{"id":120,"date":"2013-10-12T07:30:41","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T01:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/?p=120"},"modified":"2013-10-30T21:30:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T15:30:18","slug":"making-room-theres-not-much-room-atop-a-fence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/2013\/10\/12\/making-room-theres-not-much-room-atop-a-fence\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I can’t be on the fence about God."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"keep-calm-and-get-off-the-fence\"<\/a>The limits of Live and Let Live.\u00a0 Reflections on three years in UU.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I joined a UU church three years ago.\u00a0 I jumped in, knowing I couldn\u2019t assess it fairly from the outside. I needed to experience it.\u00a0 There have been many bright spots, like this one from last week\u2019s sermon:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA Vermonter bought an old run-down farm and worked hard to get it\u00a0<\/span>back in good running condition. The local minister stopped by to say\u00a0hello. Looking over the refurbished acreage, he commented that it was\u00a0wonderful what God and man could achieve together. \u201cYup,\u201d allowed\u00a0the farmer, \u201cp’raps it is. But you should have seen this place when\u00a0God was running it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are dark spots, too, places where the minister and the members seem to avert their eyes.\u00a0 When this happens, our church plummets from a place of shared searching to one of avoiding conflict through willful ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

In last week\u2019s sermon, our minister cited the viral video where Wolf Blitzer interviewed an atheist mom after the Moore, OK tornadoes.\u00a0 He put it this way:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter what she and her neighbors had been through, the terror and the\u00a0<\/span>devastation of nature\u2019s fury, some would say God\u2019s fury, this young\u00a0mother didn\u2019t shy away from her truth, and yet, she left room for the\u00a0truth of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Making room\u2019 is a favorite of UUs at my church.\u00a0 They keep big shakers of it handy and apply it, well, liberally.\u00a0 It\u2019s a cure-all.\u00a0 But of course it makes no sense.\u00a0 If we value anything, we can\u2019t make room for its opposite. \u00a0But you\u2019re not supposed to notice that.\u00a0 Nothing is worth having a conflict over.\u00a0 That seems to be the real foundation of UU.\u00a0 I found this on the UUA website:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere no one\u2019s idea of God is better than another\u2019s\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They can\u2019t mean this.\u00a0 Since they\u2019re Universalists, they explicitly say<\/i> they don\u2019t mean this.\u00a0 They would vigorously reject the idea that God would condemn homosexuals or atheists, for example.\u00a0 Why then did they position this on their Welcome page so prominently?\u00a0 Politics, apparently.<\/p>\n

But UUs do have spines.\u00a0 Our minister shared how he would have responded to Blitzer:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Wolf, that\u2019s a very interesting question. When you ask it, are you implying that I should be thanking a God who destroyed much of my town and oversaw the deaths of my neighbors, because he or she decided to\u00a0<\/span>save me, and my family? I don\u2019t think that kind of God should be\u00a0thanked right now.<\/p>\n

And yet, I am not without a sense of faith in things beyond myself, a sense of faith,…I sometimes call this force \u201cspirit of life\u201d or \u201cthat which is greater than all but present in each\u201d.\u00a0 This kind of God, or \u201cspirit of life\u201d, I can thank in a metaphorical way.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, so good.\u00a0 But he concludes by agreeing with the young, atheist mother:\u00a0 \u201cBut I\u2019m a reverent agnostic, so of course I don\u2019t blame anyone for thanking the Lord.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Did you see that?\u00a0 He wants things both ways.\u00a0 He acknowledges that God plays favorites, but wants to make room for people to thank the Lord.\u00a0 He does that by equivocating on \u2018God\u2019, saying it can be metaphorical.\u00a0 Foul.\u00a0 He can\u2019t have God be worthy of thanks and metaphorical at the same time!\u00a0 \u2018Thanking the Lord\u2019 <\/span>entails<\/i> the kind of God he just rejected, the one he must reject in order to live with himself.\u00a0 Here\u2019s why:<\/span><\/p>\n

