The first thing I noticed was 2 cops directing traffic. Butch commented on taxpayer resources being used for such a purpose, but they were definitely needed. This was a big church with lots of cars. The building looks more like a school than a church, if you ask me.

Here’s where we went: Chestnut Ridge Church. None of us got a good estimate of how many seats there were. It was set up like a theater with a big stage, a 6 piece pop music band, 2 giant screens where they put the words to the songs and the bible verses from the sermon, and movie theater seating. The control booth is state of the art, like you’d find for a rock concert.Free coffee was served before people went in and each seat had a cup holder like in a movie theater. There were no crosses, no crucifixes, no representations of Jesus at all, nothing that made it seem church-like. It was very casual, very relaxed.

Everyone was very pleasant and nice. We had to shake hands and everyone made eye contact. Children were all well behaved and not too many babies cried much. The TV monitors counted down to the start, then they just basically began with a rundown of the schedule, then everyone said hi to their neighbor then 3 or 4 songs which people were encouraged to sing to, with the karaoke lyrics on the screens.

People seemed to enjoy the music which was very loud. The audience had very little lighting, just enough for me to see my notebook and for people to see if they wanted to get up. But the stage had concert lighting including a smoke machine. The babies didn’t seem upset by the incredibly loud music and the bass was really cranked up on the drums. People seemed to enjoy it but no one got “into the spirit” or did anything crazy, just a bit of keeping time and singing, stuff like that, maybe a bit of clapping when prompted.

We guessed the seating to be around 1500 but that’s a very rough guess. It was about 85-90% full, mostly young people (teens to 30′s, as a rough guess), about 99.9% white. One of my heathen friends saw one black man in African garb in the parking lot when we were going in. Other than that, I only saw white people. Then again, West Virginia is very white if I recall the statistics, so it doesn’t mean too much.

But remember how small our area is. Sure, Morgantown isn’t too small, and the college kids are back for the fall semester, but this is outside of town, and I am just amazed that they had so many seats filled. One thing my friend Joe noticed was not too many older people. But we went to the 11 am service. Maybe the 9 am service catered more to older folk.

So there was about 25 – 30 minutes of singing, which was basically teaching everyone how unworthy they are without God and how much they need him to fill their hearts. And give thanks for Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross and having that bad weekend for us. The band was really good, actually. The two singers had great voices, especially the woman, and the guitar player had mad skillz. The drums were really loud but I think that was intentional to help “move” people.

Some of the songs. The words in quotes are actual lyrics from the TV screens:

• Your Grace is Enough: positive song reminding God to “remember your promise”
• We Cry Out: repent and ask for mercy
• Glory of it All: he came for redemption to save us all; he forgives.
• Unnamed song: a song about having secrets and fear. “his blood can cover us” (ew!)

After the singing, the pastor came out. Like the first guy who seemed to be the master of ceremonies, the pastor was rather unassuming, casually dressed and rather mellow. He seemed humble, in a way, but that might not be the best word to describe him. He preached for about 30 minutes and the message was generally emotional.

There was no substance or anything you could sink your teeth into with what he said. It was all intangible and boiled down to the fact that you’re useless without Jesus, who came to save everyone so you don’t have to bear your burden alone. Just ask him into your heart. He said that you’ll probably still have the same burdens – which I found interesting – but that you’ll also have Jesus. Gee, thanks. Now I have a freeloader and a burden.

It was all very wishy-washy and pleasant. Extremely watered down. Kind of like Christian Homeopathy.

Here are some of the things the pastor said. I wrote them down word for word to share with you:

• John 10:10 (NASB, NIV), Psalm 23
• Isaiah 40:30-31 (rest of bible from NIV)
• Matthew 11:28-30
• “I don’t think life is supposed to be a burden.”
• Galatians 2:20a – crucified in christ. I no longer live, but christ lives in me…
• “God wants to give you more than you can handle.” (so that you’ll let go of your burden and let christ into your heart)
• “When you put your faith in christ, you get a new identity.”
• Luke 10:38-42 – the story of Martha and Mary. Moral of the story, don’t be a Martha!
• “Christians are so busy working for christ, serving christ, they don’t worship him anymore.”
• If you’re a Martha you’re hard to live with. You’ve forgotten how to live.
• Colossians 2:6a – live in Jesus
• John 15:5-8 – the vine and branches parable. You can’t do a single spiritual thing without christ.
• But Jesus’ parables make one point, don’t take them too far. When Jesus talks about the bad branches being cut off and thrown in the fire, that’s not about going to hell. (This was his only reference to hell or any kind of punishment and he made sure that we knew that wasn’t what was meant)
• John 15:7 (again, just so you get it)
• “The burden you carry might remain the same. But now you’ll have Jesus.”
• Homework for the week: Am I Striving or Living? Striving is struggling and judging others. Living is only done through christ and is effortless and happy.
• “There’s a joy that comes when you get this.” (when you start living and stop striving, when you accept Jesus into your heart)

In essence, I felt he was saying you have to hand over your responsibility to christ. You can’t be a whole person without Jesus. And God will make your life harder until you crack and let Jesus in. But that’s just me seeing it from my heathen perspective.

