What Church?
“What church do you go to?”
That question, asked of newcomers here in Charlotte, caused a minor flurry in the Observer Forum a while back. I wonder if those newcomers realize just how Southern a question it is?
When I was a girl, my Momma taught me that I must always refer to any person of the female persuasion as a “Lady,” because to do otherwise was to imply that she was not. Similarly, no one here asks “do you go to church?” as that would imply that the questioner has some reason to suppose that you do not; that you are a heathen, an non believer, a (Gasp! Shudder!) atheist, even! And opinions concerning “non believers,” here, are far more negative than those concerning the merely “unladylike.”
For the purposes of this column, I am using the term “non believer” to encompass a wide range of non belief: Card carrying atheists, agnostics, and vaguely spiritual cosmic deists, who all share non belief in a personal deity, and who all are subject to deep prejudice on the part of believing neighbors.
The chief misconception about religious non belief is that “non believers” are moral nihilists, or at least, ethically untrustworthy. This is certainly untrue. There is not a scintilla of evidence that non believers are less moral or ethical than believers are. In fact, there is mounting evidence that all peoples in all places at all times are born with a proclivity to develop moral and ethical principles in the same way that we are born with a proclivity for language. Both language and interpersonal ethics are necessary for us to build complex, cooperative societies. Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser has developed a science of moral grammar that applies to all human cultures. We can even see the basic outlines of ethical behavior in non human species. Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, has documented what can only be called sympathy, empathy, and reciprocity in various primates. Monkeys will go hungry for days rather than get food by shocking other monkeys. Chimpanzees will drown trying to save other Chimpanzees.
Ethical systems based on the Golden Rule long predate Christianity. As early as 500 BC or thereabouts, the Buddha and Confucius both formulated versions. Buddha wrote: "One should seek for others the happiness one desires for himself." Asked if there was “one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life," Confucius replied, "It is the word shu--reciprocity: Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you."
Non believers are not without sin in the insult department, of course. As far back as the American Revolution, the good Southern gentleman Thomas Jefferson wrote, “[T]he day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.” Jefferson, like many of the Founders, was a Deist, for whom God and the laws of the natural universe were more or less synonymous. He had some famously negative things to say about Christians.
The most common insult now hurled at believers is that they are, well, not the sharpest tacks in the box. The so called “New Atheists” are famous for this. Men like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris do not stop at extolling the blessings of the god-free, reason based universe; they inveigh against the evils of all religion, and demand that it be vanquished; banished from decent human society forever. As a badge of their rational honor, they would dub themselves “brights,” a label implying that if you are not one of them, you must be, well, “dim.”
This tendency to insult believers complicates the battle to keep religion out of science and science classes. Frankly, it seems to me to be perverse to call for public support for a solid scientific education, while implying that that self same public, 80% of whom are religious, is a flock of deluded sheep.
Time to lower the decibel level a bit, folks. Your non believing neighbors aren’t heathens who dance naked in the yard on Samhein. Your believing neighbors are fully capable of adding their age and the change in their pocket. We can work together to improve the science curriculum for our students, and to keep Charlotte moving toward a better future for us all.
And how do I answer that “What Church . . . “ question? Well, I’m Southern enough to get by with the classic, “Bless your heart for asking! Say, do you have a recipe for this casserole?”
That question, asked of newcomers here in Charlotte, caused a minor flurry in the Observer Forum a while back. I wonder if those newcomers realize just how Southern a question it is?
When I was a girl, my Momma taught me that I must always refer to any person of the female persuasion as a “Lady,” because to do otherwise was to imply that she was not. Similarly, no one here asks “do you go to church?” as that would imply that the questioner has some reason to suppose that you do not; that you are a heathen, an non believer, a (Gasp! Shudder!) atheist, even! And opinions concerning “non believers,” here, are far more negative than those concerning the merely “unladylike.”
For the purposes of this column, I am using the term “non believer” to encompass a wide range of non belief: Card carrying atheists, agnostics, and vaguely spiritual cosmic deists, who all share non belief in a personal deity, and who all are subject to deep prejudice on the part of believing neighbors.
The chief misconception about religious non belief is that “non believers” are moral nihilists, or at least, ethically untrustworthy. This is certainly untrue. There is not a scintilla of evidence that non believers are less moral or ethical than believers are. In fact, there is mounting evidence that all peoples in all places at all times are born with a proclivity to develop moral and ethical principles in the same way that we are born with a proclivity for language. Both language and interpersonal ethics are necessary for us to build complex, cooperative societies. Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser has developed a science of moral grammar that applies to all human cultures. We can even see the basic outlines of ethical behavior in non human species. Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, has documented what can only be called sympathy, empathy, and reciprocity in various primates. Monkeys will go hungry for days rather than get food by shocking other monkeys. Chimpanzees will drown trying to save other Chimpanzees.
Ethical systems based on the Golden Rule long predate Christianity. As early as 500 BC or thereabouts, the Buddha and Confucius both formulated versions. Buddha wrote: "One should seek for others the happiness one desires for himself." Asked if there was “one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life," Confucius replied, "It is the word shu--reciprocity: Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you."
Non believers are not without sin in the insult department, of course. As far back as the American Revolution, the good Southern gentleman Thomas Jefferson wrote, “[T]he day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.” Jefferson, like many of the Founders, was a Deist, for whom God and the laws of the natural universe were more or less synonymous. He had some famously negative things to say about Christians.
The most common insult now hurled at believers is that they are, well, not the sharpest tacks in the box. The so called “New Atheists” are famous for this. Men like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris do not stop at extolling the blessings of the god-free, reason based universe; they inveigh against the evils of all religion, and demand that it be vanquished; banished from decent human society forever. As a badge of their rational honor, they would dub themselves “brights,” a label implying that if you are not one of them, you must be, well, “dim.”
This tendency to insult believers complicates the battle to keep religion out of science and science classes. Frankly, it seems to me to be perverse to call for public support for a solid scientific education, while implying that that self same public, 80% of whom are religious, is a flock of deluded sheep.
Time to lower the decibel level a bit, folks. Your non believing neighbors aren’t heathens who dance naked in the yard on Samhein. Your believing neighbors are fully capable of adding their age and the change in their pocket. We can work together to improve the science curriculum for our students, and to keep Charlotte moving toward a better future for us all.
And how do I answer that “What Church . . . “ question? Well, I’m Southern enough to get by with the classic, “Bless your heart for asking! Say, do you have a recipe for this casserole?”
posted by Mooms at 2:22 PM
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