Our minister admitted he rejected the God who plays favorites, then said he makes room for a Spirit of Life, so that\u2019s why he has no problem with people thanking God.\u00a0 There it is again.\u00a0 Our minister is genuine but has a political talent that leaks out from time to time.\u00a0 Here it is in slow motion:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Christian God is a son of a gun.\u00a0 I reject him.<\/li>\n
  2. The word God can also be benign.<\/li>\n
  3. So, I have no problem with people thanking God.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This is sleight of hand.\u00a0 He switches gods mid-argument.\u00a0 The key is the meaning of \u2018thank\u2019.\u00a0 Any God who deserves thanking JUST IS the cruel God he rejected.\u00a0 Again, here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

    You can thank a Spirit of Life, but it is not really deserving of it.\u00a0 It\u2019s either an abstraction, an emotional teddy bear, or an actual thing, like a set of unconscious processes.\u00a0 In the last case, it simply acts according to its nature, like ice melting.\u00a0 In the spring, we\u2019re grateful that ice melts, but that doesn\u2019t mean it did us any favors.\u00a0 Ice just does that.\u00a0 In all three cases, \u2018God\u2019 could not have done otherwise.\u00a0 There is no occasion for thanks.\u00a0 We can offer it, but it can\u2019t be received.<\/p>\n

    So, \u2018thank\u2019 carries with it the thick, red-meat God who can help us.\u00a0 And who obviously doesn\u2019t help everyone.\u00a0 The one we must reject if we value equality.<\/p>\n

    He seemed to know something\u2019s wrong:<\/p>\n

    \u201cNow the cynical among us might say that an atheist or agnostic\u00a0<\/span>answering the question by throwing in a comment about not blaming\u00a0others for thanking the Lord is a self-preservation tactic, and they may\u00a0be right.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Ministers have to be politicians.\u00a0 I don\u2019t blame them for that, but let\u2019s be frank about it.\u00a0 He then switches to a pragmatic argument for \u2018making room\u2019:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cIf you are an atheist, or lean that way, you have probably been\u00a0<\/span>approached, if not accosted, by folks who think they are doing you a\u00a0favor by pointing out the errors of your lack of traditional belief. How<\/p>\n

    much have these folks, no matter how well-meaning or kind in their\u00a0approach, altered your thinking? Not much, I\u2019ll bet. It goes the other\u00a0way, too, of course, in that triumphal atheists rarely convert the more\u00a0traditionally faithful among us.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The problem here, of course, is that he puts all beliefs on a par.\u00a0 If we value anything, then all beliefs can not be on a par.\u00a0 But like any good illusion, he has made sure we\u2019re not looking at that at this point in the trick.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Then he ventures into a critical area:\u00a0 \u2018what we can be sure of\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cAs I see it, conversations about theological concepts over which none\u00a0<\/span>of us can be certain, can be so burdened with definitive assertions of\u00a0\u201cright\u201d and \u201cwrong\u201d that they quickly devolve into tedious, self-righteous,\u00a0and counterproductive attempts at conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The key here is \u2018over which none of us can be certain\u2019.\u00a0 Our ignorance is great, and most UUs have been conditioned by postmodernism to see knowledge as a shifting web of opinion and belief, with no solid ground, and no perch from which to pronounce right and wrong.\u00a0 If this was the case, he would be right.\u00a0 He\u2019d have to smile and nod even at a God who plays favorites.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But this isn\u2019t the case, and here\u2019s why.\u00a0 We know some things.\u00a0 Here\u2019s one:\u00a0 If we care about our values at all, we must reject their opposites.\u00a0 UUs say they care about equality.\u00a0 He acknowledged he rejects any God who allows some to expire slowly under the rubble and others to escape only losing an eye, a kid, a pet or a house.\u00a0 Good.<\/p>\n