A few more things. When they asked for money, they actually passed around cheap buckets! The people sitting to our right put in a $20 bill, and one of our group saw someone else put in a check for $40. I put in my envelope of quotes, and Butch put his in too. A couple others in our group also did the envelope trick. They basically only asked for money from the regulars. They said if we were just visiting we didn’t need to feel obligated to donate. See below for what Butch and I wrote. In the service the pastor mentioned that the church wasn’t doing as well as they had hoped. But I think that was a lie. They looked like they were raking it in, and everything was top notch. On the website, I think they said the church cost $12 million. Tax free, though. Of course.

Only one short prayer, and no communion, I noticed. And no baptism or mention of either. But they have many other services, some where they “study” the bible, some for adults, college kids (we have a great university here in Morgantown – go Mountaineers!), teens, kids, etc. They also have counseling and an art program. They really do want you to feel like part of a community, it seems, although the service we went to was more like a rock concert. Their other services sound like they are tailored to connect to people.

After the service, there was something called the Mix out front. There was inflatable naked twister, a badminton net, hamburgers and hot dogs being grilled, a football to throw around, all for teens and college kids. Ok, it wasn’t naked twister. But it was inflatable. lol.

I have to say, if I had to go to a church, I’d pick one like this. Everyone was so nice, but it didn’t seem fake or forced. No one seemed too fervent or angry. It was just so damned pleasant. Of course, my little Grinch heart, blackened by years of godlessness couldn’t handle it and I was itching to get out of there, but that’s just me being me, the typical curmudgeonly atheist.

There was nothing negative, no hell-fire, no hatred or bigotry displayed, no fundamentalism. This church seemed to really focus on being a nice, casual place to hang out, be part of a community of like-minded people, and be a generally nice person.

While I didn’t enjoy myself I am glad I went and experienced it. It was definitely interesting and enlightening. I can certainly see the appeal of a church like this over what I had when I was a kid.

Here are the quotes I put in my envelope and gave instead of a donation:

• I don’t want to believe, I want to know. Carl Sagan
• Scientia Vincere Tenebras (Science will defeat darkness)
• I have no need for a religion. I have a conscience.
• If God’s love is unconditional, then why does Hell exist?
• I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.

Here’s what Butch wrote:
Thank you for reaffirming my atheism. Sorry there’s no money. From the look of things, you don’t need it, so you’ve got that going for you.
Have a great life,
An Atheist

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Before that, I’d have to go back to my troubled religious youth to remember being in church. Sitting uncomfortably in straight backed pews; singing vapid, falsely cheerful songs of unworthiness and worship to an invisible sky daddy; sipping grape juice and eating stale bits of savior; getting baptized 3 times in 3 different churches to ward off eternal damnation and gnashing of teeth in the sulfurous, burning pits of hell; dealing with fake smiles on fake faces adorned in Avon makeup and festooned in Sears and Roebuck Sunday best outfits; parroting bible stories carefully cherry-picked from the sordid pages of a book filled with murder, slavery and hate.

None of it was all that pleasant. All of it was forced. No one ever seemed genuinely kind or compassionate. When I learned about hypocrisy at the age of 12 I promptly called bullshit on the whole mess of religion and refused to go again. My parents were furious, but in the end they gave up on me, content that I’d eventually get my just reward in the fiery lakes of hell.

This Sunday we’re going to the mega-church about 45 minutes away. I don’t want to go but my local group wants to experience it. Since I’m the Official Cat Herder, I feel like it would be a good thing to go along. Part of me wonders what it’s like in a mega-church. What is the feel of the place? Something I thought church should do for people is give them a sense of belonging, of community. How can you get that in a huge auditorium? I have no idea how big this place is. So it’s only fair that I actually experience it, I guess.

I have some questions that I want to answer on Sunday. Feel free to comment with other questions I can try to answer as well. Here’s what I have so far. I will take notes while I’m there.

• What makes people excited to come here?
• What messages are they conveying? Fire and Brimstone (like I got in the Southern Baptist church I went to as a child?), Love Thy Neighbor? Look forward to Heaven and forget about the troubles of today? End Times? Healing?
• Are the messages cherry-picked? Are they exclusively positive or are there warnings as well?
• Is there any bigotry?
• How many people are there? How many seats are there? How many seats are filled?
• What is the overall emotion? Do people seem desperately, fakely happy? Do they seem unconnected to reality? Are they calm or elated? Are they somber? Are they quiet or excited? Are they glassy-eyed?
• Do they talk to each other? Do they all sit near each other or are they scattered about? Is there any sense of “community?”

When the collection plate comes around, I have an envelope to put in. It contains the following quotes:

• I don’t want to believe, I want to know. Carl Sagan
• Scientia Vincere Tenebras (Science will defeat darkness)
• I have no need for a religion. I have a conscience.
• If God’s love is unconditional, then why does Hell exist?
• I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.

Thank you for all of your quotes that you shared with me. There were so many good ones, it was hard to decide which ones I wanted, but I had an idea of the message I wanted to convey. Someone commented that they didn’t know why I’d do such a thing. Well, I shared the idea with the rest of my group and hopefully others will also contribute an envelope of quotes to the collection plate.

