Que Sera, Sera

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Andrew Stuttaford

Fans of grand guignol spiced with a little anticlericalism and a surprising (for its time) suggestion of religious skepticism might enjoy The Duchess of Malfi, an early 17th century play now being staged in NYC for the first time in decades.  So far as the randomness of existence is concerned, I did rather like these (famous, but not to ignoramus me)  lines:

“We are merely the stars’ tennis balls, struck and bandied
Which way please them.”

Fair enough, I reckon. That theme was picked up cleverly by the director’s decision to play Que Sera, Sera as we filed out of the theater, memories of the play’s brutalized romance and piles of corpses still fresh in our minds. Splendid stuff!

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Mystic Pieces

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Andrew Stuttaford

Today’s New York Times op-ed by Ross Douthat begins on a note (sort of) of hope:

“Mysticism is dying…Monasteries have dwindled. Contemplative orders have declined. Our religious leaders no longer preach the renunciation of the world; our culture scoffs at the idea…”

But it was too good to last. A little later Ross continues with these glum tidings:

“Yet by some measures, mysticism’s place in contemporary religious life looks more secure than ever.”

Oh well. As always with Ross the piece is intriguing and well worth reading, not least in this case for the rather vivid description of what mysticism is said to involve:

“[T]he quest for the numinous, the pursuit of the unnamable, the tremor of bliss and the dark night of the soul. “

Blimey.

And then, of course, there is the part that mysticism is meant to play in “what’s supposed to be the deep promise of religious practice:”

“[T]hat at any time, in any place, it’s possible to encounter the divine, the revolutionary and the impossible — and have your life completely shattered and remade.”

Promise? Sounds more like a threat to me.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 10 Comments

Hostility to anti-religion by demographic

Posted on March 5, 2010 by David Hume

A question:

do you have polling data that examines distrust of atheists in public office according to gender/race/religion (e.g. exploring whether men or women are more likely to trust an atheist president)?

I couldn’t find cross-tabs, but pollster.com does have this trendline (atheists are yellow):

But the GSS has the variable SPKATH which would probably be a good proxy:

There are always some people whose ideas are considered bad or dangerous by other people. For instance, somebody who is against churches and religion… a. If such a person wanted to make a speech in your (city/town/community) against churches and religion, should he be allowed to speak, or not?

I limited the sample below to the years 1998-2008. “No College Degree” is inclusive of those who have attended, but not completed, university. Stupid = WORDSUM 0-4, Average = WORDSUM 5-8 and Smart = WORDSUM 9-10.

All cells were outside of each other’s 95% confidence intervals.
Continue reading →

Posted in data | Tagged | 14 Comments

Non Angli sed angeli

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Bradlaugh

Andrew: I am willing to extend a modicum of tolerance to angels out of respect for William Blake, who, by his own account, regularly conversed with them.

The Angel

I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne’er beguiled!

And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart’s delight.

So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten-thousand shields and spears.

Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.

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Angelic Upstarts

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Andrew Stuttaford

Here’s an entertaining, if in its implications somewhat depressing, article from the London Spectator on the current popularity of angels. This extract gives a flavor:

Angels in My Hair is the autobiography of Lorna Byrne, an Irish woman who claims to have seen angels every day since she was a baby. Not only did the book become a bestseller, achieve six-figure sales in America, attract queues of weeping fans to Byrne’s signings and gather endorsements from the likes of William ‘Ken Barlow’ Roach (‘Lorna beautifully and graphically describes angels and how they work’). It also led to interviews with several newspapers, who quoted Byrne with a remarkable lack of scepticism. ‘I see angels all the time I’m awake,’ she told the Mail. ‘I see people’s guardian angels — we each have one — and other types of angels, too, including archangels and cherubim.’ ‘Their wings,’ she added for the Telegraph, ‘are beautiful beyond words.’

The whole piece is a useful reminder of the sort of stuff that people want to believe in – and do. And will.

Posted in culture, Odds & Ends | Tagged | 7 Comments

The different qualities of distaste

Posted on March 4, 2010 by David Hume

A comment below:

” I’m sure many people here have read opinion polls that show Atheists to be public enemy #1 ranking less favorably than Gays, Blacks, and Gay Blacks. Many still can’t understand that someone can believe in morality but not God.”

Just speaking as someone who is gay [lesbian] and was atheist/agnostic for most of my life, I always object when ppl make such statements. Sure, people say they don’t like atheists, but hatred against atheists manifests itself in completely different ways than hatred of other groups….

Over the past generation there has come to be in the United States a series of “oppression” bidding wars. Who has it worse, white women, or black men? Atheists or homosexuals? Muslims or Mormons? And so forth. A problem though with these comparisons is that they presume that dislike and persecution lay on a linear spectrum, rather than exploring a multidimensional space. The concreteness of this is manifest in comparing relations between the sexes and the races. The relationship between men and women, all things equal, is qualitatively different from the relationship between different races.
Continue reading →

Posted in culture | Tagged , | 26 Comments

The most powerful atheist politician in the USA

Posted on March 3, 2010 by David Hume

Pete Stark. One of my “TO-DO” projects is to infer the real proportion of atheists in Congress based on demographic variables.

Posted in culture | Tagged , | 28 Comments

The “Next in Line” model

Posted on March 3, 2010 by David Hume

Alex Knepper argues that Romney’s Nomination No Lock. The evidence he marshals seems respectable, but I have to say that it was less persuasive than I’d expected, so I am actually increasing my confidence in the model, not decreasing it (I started out guardedly skeptical of the model so I expected Knepper to make a clearer case).

Posted in politics | 7 Comments

Moral thought, rational or reflexive?

Posted on March 3, 2010 by David Hume

Rod Dreher, Does moral action require rational thought?:

What do you think? My answer is, “Mostly, no.” I believe virtue is mostly a matter of habit. This is not to say that reason has nothing to do with morality; obviously there are many dilemmas that require serious moral deliberation before one acts, so there is absolutely a place for reason. My point is that in most cases that confront us, we don’t have to think before we act morally; we behave morally (or immorally) because we have gotten into the habit of thinking and acting in ways that lead us to a particular moral response to a challenge.

Presented this way, I mostly agree with Dreher. Rather, it seems that rational justifications are created after one makes a moral judgement. But this quote from The New York Times gets at the issue more subtly:
Continue reading →

Posted in philosophy | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

No Extremists Here!

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Bradlaugh

So … American Renaissance can’t get a Red Roof Inn conference room but Louis Farrakhan and his gang of creepy white-hating leg-breakers get a whole stadium.

But then, of course, Farrakhan is mainstream, while AR is … what’s the cant word here? oh yes — “repugnant.” Right.

Posted in culture, politics | 12 Comments