From the Mind of Trevor Stone

Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim's word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order. (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.

Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic socieites have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies every known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).

— Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, "Religion is a Team Sport."

While many European countries have low native birthrates, the successful ones have high immigration rates. I see this as a transitional phase in group selection. Haidt argues that religious communities and practices are a group adaptation: groups of humans with a strong religious bond are able to overcome free rider problems and outcompete—as a group—groups which are less cohesive or whose cultural practices are less effective at bringing collaboration to fruition. For most of human history, one's membership in a religious group was generally from life through death: leaving a religious group meant leaving a tribe, or having a conquering tribe's religious system forcibly replace the conquered tribes.

But now large group "superorganisms" (including religions, nations, governments, and companies) don't have to be tied to a human lifecycle. In the 21st Century, humans have considerable ability to move between groups. Much as an animal organism doesn't die as its cells come and go at a steady pace, a paper entity can grow and thrive so long as it can get a continual influx of new resources, even if those resources shift focus to providing outcomes beneficial to the group rather than reproducing on their own. This is particularly true for companies: two parents often work for different companies; a baby born to the couple is not generally part of either company's culture; and there's no assumption that the child will grow up to be part of the company as an adult. Workers might be part of a company for a few months or a few years (and rarely more than half their lives), yet companies like IBM and UBS are older than roughly half of the countries in the UN.

The Sadducees believed in total textual authority of the original Torah. The Pharisees added the history of law decisions. It would make sense to see Jesus as a rebel advocating for non-textual authority through direct experience. Insofar as the gospels quote him citing scripture, it's because he was arguing with people who insisted that the only truth was in the book.

The Pope made a speech to the Queen of England which could be interpreted as comparing atheists to Nazis.

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.

I leave open the question of whether Pope Benedict XVI prefers the sobering lessons of religious extremism from the 16th and 17th Centuries. It's true that many of the violent extremists of the 20th Century were explicitly atheistic: Stalin and other Soviets, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the Khmer Rouge. But many other violent extremists were religious, even if their target selection wasn't motivated by religion. U.S. segregationists and South African apartheid advocates, conflicts in Rwanda, Guatemala, Vietnam... World Wars I and II were not about religion, but aside from the Soviets, all the major players were at least nominally religious. And regardless of the private views of Nazi leaders, their extremist persecutions were largely ethnic and social, not religious: being a nonpracticing Jew didn't buy reprieve, nor did they distinguish between Christian and atheist homosexuals.

Leonard Shlain wrote something interesting in The Alphabet vs. The Goddess: the conflicts between communism/socialism and capitalism in 19th and 20th Century Europe can be seen as a new phase in the continent's history of religious warfare. The communists don't believe in God, but they have religious texts (Das Kapital, for instance), prophets, and a sometimes-violent fervor based on a set of ideas.

So far the 21st Century has provided one major ideological conflict: Wahhabists and other extremist Islamic groups in a decentralized fight against imperialism and secular and insufficiently-religious governments. And there are conflicts which mix nationalism with religion that have spilled over from the last century: Israelis and Palestinians in the near east and Muslims and Hindus in Pakistani/Indian border lands. But the bloodiest conflicts, in eastern Congo and southern Sudan, are about concerns much older than religious conflict: land and resources. And as the world population grows and the climate gets more volatile, these sorts of conflicts can only be expected to spring up more often. The important thing isn't what the folks involved believe, it's what they have and what they want.

Left Behind is the magnum opiate of the people.

388 communities and 420 people are interested in bad religion, but only five people are interested in good religion.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the pro-life Catholic Church spends a lot more energy opposing abortion than opposing the death penalty. In every place of worship, and around many believers necks, sits a sculpture of an ancient device for killing a prisoner in public.



(I've heard that Catholic organizations have started taking stands against the death penalty, war, and other politically-charged death situations. I applaud this direction and hope the world's largest organization takes a more public and active role in these campaigns.)

If a poor and despised Indian tried to get a job at a company testing Java software they would throw him out with a ClassCasteException.

My OKCupid profile lists my religion as "Other and laughing about it." In the "You should message me if..." section, I invited folks to ask what the "other" is and just what's so funny. lonelocust asked, and the answer got a bit lengthy. I figured the answer might be of interest to the public at large.

As for my Other... I am a polyathiest: I believe in the nonexistence of many gods. More broadly, I find value in religious practice, which is in large part a communal expression of metaphor. Because it's communal, we come to know and trust each other. Beacuse it's metaphoric, we have mental tools to handle events and situations in public and private life. But I don't mistake the metaphor for the real thing.

For instance, a ritual about Demeter and Persephone provides an opportunity for participants to reflect on changing seasons and harvests using the intimately familiar tools of human relations. So in one sense, I believe in these gods; I tell stories about them. But I don't think that Demeter lives atop Mount Olympus and personally oversees the annual changing of the color guard.

When asked, I typically identify as Pagan (by which I mean Neopagan). I practice with other Neopagans, ranging from an annual festival in the mountains with about 1,000 people to a group of about 10 that met privately two or three times a month during college. I like the attitudes of a lot of my fellow Neopagans and often feel an ecstatic connection to the world in Neopagan-styled ritual.

But I don't limit myself to Neopagan dogma. (It's an eclectic bunch, so there are several dogmae to choose from. And even though witches prefer cats, there's plenty of dogma around.) For one, I don't paint Christianity with a broad brush. A lot of pagans are (justifiably) frustrated with closed-minded relatives, xenophobic evangelists, a thick book where women play a minor role, and 2000 years containing crusades, witch hunts, and suppression of science. But they tend to conflate all Christian people, practices, and ideas under the same umbrella of negativity.

As a polyathiest, I can appreciate the artistic beauty of a cathedral while condemning the practices of the priesthood; welcome Jesus's teachings of love while challenging the focus on the afterlife; have a great time at a Blind Boys of Alabama concert while raising a disapproving eyebrow at lame rock about Jesus; acknowledge Christ's role in Martin Luther King's nonviolence while arguing with people who think war in Iraq is guided by God; appreciate the metaphors of birth, life, and death while being suspicious of the prevalence of sacrifice and savior metaphors in our culture's tradition. Like Joseph Campbell, I'm fascinated by the stories people tell and the rituals they perform, and I don't want a label for census purposes to prevent me from exploring something that might be interesting and fun.

So with an explanation that deep and intellectual, why am I laughing about it? Because I like to laugh about everything of importance. I like to make religious gatherings an opportunity for mirth and (ir)reverence. I include puns and jokes in quarter calls I write. I even led a ritual based on (and set to) Dark Side of the Moon when the new moon fell on April Fool's day a few years ago. And despite the high-level irony and humor of it, it turned into a very serious and moving experience for many of the participants. I also lead non-verbal rituals and excercises which can be both very playful and very serious. I laugh (often inwardly) when having fun, and if religion wasn't fun, I wouldn't do it. (People who practice religion without having fun typically do so because they think God wants them to do it that way. A God who's opposed to fun is a metaphor I choose not to participate in.)

This explanation is unedited and not particularly organized. I would like to write a more formal essay and post it on my website. In the mean time, I welcome questions and suggestions of points that could be clarified or expounded upon. Let's start spreading the term "polyathiesm," the belief in the nonexistence of many gods. I notice mollybzz is on the bandwagon. I think in many situations it's better than "pagan," since there's more in common between Dragonfest and an anthropology convention than a 5th-Century village outside the Holy Roman Empire.

The Bible was Holy Ghost written.