Here is my reasoning. I will be uncomfortable enough in the presence of strangers ( I have severe Social Anxiety, of several diagnosed varieties, btw, so this is very stressful to me, just to go there at all), the last thing I want to do is stand out from the crowd and look really weird. As a Social Phobic, I like to blend in to avoid bringing attention to myself. I won’t sing the hymns or bow my head, but I will be very courteous and polite. I’m in their house, after all. The goal is to learn and experience. So I thought it would be nice to have something to put in the collection plate.

They will open the envelope and instead of getting hard earned (undeserved) money they will get the opportunity to experience a different worldview in a nonthreatening way. Of course, you can never teach anyone anything unless they are willing to learn.  I don’t expect my quotes to change any minds.

Now, to be completely honest, I must confess to you that part of the reason is harmless deviousness. I can’t help it. I want to smirk all the way to our brunch afterward thinking of them opening the envelope and getting wisdom instead of untaxed, undeclared income. To think I will spread a bit of Carl Sagan goodness and imagine their eyebrows raise as they realize a heathen sat politely among them tickles me to some degree.

If I have to suffer this discomfort at least I can have a tiny bit of harmless fun, can’t I? I know that my message will be discarded, probably in righteous indignation. But I picked my quotes very carefully. I tried not to be offensive or nasty in any way. I tried to show a love of science and knowledge, to show that atheists have morals, to show that asking questions and thinking critically is a wonderful human ability that shouldn’t be wasted by unquestioning obedience to an invisible man in the sky.

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1. Are there right and wrong answers to moral questions?

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world — and there clearly are — then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

2. Are you saying that science can answer such questions?

Yes, in principle. Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors — ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply.

3. But can’t moral claims be in conflict? Aren’t there many situations in which one person’s happiness means another’s suffering?

There are some circumstances like this, and we call these contests “zero-sum.” Generally speaking, however, the most important moral occasions are not like this. If we could eliminate war, nuclear proliferation, malaria, chronic hunger, child abuse, etc. — these changes would be good, on balance, for everyone. There are surely neurobiological, psychological, and sociological reasons why this is so — which is to say that science could potentially tell us exactly why a phenomenon like child abuse diminishes human well-being.

But we don’t have to wait for science to do this. We already have very good reasons to believe that mistreating children is bad for everyone. I think it is important for us to admit that this is not a claim about our personal preferences, or merely something our culture has conditioned us to believe. It is a claim about the architecture of our minds and the social architecture of our world. Moral truths of this kind must find their place in any scientific understanding of human experience.

4. What if some people simply have different notions about what is truly important in life? How could science tell us that the actions of the Taliban are in fact immoral, when the Taliban think they are behaving morally?

As I discuss in my book, there may be different ways for people to thrive, but there are clearly many more ways for them not to thrive. The Taliban are a perfect example of a group of people who are struggling to build a society that is obviously less good than many of the other societies on offer. Afghan women have a 12% literacy rate and a life expectancy of 44 years. Afghanistan has nearly the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. It also has one of the highest birthrates. Consequently, it is one of the best places on earth to watch women and infants die. And Afghanistan’s GDP is currently lower than the world’s average was in the year 1820. It is safe to say that the optimal response to this dire situation — that is to say, the most moral response — is not to throw battery acid in the faces of little girls for the crime of learning to read. This may seem like common sense to us — and it is — but I am saying that it is also, at bottom, a claim about biology, psychology, sociology, and economics. It is not, therefore, unscientific to say that the Taliban are wrong about morality. In fact, we must say this, the moment we admit that we know anything at all about human well-being.

5. But what if the Taliban simply have different goals in life?

Well, the short answer is — they don’t. They are clearly seeking happiness in this life, and, more importantly, they imagine that they are securing it in a life to come. They believe that they will enjoy an eternity of happiness after death by following the strictest interpretation of Islamic law here on earth. This is also a claim about which science should have an opinion — as it is almost certainly untrue. There is no question, however, that the Taliban are seeking well-being, in some sense — they just have some very strange beliefs about how to attain it.

In my book, I try to spell out why moral disagreements do not put the concept of moral truth in jeopardy. In the moral sphere, as in all others, some people don’t know what they are missing. In fact, I suspect that most of us don’t know what we are missing: It must be possible to change human experience in ways that would uncover levels of human flourishing that most of us cannot imagine. In every area of genuine discovery, there are horizons past which we cannot see.

6. What do you mean when you talk about a “moral landscape”?

This is the phrase I use to describe the space of all possible experience — where the peaks correspond to the heights of well-being and valleys represent the worst possible suffering. We are all someplace on this landscape, faced with the prospect of moving up or down. Given that our experience is fully constrained by the laws of the universe, there must be scientific answers to the question of how best to move upwards, toward greater happiness.

This is not to say that there is only one right way for human beings to live. There might be many peaks on this landscape — but there are clearly many ways not to be on a peak.

7. How could science guide us on the moral landscape?

In so far as we can understand human well-being, we will understand the conditions that best secure it. Some are obvious, of course. Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I’m not sure we do. Are there genes that make certain people more compassionate than others? What social systems and institutions could maximize our sense of connectedness to the rest of humanity? These questions have answers, and only a science of morality could deliver them.