    So here\u2019s the pinch.\u00a0 If we care about equality, we must reject inequality.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t, then it means little to say we value equality.\u00a0 Any God worthy of the name could treat us more equally.\u00a0 He fails spectacularly, in fact, so he is not compatible with our 2<\/span>nd<\/sup> Principle.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Perhaps realizing this, our minister continued with the pragmatic angle:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cThe question I offer to any of us who are working to \u201cchange the religious belief system\u201d of others is how is that working out for you? \u2026 I suggest that trying to convince people that their theology is wrong is not a very good strategy. How many times has it worked when someone has tried it on you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    I\u2019m very sympathetic to pragmatism.\u00a0 It might be smart to avoid a frontal assault on latent inequality. \u00a0But it’s often based on the false idea that we can’t avoid conflict while being authentic. \u00a0And there are reasons besides persuading people to point out problems with religious positions.\u00a0 To be credible in our own positions, we have to reject their opposites.\u00a0 This is so obvious, I\u2019m embarrassed to keep repeating it.\u00a0 We might even be able to remain silent if our values allow it or strategy requires it.\u00a0 But we can’t\u00a0<\/span>explicitly<\/i> make room for values that oppose our own.\u00a0 If we do, we embrace contradiction and thus undermine our own positions.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But pragmatism is compelling:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cI\u2019m reminded of a story I like that shows the folly of such attempts. \u00a0In a town not all that different from ours, there is an elderly woman\u00a0who every morning for years has gone out onto her porch, raised her\u00a0arms to the sky and shouted \u201cPraise God!\u201d<\/p>\n

    One day an atheist moves in next door to the woman, sees her\u00a0morning ritual, and is irritated. So every morning he waits for the\u00a0woman to shout her praises, so that he can shout back at her \u201cThere is\u00a0no God!\u201d This daily exchange goes on for years.<\/p>\n

    One winter, though, the woman experiences some hardships and this\u00a0time goes out onto her porch to holler \u201cPraise God! I spent the food\u00a0money on heat and now I am going hungry. Provide for me, God!\u201d<\/p>\n

    The next morning she steps out onto her porch and discovers two full\u00a0bags of groceries have been left by the door. \u00a0\u201cPraise God!\u201d she proclaims. \u201cGod has provided me with groceries!\u201d<\/p>\n

    Just then the atheist neighbor jumps out and shouts back \u201cThere is no\u00a0God! I <\/i>bought those groceries!\u201d<\/p>\n

    The woman throws her arms into the air and shouts \u201cPraise God! Who\u00a0provided me with groceries and made the devil pay for them!\u201d<\/p>\n

    Here he got his biggest laugh yet, but not from me.\u00a0 I was aghast.\u00a0 Ready to cancel my pledge aghast.\u00a0 Ready to write an article aghast.\u00a0 Do you see it?<\/p>\n

    The woman had a belief system that fit any facts, so of course she couldn\u2019t be talked out of it. \u00a0<\/span>But it doesn\u2019t follow that we should be silent!<\/i>\u00a0 We tell the truth to countless people who won\u2019t be persuaded:\u00a0 the mentally ill, the addicted, the ignorant.\u00a0 We try with them because it follows from our values, it is the loving thing to do, and there are some successes.\u00a0 People like the woman in the joke are often socially conditioned to think that their faith is the best or only way to get through life.\u00a0 Surely, one of UU\u2019s purposes is to provide alternatives to the unworthy religious and social conditioning that most people have been subject to.\u00a0 This woman may have no idea there are other ways to live, other tribes that can sustain her without faith.<\/span><\/p>\n

    If we really value what we say we do, we can\u2019t just Live and Let Live.\u00a0 Saying that all beliefs are legitimate is equal to saying they don\u2019t matter at all!\u00a0 This is another behind the back maneuver UUs are trained not to notice.\u00a0 A fight is avoided, but only because we give up our other values in a back-room deal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    UUs love making room, not because they hate being right, but because they hate it when others say they are right.\u00a0 But if someone is right, it\u2019s not their fault!\u00a0 We can\u2019t avoid being right about many things.\u00a0 We tell people to wash their hands.\u00a0 We tell them to get vaccinated.\u00a0 We don\u2019t make room for the unhygienic or unvaccinated.\u00a0 Once we care about anything, there are better and worse, right and wrong, ways to act.<\/p>\n

