in our consumer choices! If it did, surely all the money and energy put into the black magic of advertising would be a waste. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1860,"featured_media":8046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330,1077,187],"tags":[600,1394,61],"class_list":["post-8039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-the-zen-pagan","category-theology-ethics","tag-atheism","tag-islamophobia","tag-politics-2"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Memorial](\"https:\/\/infamous.net\/tzp_images\/Memorial_Stadium_crop.jpg\" "\\"Memorial")
<\/a>\n
\nReferences<\/h3>\n
\n