8. Why is it taboo for a scientist to attempt to answer moral questions?

I think there are two primary reasons why scientists hesitate to do this. The first, and most defensible, is borne of their appreciation for how difficult it is to understand complex systems. Our investigation of the human mind is in its infancy, even after nearly two centuries of studying the brain. So scientists fear that answers to specific questions about human well-being may be very difficult to come by, and confidence on many points is surely premature. This is true. But, as I argue in my book, mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a huge mistake.

The second reason is that many scientists have been misled by a combination of bad philosophy and political correctness. This leads them to feel that the only intellectually defensible position to take when in the presence of moral disagreement is to consider all opinions equally valid or equally nonsensical. On one level, this is an understandable and even noble over-correction for our history of racism, ethnocentrism, and imperialism. But it is an over-correction nonetheless. As I try to show in my book, it is not a sign of intolerance for us to notice that some cultures and sub-cultures do a terrible job of producing human lives worth living.

9. What is the difference between there being no answers in practice and no answers in principle, and why is this distinction important in understanding the relationship between human knowledge and human values?

There are an infinite number of questions that we will never answer, but which clearly have answers. How many fish are there in the world’s oceans at this moment? We will never know. And yet, we know that this question, along with an infinite number of questions like it, have correct answers. We simply can’t get access to the data in any practical way.

There are many questions about human subjectivity — and about the experience of conscious creatures generally — that have this same structure. Which causes more human suffering, stealing or lying? Questions like this are not at all meaningless, in that they must have answers, but it could be hopeless to try to answer them with any precision. Still, once we admit that any discussion of human values must relate to a larger reality in which actual answers exist, we can then reject many answers as obviously wrong. If, in response to the question about the world’s fish, someone were to say, “There are exactly a thousand fish in the sea.” We know that this person is not worth listening to. And many people who have strong opinions on moral questions have no more credibility than this. Anyone who thinks that gay marriage is the greatest problem of the 21st century, or that women should be forced to live in burqas, is not worth listening to on the subject of morality.

10. What do you think the role of religion is in determining human morality?

I think it is generally an unhelpful one. Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious. You do not need to believe that the Bible was dictated by the Creator of the Universe, or that Jesus Christ was his son, to see the wisdom and utility of following the Golden Rule.

The problem with religious morality is that it often causes people to care about the wrong things, leading them to make choices that needlessly perpetuate human suffering. Consider the Catholic Church: This is an institution that excommunicates women who want to become priests, but it does not excommunicate male priests who rape children. The Church is more concerned about stopping contraception than stopping genocide. It is more worried about gay marriage than about nuclear proliferation. When we realize that morality relates to questions of human and animal well-being, we can see that the Catholic Church is as confused about morality as it is about cosmology. It is not offering an alternative moral framework; it is offering a false one.

11. So people don’t need religion to live an ethical life?

No. And a glance at the lives of most atheists, and at the most atheistic societies on earth — Denmark, Sweden, etc. — proves that this is so. Even the faithful can’t really get their deepest moral principles from religion — because books like the Bible and the Qur’an are full of barbaric injunctions that all decent and sane people must now reinterpret or ignore. How is it that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims are opposed to slavery? You don’t get this moral insight from scripture, because the God of Abraham expects us to keep slaves. Consequently, even religious fundamentalists draw many of their moral positions from a wider conversation about human values that is not, in principle, religious. We are the guarantors of the wisdom we find in scripture, such as it is. And we are the ones who must ignore God when he tells us to kill people for working on the Sabbath.

12. How will admitting that there are right and wrong answers to issues of human and animal flourishing transform the way we think and talk about morality?

What I’ve tried to do in my book is give a framework in which we can think about human values in universal terms. Currently, the most important questions in human life — questions about what constitutes a good life, which wars we should fight or not fight, which diseases should be cured first, etc. — are thought to lie outside the purview of science, in principle. Therefore, we have divorced the most important questions in human life from the context in which our most rigorous and intellectually honest thinking gets done.

Moral truth entirely depends on actual and potential changes in the well-being of conscious creatures. As such, there are things to be discovered about it through careful observation and honest reasoning. It seems to me that the only way we are going to build a global civilization based on shared values — allowing us to converge on the same political, economic, and environmental goals — is to admit that questions about right and wrong and good and evil have answers, in the same way the questions about human health do.

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To start out, the definition I am using for god is any given being that can supposedly create matter out of nothing, is omnipotent, and is unbound by physical spatial traits. Furthermore I derive that an omnipotent god constitutes as an unstoppable force or can be the causation of such. The existence of such a god forms my hypothesis (which I will regard as true for this proof); therefore the following mainly concerns itself with monotheistic brands of gods.

Using the above traits, the god from my hypothesis could create an object of infinite size and maximum density. This theoretical object would literally fill the entirety of the universe, with every small speck of space filled with matter. This rock constitutes as an immovable object as there is nowhere left to move the rock and thus it is incapable of movement. As an aside it happens that god can create an object so large that he cannot move it.

However the existence of an immovable object by definition means that an unstoppable force cannot also exist. Since that is a part of the definition of god outlined above, I therefore must reject the hypothesis and assert that such a god cannot and does not exist. In particular a god that can create matter unrestrained cannot also be omnipotent in all regards.