    Concerning God, we know life is not fair, so we know that any God who is a moral agent plays favorites, at least insofar as he determined how much we can<\/i> suffer.\u00a0 So the grown-up thing to do is to face that fact.\u00a0 Once we face it, we can\u2019t make room anymore, but it\u2019s not because we\u2019re arrogant.\u00a0 It\u2019s because we hold a value.<\/p>\n

    UUs are often very courageous activists who bite the bullet and take a stand.\u00a0 But when it comes to God, it seems many or most are under the same spell most humans are, that a good God is a live possibility.\u00a0 It\u2019s not.\u00a0 It\u2019s ruled out.\u00a0 Any God either can\u2019t or won\u2019t reduce human suffering further.\u00a0 There are no other options.\u00a0 And switching to a hollowed-out God doesn\u2019t solve the problem.\u00a0 It\u2019s a trick that fools only those who want to be fooled, the ones who don\u2019t care about defrauding themselves and others, at least in this arena.<\/p>\n

    He told this story about how wrong it is to admit you\u2019re right:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cThe other night, I was getting hard-hearted, closed-minded, and<\/span>fundamentalist about somebody else, and I remembered this\u00a0expression that you can never hate somebody if you stand in\u00a0that person\u2019s shoes\u2026and I realized, \u201cI\u2019m just as riled up and self-righteous and closed-minded about this as he is. We\u2019re in exactly the same\u00a0place!<\/p>\n

    If you could have a bird\u2019s-eye perspective on the earth and could\u00a0look down at all the conflicts that are happening, all you\u2019d see are two sides to a story where both sides think they\u2019re right. So the solutions have to come from a change of heart,from softening what is rigid in our hearts and minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Softening.\u00a0 That\u2019s all you need.\u00a0 Just soften.\u00a0 Well, that does resolve the conflict, which feels great, but it dissolves our other values, too.\u00a0 It\u2019s the krokodil of feel-good liberalism.\u00a0 A corrosive painkiller.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We can\u2019t have it both ways.\u00a0 If we care about anything, we can\u2019t make room for its opposite.\u00a0 UUs accept this around marriage equality, sexism and racism.\u00a0 They even go after the \u2018soft bigotry of low expectations\u2019, because they know silence is complicity, and their values won\u2019t let them sit on the fence.\u00a0 They cultivate a healthy liberal guilt by raising awareness about white privilege.\u00a0 They just can\u2019t seem to reject God because of political constraints, the myth that God can be good, and their well-meaning desire to avoid conflict.<\/p>\n

    The most charitable way I can put it is this:\u00a0 UUs are smart, caring, grown-up people who understand everything I\u2019m pointing out.\u00a0 They just make a different cost\/benefit calculation than I do.\u00a0 They hold that letting more mainstream religious believers have a face-saving way forward is better than pushing logical or ethical points.\u00a0 If a believer\u2019s behavior is good, if their politics are liberal, then leave them alone.\u00a0 It\u2019s not worth it!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    I think this is short-sighted.\u00a0 The world is waking up from a long religious nightmare.\u00a0 The status quo always has the advantage, enabled by our natural desire to be nice.\u00a0 In every social change, there are people who are afraid of going too fast for fear of a regressive backlash.\u00a0 That fear is legitimate.\u00a0 But at this time in our culture, I read the risks differently.\u00a0 I think the time is right to speak plainly and stop all this disingenuous deference to the religious supremacy that pervades our culture.\u00a0 We\u2019ve banished some bad ideas.\u00a0 The iconic ignorant racists of the American South are mostly gone.\u00a0 They have gotten the message that racism will not be tolerated.\u00a0 But any creator God would be far worse than any racist!\u00a0 It is time to say it out loud.\u00a0 If not in a UU church, then where?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    One canard I hear, even from atheists, is this:\u00a0 If you don\u2019t believe in God, why do you care?\u00a0 Please notice that this is another way to dismiss belief!\u00a0 The whole project of smoothing over religious differences relies on saying they don\u2019t matter.\u00a0 But here\u2019s why I care.\u00a0 Suppose the person next to me in the lifeboat endorses a plan that leaves me in the water, so they get more food, for instance.\u00a0 That person is not an ally.\u00a0 Suppose this plan is a hoax.\u00a0 Would it make a difference?\u00a0 No, I have gotten a peek into my neighbor\u2019s mind, and that holds even if there is no Plan.\u00a0 People with such attitudes are carriers, and they spread their ideas when they vote and raise children.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Toward the end, we hear a quote from UU minister, Marilyn Sewell:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cIt\u2019s grown-up time now. We no longer prioritize how \u2018religious\u2019 our language should be… The mission of the church is to not meet our needs; the mission of the church is to heal our world. It is to give ourselves to something larger than ourselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    Then, concluding:\u00a0 \u201cI contend our something larger as UUs doesn’t have to require God.\u00a0 But I think it should be hospitable to those who find meaning in notions of the divine.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Fine, but that\u2019s a fine line. \u00a0And don\u2019t go switching gods on us when we\u2019re not looking.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cIt has to leave space for difference. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n

