136: Welcoming Young Atheists with David Breeden
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David Breeden joins The VUU to talk about how UU is engaging with young atheists and turning them into humanists. The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Tom Schade, Joanna Fontaine Crawford, Aisha Hauser, and Hank Peirce, and airs Thursdays at 11 am. ET. This episode first aired March 24, 2016.
Tornados, Typhoons, and Straw Dogs: Giving Thanks With Some Thinking
Thanksgiving American style. The day declared a national holiday for the purpose of giving thanks. Despite the best efforts of those of a theocratic bent, who or what to thank remains open to interpretation.
My thanks goes to the universe that just keeps cranking out good things. As the fifth chapter of the Daodejing puts it,
The space between
sky and earth is empty,
like a bellows, moving
and moving, and
out comes more.
That’s something to be thankful for. Yet problems begin when all of that “more” between earth and sky begins to get divvied up. And, Thanksgiving being a national holiday, I can’t help thinking of the portion of the universe’s “more” taken by this particular nation and how that “more” is divvied up within our borders. It its harsh realism the Daodejing says,
The universe is neither
“good” nor “evil” outside
of human standards.
The universe treats all things
like so many straw dogs.
Recent survivors of various weather-related calamities might agree with that. Then there are these next lines:
Earthly rulers treat people
like so many straw dogs.
Well, maybe in the China of 400 BCE rulers treated people like so many straw dogs, but here in the US . . . Oh, wait. There was that government shutdown. There is that sequestration. There is that surveillance. Those drones. Oh, and then there’s work on Thanksgiving. And Black Friday. Rising poverty. Rising hunger. Straw dogs.
For Daoists, the answer is clear: the universe itself has no morality—it is neither good nor evil, and governments almost inevitably act in self-interest without regard to the greater good. It’s not what we learn in school, but evidence indicates another story.
I lost my childhood faith for the “big guy in the sky” when I began to suspect the moral calculus of the universe. When I began to suspect that “good” and “evil” are thoughts only in the human mind.
Does “god,” or does “god” not, decide who gets the cookies? And what is the basis for that judgement? Nation of birth? Social class? Skin tone? Religious affiliation?
Is it a moral act to thank such of deity for choosing me? Or my nation? My social class? My skin tone?
It’s not that I’m not thankful. But I’m not thankful to a deity that would put one child in Switzerland and another in Somalia. Such a deity does not deserve thanks, however mysterious “his” ways might be. And a deity that merely reflects the workings of the bellows of the universe? What’s the point?
Government? Yes, I grew up with those cardboard Pilgrims with their very white faces taped to the classroom windows. I understand what I was supposed to take away. Am I thankful to a government that protects the rapacious while ignoring the basic humanity of most of its citizens? Not so much.
Where might the thanks go? To luck? To fortune? To randomness? To that bellows that just keeps pumping?
Perhaps, finally, all we can do is watch and try as hard as we may to resist cynicism and complicity with the powers of what we human beings view as evil.
Here’s the advice to the Daoist:
Take care of what
is within yourself;
the outside will never
stop moving
and moving.
Thankfulness in the face of what we human beings call good and evil must serve as a reminder to think through who and what is dividing up the blessings. Yes, tornados and typhoons sweep away both the good and the bad. The universe treats us all like so many straw dogs. We find ourselves enmeshed in systems of oppression. Our choice is our work against those systems, and how we treat each other.
Naming the Ultimate, Part One
I suspect that we think about the ultimate because we can’t manage to see ourselves as ultimate. Or infinite. Or eternal. Or all-knowing. And that hurts! It hurts to be a too, too solid, limited, fragile creature.
So, we think about the Spirit of Life. God. The gods. The Ultimate Concern.
Search the internet for the names of God. Besides the ninety-nine that Sufis chant, just start with “A” and work through time and geography. Or read Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods. I’ll bet you don’t know them all! Furthermore, you probably only believe in one or two or five at the most.
Always, human beings have pinned names on the absolute.
We call those who do not believe in the gods not a word of their own choosing but “a-theist.” Everyone is defined by the naming of the ultimate. We human beings take this quite seriously.
Alan Watts called this ultimate thing, “the which of which there is no whicher.” That about sums up the idea, doesn’t it?
Inevitably, with the naming comes the assignment of attributes: “Omnipotent.” “Omnipresent.” “Omniscient.” I learned to chant these long, hard words as a child in Sunday school. It’s what God was— Everything. Everywhere. All the time . . .
Walking to school? Yes! In the bathroom? Yes! Watching dad working at the factory? Yes!
The thought was reassuring. And frightening. And threatening. This was the Big Guy in the Sky, who had walloped the world in a flood and made Noah a sailor. The Big Guy who waxed the Egyptian kids and drowned—again with the drowning!—hard-hearted Pharaoh’s army.
This was the Big Guy who would wipe out the world with fire next time. And He really, really didn’t like human nature.
“But wait!” I said. “What about . . .” And so it went, ‘round and ‘round in my little primate brain. I was wrestling with the which of which . . .
Naming the ultimate. Assigning attributes to the absolute.
“The which of which there is no whicher.”
Always this ultimate was about what we—poor farmers in the Midwestern United States—weren’t. And this exhausts at least one avenue of inquiry: we limited creatures want some “whicher” out there that keeps an eye on the (clearly dangerous) machinery of the universe.
But then my little primate brain realized just how blatant a case of wish-fulfillment this was. And so off I went, searching for another “which.” About that . . . next week.