Simple, short, and sweet… but the devil is in the details (ha ha). Any god with boundaries and limitations obviously escapes the above, but from my experience that’s the last thing any monotheist will even begin to contemplate (god being the biggest baddest supernatural being that ever was—who also happened to create everything—just isn’t enough, seemingly god must also have limitless power and ability). So please qualify objections to the below considerations.

1)      Can god create an object so large even he cannot move it?

The answer given above is yes. To disagree, please provide what way the following proof is inaccurate and give an alternative:

a)      Definition: god is omnipotent (omnipresent as well).
b)      Definition: god can create matter anywhere out of nothing.
c)       Action: god creates matter everywhere he exists / in all space.
d)      Analysis: there is nowhere left to move the object, thus…
e)      Conclusion: god can create an object so large that he cannot move it.

It is a very logical progression given omnipotence that does not limit god in any way. Please refrain from self-defeating arguments, god cannot create space no matter how capable he is as space is nothing. I literally mean nothing, it doesn’t exist—it is the default before anything is created or exists there. Furthermore adding a step between c and d is self-defeating as well (such as removing a portion of the object to create space to move it) as it implies that before god does something to it the object is immovable.

2)      Infinity and Gravity

The first thing to note is that the matter in the object from the proof is countable infinity and the force is not. Infinity in mathematics doesn’t actually exist either, so any mathematical attempts should have both these considerations explained with it. I’d also like to add here that a theoretically infinite object is at equilibrium and has no center, so that should take care of gravity qualms.

3)      Hilbert’s Hotel Paradox

Hilbert’s Hotel paradox refers to a hotel with infinite rooms each filled with a guest (so full). However the hotel can accommodate infinitely more guests by putting a new guest in room 1 by having the guest in room 1 move to room 2, the guest in room 2 to room 3, and so on for each new guest. The conceptual flaw to this problem is that the hotel isn’t actually accommodating more guests; it’s just that there are now guests infinitely transitioning rooms. In other words the number of guests in rooms did not increase. This paradox cannot apply to the infinite object due to the incapability of having a transitional progression.

4)      Beyond Reason

Please refrain from trying to tell me god is not understandable by human reason. Realize that there would be no correct religion if that was the case as no religion understands god, and there would be no assertions that god exists because it would be beyond reasoning. Besides religions often like to claim we were created in the image of god, thus cannot be outside of our reasoning. I’m going to make an assertion that anybody who asserts such doesn’t actually believe it… By saying god is beyond reason, nobody could then assert that anything above is wrong since it would be beyond their reasoning as well.

There we go, I think that covers all the rift-raft arguments. Let the fun begin!

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Partial Transcript:

37:18 If the goal is not to score points, if the goal is actually to persuade people, if the morally superior goal is to win minds rather than just make people look stupid, then tone really does matter. Psychology has some things to say about how we should best go about trying to persuade people to really, any position, but even more specifically to a scientific position that they may otherwise feel threatened by,  or may conflict with their worldview.

38:07 It’s an empirical issue. What is likely to be persuasive or off-putting or not is a testable question. There are people right now researching how you package factual issues and seeing if that affects the rate at which people believe, disbelieve or deny them.

One of the examples of this, there is a researcher who’s name is Geoffrey Monroe from Towson University who has done some studies on peoples’ willingness to agree with belief consisting information as opposed to information that’s inconsistent with beliefs as a function of things like how the information is presented to them.

So he had a piece on Science and Religion Today where he folded this into the debate about, do you alienate people by using blunt language that offends them. The theory behind this that people don’t, as most people probably realize, they don’t simply make up their mind on the basis of factual, cognitive, cold type calculations. This is one aspect that frustrates us, is that when we are debating with somebody, it quickly becomes apparent that the facts of evolution in some cases won’t make a difference, if the person has an emotional investment.

So people hold attitudes because they are linked to aspects of your self-identity. As stated in Terror Management Theory, if you have a worldview that can be threatened, you get defensive. You circle your wagons as if attacked. In the same way, with factual issues like scientific-type things, religious people hold these as part of their broader self-identity.

So if you’re saying, “I’m a creationist”, you’re not just saying, “I favor the arguments for creation”, you’re saying, “I, as a person, my identity is as a creationist”. So if you’re attacking creationist claims, you’re attacking that person as well, their self-identity. So how do you challenge the beliefs, but don’t threaten them on a personal level?

40:14 Geoffrey Monroe did a study that is very sobering, because what he found was that, his particular study used stimuli that had to do with things like homosexuality and mental illness. He had people who thought homosexuality and mental illness were the same thing, and he had people who had the view that there’s no connection. Then he presented them both with statements that confirmed or disconfirmed that.

What he found was disturbing. People who’s views were challenged by this evidence, so believed disconfirming information, so if I thought that homosexuals have higher rates of mental illness, then I read a scientific article that said the opposite, those people tended to devalue science itself. That is, they rated lower the ability of science to answer questions like that, even beyond that, that it generalized to other issues other than the one that was challenged.

So it wasn’t even just, “this is a bad study”, or “I disagree with the conclusions” it was that “science itself cannot answer a question like this”. They become almost postmodernist. They would say, “well, you can have your science, but that doesn’t answer these questions.”