    That depends on the difference.\u00a0 We can\u2019t leave space for the opposite of what we say we value.\u00a0 We just can\u2019t, not if our own values are to mean anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

    I agree with Sewell that we have to grow up.\u00a0 Growing up sometimes means biting the bullet and living in accordance with our values even when it is unpopular.\u00a0 In UU, it is unpopular to reject God outright, so I am taking a risk.\u00a0 UUs seem to think the moral drawbacks of their excessive liberalism are outweighed by the unity they preserve.\u00a0 The worry is that it is a bogus unity, the result of humoring believers, rather than honestly engaging their beliefs.\u00a0 I suspect that Sam Harris got it right when he said that liberal believers are dangerously out of touch because they are unable to comprehend that anyone would <\/span>really <\/i>believe what fundamentalists believe.\u00a0 This disconnect may account for the glib tolerance UUs hand out so freely.\u00a0 \u201cOh, there\u2019s no real conflict.\u00a0 No one really believes in a God who helps some and not others, anyway\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

    UUs get a lot right, but undermine their own positions because they think \u2018tolerance\u2019 is a value in and of itself.\u00a0 It\u2019s not.\u00a0 It really matters what we are asked to be tolerant of.\u00a0 If we\u2019re tolerant of everything, we are weathervanes.\u00a0 We become amoral.<\/p>\n

    Now, the UUs I know are anything but amoral.\u00a0\u00a0 But they seem to maintain private and public faces.\u00a0 Inwardly, they hold firm convictions.\u00a0 But when they meet a soft, vulnerable fellow human who happens to hold the opposite view, they naturally soften, as we all do.\u00a0 They make a calculation that arguing over a mere belief is not worth the risk.\u00a0 Please notice that this way of avoiding conflict involves degrading belief to the status of opinion or fashion:\u00a0 it\u2019s hardly worth discussing.\u00a0 And certainly not worth any risk.<\/p>\n

    The service closed with the following bizarre spectacle, \u201cThere might be a God somewhere\u201d.\u00a0 Aghast again.\u00a0 Most people in the room know that if God exists, he\u2019s no friend of ours.\u00a0 But they went out of their way to endorse him anyway.\u00a0 I doubt that its purpose was to make nice with anyone present.\u00a0 I worry it was more to burnish their own self-image as radically tolerant.<\/p>\n

    Closing song, \u201cThere might be a God somewhere\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

    If we value anything, we must reject many things.\u00a0 We can\u2019t harmonize a value with its opposite.\u00a0 Pretending we can denigrates both values and harmony.\u00a0 I\u2019ve accepted that I can\u2019t make room for UU\u2019s have-it-both-ways culture, at least not without giving up value itself.\u00a0 I\u2019m like the guy at the magic show telling people how it\u2019s done, and they don\u2019t appreciate it.\u00a0 Whether I stay in UU depends on how central this maneuver is.\u00a0 Last Sunday morning, it was front and center.<\/p>\n

    The full sermon is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The limits of Live and Let Live.\u00a0 Reflections on three years in UU. I joined a UU church three years ago.\u00a0 I jumped in, knowing I couldn\u2019t assess it fairly from the outside. I needed to experience it.\u00a0 There have been many bright spots, like this one from last week\u2019s sermon: \u201cA Vermonter bought an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}