People at my university usually reserve two areas where “science can’t touch this”: religion and things like love or sexuality. They say, “Yes, you can have your data but these things are immune to faith or the wonders of the emotions, but science can’t address that.”

It seems also that a lot of pseudo-sciences tend to cluster together. You’re going to hear on a christian radio network, typically, obviously creationist stuff, but climate denialism comes in there, a lot of times there’s a lot of pseudo-science-y herbal remedies that you’ll hear late night on the christian talk shows.

It does seem to be that once you distrust one area of science, it’s not all that hard to start being more skeptical of others.

42:07 It spreads. So, what Monroe’s work is suggesting is the reason that happens is the person has some sort of cognitive dissonance. “My view is apparently disconfirmed by this study, so therefore this study cannot be valid, and studies in general probably aren’t valid.” They bring out things like, “even scientists disagree” or “facts can be twisted”.

What Monroe’s broader point to the debate of how information is presented is that often you can change that, or you can blunt that response by packaging the information in a less threatening way. That is, if somebody’s emotional factors are involved in this, if they are hurt, or if their worldview is challenged, if you present the information in a way that allows them to maintain part of their worldview, they are less likely to have that compensatory defensive response.

His argument is that you can use language that is relatively more accommodating. Like instead of saying, “we argue” that you instead frame it as, “here’s what the data says”. Or that you allow them to affirm part of their identity in another area.

So the way that some of these studies work is, let’s say you’re studying group boundaries like nationalism or patriotism. If you present the information like, write an essay on things that are good about America, and then present them with information that might be challenging, like slavery or something like that, then the person is more likely to accept that information because they’ve had the chance to affirm their broader values in a different context.

If I’m somewhere talking to a christian face to face, and we’re getting into a theological debate, I found myself instinctively but then later deliberately using a lot of morally loaded terms when talking to them. Instead of just saying, “you’re wrong on this position, that’s not the most valid argument”, you say things like, “well, I know you believe in integrity, I know you believe in worshiping god with all your heart soul,  and mind. I think integrity requires us to use the same standards to judge our own arguments that we would others.” Now what that’s doing, I’m still making a critique of their position, but I’m affirming some part of their moral identity. I’m not attacking them, “you’re a bad, ignorant person”, I’m saying “you’re a person who wants to live a life of integrity. Here’s an opportunity to have more intellectual integrity.”

45:05 The evidence suggests that if you frame a response within the person’s own worldview as much as possible, that it’s less likely to be alien to them and they can just dismiss it. For example, about the environmental movement becoming more christianized, or rather that the christian left movement, that if you package things in terminology like “creation carer” or “global warming stewardship”, that the persons are more likely to receive that rather than deny that.

The point is that if you frame an issue that is less likely to be threatening, or if you allow the person to affirm other things, like “religion is really great for you, it sounds like it’s done great things, but”, then that makes the person less likely to have a defensive response where they just say “No, I’m not going to listen”

45:54 So the question is, can we do this in a way that preserves our intellectual integrity? Do we have to lie to them, and coddle them and say, “oh this is really great” when we don’t think it is? Or can we frame things and still preserve our own beliefs?

~What follows is the RD guys hashing out their ideas and thoughts, which are interesting. They don’t really agree that it’s a good way to handle arguments with religious people, but have a listen for yourself to get their full thoughts.

What do you think? I want to mull it over some more, but I think affirming someone’s moral identity, appealing to their sense of integrity, would be a good way to go, to not alienate them. But I agree with the guys that winning a tiny little battle isn’t really that satisfying. Although part of me thinks it might help, another part thinks it might be harmful, as the guys mention how people mix pseud0-science with real science readily, which isn’t acceptable. I also don’t believe that science and religion can mix.

It’s a delicate issue. I look forward to hearing what you think about it, if you care to chime in.

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I know not all of you like to listen to podcasts. So I went through it and transcribed a good chunk of what Luke said in his lecture, the parts that I thought were most important. I have a few thoughts afterward. By the way, I missed the beginning for reasons I can’t remember (this took me a couple of days to make it all make sense) but this is a lecture about Dr. Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory.

Partial transcript:

…This is where we get neurotic about death. It’s the ultimate inferiority complex. Our lifespan is limited. We realize we must die but in striving to overcome that, it creates more problems. We put a lot of energy into denying death.

One way to summarize Becker’s theory: It’s good to have a brain that can plan for the future and be self-aware, but the problem is that when we become scared of our own mortality it sets up a defense against that. Part of the defense involves symbols. We think symbolically and so our symbols set up a barrier. These symbols can be religious, political, symbols of our mastery over the world, symbols of making money, etc.

What Becker thought was that culture itself is a buffer against these threats to our self esteem. We set up our belief in culture and human culture really is an attempt to deal with threats to our own mortality and our self esteem. So first, what is self esteem?

Self esteem is not just a product of you, individually. What Becker thought was that self esteem was something you get a sense of only through other people. So you think of yourself as a valued person who has powers, who can act upon the world, but that is socially validated by parents, siblings, peers, a gradually expanding group of people. This gets more abstract and symbolic as the child grows up. So as a young adult you might latch onto ideologies. For many people this is religion. You join a church and get a sense of what you need to do to be good or bad from those groups too. The good thing is that these groups give you clear guidelines to derive your self esteem.

This can be positive or negative. So if you don’t get positive reinforcement, you’ll look for self esteem and validation in other ways. So this is why people join cults and gangs, etc.

Hero Striving System: whatever you use to seek pride and superiority. Everyone does this in different ways. The system is different for different people but it all boils down to wanting to feel worthwhile.

So cultural symbols can provide a buffer against our mortality fear. How can I transcend death? This is Immortality Striving. It all boils down to “the end is not the end.” This could also be more abstract. Your cultural striving could be symbolic striving against death. You believe your genes and your legacy will pass down even after you die through your children. You create something that will last after your death, like a pyramid, or a lot of money, etc. You’re saying, “I was here, I mattered.” This maintains your self esteem.

Here’s where the problem comes in. If you are so invested in these strivings, in these worldviews to drive your self esteem, that means any threat to those worldviews, to that symbolic system, if they are poked at, is not trivial. This will poke at your self esteem. This person is challenging my worldview. And someone doesn’t even have to be mean to threaten you, because there are different worldviews. Every time you encounter a different person, a different culture, you see the standards of normal differ.

What Becker thought was that being presented with a different worldview is inherently threatening. Because if that guy’s right, he has a different worldview, he seems perfectly happy with his system, and it’s contradictory to my system, there’s a problem for my system.

So a lot of war, strife and prejudice was really about more than just “you’re different, I don’t like you, you have funny gods”, but it’s a threat to our self esteem. So if he’s right, I’m not going to heaven, or there isn’t a heaven.

So an atheist’s world view is very different and therefore very threatening.

People, when confronted with different worldviews have to find a way to deal with it. You can denigrate people (call them stupid); try to convert them to your worldview (proselytize or missionary work) – which validates your worldview and your self esteem; assimilate people – neutralizes the threat by getting them to give up part of it (Native Americans, etc);  accommodation – declaw the other worldview by incorporating some of their elements into ours (like blue jeans, hippy symbols, etc) in a very sterilized sort of way; or annihilate the other worldview – genocide, stamping out everything about the American Indians, even their buffalo, don’t let them speak their own language, etc.

Here’s where Terror Management Theory comes in, with empirical testing. There are 2 main predictions to test:

1. If we threaten someone with mortality thoughts, if we remind them of death, that should result in compensatory response to bolster their worldview.

Mortality Salience Hypothesis (around the 30 minute mark)

2. If we poke at someone’s worldview and suggest that they may not be correct, we should see an increase in their death anxiety. They might become more fearful of their own mortality if their worldviews are challenged in some way.

From the clip of the video, Life and Death: Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality (video on demand), Flight From Death – The Quest for Immortality (dvd)

The first component of TMT states that individuals need to sustain faith in a meaningful worldview.  The second component states that individuals need to feel as though they are value protected members, objects of significance within this worldview. This is self esteem.

Talk of politics and what kinds of leaders people will choose when their mortality feels threatened: (39 minute mark). (there is a polarizing effect)

There is a reciprocal relationship between threats and my own mortality and worldview.

49:00 – more religious studies: Here’s an interesting one. A group of high fundamentalists (believing in biblical literalism) were confronted with contradictions in the bible, they unconsciously thought about their own mortality more.

What does that mean? What’s at stake? It goes a bit deeper than they just want the bible to be perfect and literal, or that they want to preserve a belief in doctrine. When people are defending religious concepts, their worldview is at stake. When someone pokes at their belief and says your belief isn’t true, or here is evidence against your views, it’s more than just a contradiction of these facts, it’s an emotional reaction the person is going to have because that is their ticket to immortality. It raises fears of their own death when those are challenged.

52:30 – creation and evolution worldview studied with similar results. Creationists who had their worldview threatened had higher unconscious death fears.

Implications: why won’t people accept data on evolution? This study would imply that it’s not simple bullheadedness or dogmatism, it cuts deeper than that. From a TMT perspective, these people are defending their worldview. This is what keeps mortality fears in check. If someone comes along and pokes at that worldview it’s not just a matter of intellectual debate anymore, this is an actual threat to their sense of symbolic immortality.

55:00 Dual nature to mortality salience. Studies show that if you show the positive aspects of a religion, for example, then expose them to mortality salience, the people end up defending a worldview that is more accepting. So religion and politics might contain mixed positive and negative messages. If the positive ones are primed and made more active, the person when under threat defends those more too.

So mortality salience isn’t all about doom and gloom and threats. What this would imply is that, it depends on what message is accentuated.

57:20 What about atheists, who don’t have a worldview of literal immortality? Does that mean that we’re immune from the effects of death threats because we’re not expecting to live for the resurrection, or be reincarnated? That is, we are probably not using that as a security blanket. Essentially Becker says it  doesn’t matter – “It doesn’t matter whether their cultural hero system is frankly magical, religious and primitive, or secular, scientific and civilized. It’s still a mythical hero system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of unshakable meaning. Civilized society is a hopeful belief and a protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense, everything that man does is religious.” So there are just as many non-theistic, nonreligious worldviews that can be defended as religious worldviews. For example, the cult of Stalinism and Mao. Or other things people value like human rights, humanism, science: these things are also worldviews that are defended because they give our life meaning.

Somebody might not say, “I’m going to go to heaven, that’s the only thing that would matter to me”, but they might say that they support these values. That’s their ticket to immortality. So this has the same effect. If anyone pokes at the Bill of Rights, messes with Jefferson, or says that science doesn’t matter, to many people who have a naturalistic worldview that would be just as threatening as people who have religious worldviews. So these theories don’t just apply to people who have supernatural or religious worldviews.

1:00:00 What should people do with this information? The denial of death in our culture is particularly strong. So one way to deal with that is to learn to have a worldview that acknowledges mortality on a regular basis. Live more consciously with those reminders everyday, not in a negative or morbid sense, but in a sense that this is part of life. “This is going to happen to me, and I’m going to make life count now, instead of saying I can transcend and cheat death.”

Also, choose ideologies that don’t rely upon the strident defense of “that guy is threatening my worldview, I’m going to wipe him out”. Ideologies don’t have to be threatening to other people. Make the unconscious conscious. Recognize that this is a bulwark to my worldviews, to recognize when you see a commercial, a political package, or a doctrine that this is really more than what it says. It’s actually a worldview defense. If we make that conscious, we can recognize what it is that we’re doing when we do it. So then we can take a step back and say, “I’m going too far. I’m defending myself against my own sense of insignificance by doing this action.”

1:02:13 There are ways you can strive for immortality in a nondestructive way. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to strive against other peoples’ worldviews. Find positive ways to find meaning for your lives through positive ways to defend your worldview; charity, supporting other people, etc.

~

If you’ve made it through the transcript and are still with me, congratulations. This isn’t the most fun topic, and this post is really long. But it does have huge implications and can really help us in understanding our own motivations as well as how other people are dealing with their own fears and thoughts.

I have a followup, also by Dr. Luke Galen and the rest of the Reasonable Doubts crew, that will give us some very practical advice in dealing with people and their dogmatic beliefs. But this post was plenty long enough, so I thought I’d save it for later.

I welcome your thoughts.

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My sister-in-law (we’ll call her Martha) has been dating this guy who we’ll call Steve. I met him the night that she and Steve were reacquainted at the high school reunion last year. It was one of those big affairs where 10 years of classes were invited. Anyway she and Steve have basically been dating ever since. She hasn’t had the best luck with guys in the past but she’s head over heels in love with him and is very happy, which is good.

The night I met Steve, I mentioned to him that I was reading a great book called Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life. It’s a fantastic book that I highly recommend. Butch was there and chimed in that it’s all about evolution, which it is, in a very cool, observable way. Steve rolled his eyes and scoffed. Scoffed! I didn’t want to get into it since we were heading home but I immediately found myself feeling cold toward him.

So, when Martha brought Steve to a family BBQ the next day I was polite but really didn’t have anything to say to him. He seemed nice enough though.

Time went on and I learned from him that he likes Sarah Palin. He thinks she’s got some good ideas. (I think I just threw up a little in my mouth there) Martha told me he’s a full on conservative republican but that they don’t talk about politics. As I do with most people, I was also refraining from political  – or religious – talk with him as well.

To this day we’ve stayed clear of those two topics. But we’ve gone out to dinner quite a few times, hung out at family gatherings, and he even invited us over to watch some MMA on a channel we don’t get next month (Woot!) He’s a genuinely nice guy. He’s not stupid by any means, can hold a conversation, has a good sense of humor, and seems to be making Martha extremely happy.

Why am I talking about this? Well, to me, Sarah Palin is a stupid, vapid pentecostal nutcase with only enough brain cells to rub together to help her wink and flap her mouth when someone pulls her puppet strings. The fact that people give her 2 seconds of their time, combined with her views on Armageddon and the end times, makes her extremely dangerous. Usually when confronted with someone who likes Palin, I run the other way.

But this time, because I wanted Martha to be happy, I got to know Steve and found that I genuinely like him. I don’t want to talk about politics or religion with him, but I like the guy.

It leads me to wonder, are the vast majority of republicans and christians more like Steve? Are they relatively nice people who are not stupid, or even smart? Good, honest people who are just misguided in politics because of how they were raised or values they got from church?

Have the vocal minority that I see on tv or the interwebs overshadowed the quiet majority that encompasses Steve? Do the vocal minority give people like him a bad name? Or is that bad reputation well earned even for Steve?

And does it matter? I mean, if people like Steve would happily vote for Palin because of her “good ideas and folksy charm” doesn’t that make him a serious part of the problem, even if he’s a relatively nice guy?

Here’s another question. Are Steve and I going about this the right way? By eschewing political and religious debates and arguments, are we missing an opportunity? I don’t think so.

Sometimes the best way is to lead by example. We each know where the other is coming from, and he’s shown me that there are nice republican christians out there, something I wasn’t too sure of before. Maybe he has learned that atheists aren’t so bad by hanging out with Butch and I. Maybe that’s better than a bunch of heated arguments pitting reason against dogma, or republican conservatism against whatever the hell I am. Those arguments would never change the other’s mind, but would certainly strain or break the friendship we’ve developed.

Your thoughts?

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