Morgan Spurlock, filmmaker and creator of the successful fast food critical documentary Super Size Me, has a groundbreaking program running on the cable network FX called 30 Days. The premise of the show goes like this: every episode details the journey of one person, either Spurlock or another willing participant, living a life vastly juxtaposed to their own for, you guessed it, 30 days.
The show’s first episode last year let audiences watch as Spurlock and his girlfriend attempted to shell out a living on minimum wage. Episodes through this year have sent an outsourced American to meet his Indian replacement, a minuteman to live with a family of illegal immigrants, and a Christian man to follow Islam in a Muslim community. But tonight’s upcoming episode leaves me truly confounded: an atheist woman moves in with evangelical Christians.
So far, nearly every episode of 30 Days has introduced an average American to a radically different perspective, and has left them deeply changed and enlightened in the process. For example, the outsourced American, upon viewing the extreme poverty and antiquated living conditions of India, concluded that his replacements needed his technology support job much more than he did. He entered the country complaining that his job loss had made him downsize from a house to an apartment; he left with the guilt that he could not take all of the impoverished children he enountered back with him.
This episode, though, doesn’t sound all that earth-shattering. An atheist, encountering a widespread Christian movement, in America? It sounds like Spurlock has it backwards. The atheist woman’s host family will no doubt learn with shock that despite her lack of religious faith, she has morals and decency, but what can she learn from a community that already dominates a large subset of American culture? Unlike Muslims, illegal immigrants, and those earning minimum wage, evangelical Christians hardly have a bad rap that needs debunking.
Regardless of this judgement call with which I would dispute, I highly reccommend this program as one of only two or three worthy programs on television.
I consider myself an atheist, and I see your point. Nevertheless I'd like to comment that people who are perceived as extreme or fundamentalist christians have evoked strong prejudice reactions in studies using samples of college students (the typical sample in social psychological research), especifically, fundamentalist xtians evoked more anger than gay men, more disgust than activist feminists, more fear than both gay men and feminists, and more pitty than feminists (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005). Of course, atheists evoke even stronger prejudice reactions from the average American (although the article I mention didn't look at atheists).
Cottrell, C. A., & Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Different Emotional Reactions to Different Groups: A Sociofunctional Threat-Based Approach to Prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 770-789.
Christians must surely be a tiny minority in the USA, whose citizens are the richest people the world. Christianity is a creed of poverty. Christians are required to give away all their worldly goods. A rich person cannot go to heaven. The bible is quite clear on that. Though many Americans claim to be christian their wealth precludes this. Anyone claiming to be a christian on the internet is obviously lying since no true christian would even be able to own a computer (or an SUV or even a gun). Also no christian could support the current scapegoating of the Iraqi people. When an american claims to be a christian they are almost certainly lying. An atheist living in an evangelical world would be an honest person living amongst liars.
I would like to see this show. I enjoy reality TV, and I think this is one of those shows that is a must-see. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I assume previous episodes have been focused upon changing an individual, but perhaps the opposite will be the effect here. Perhaps the aim is to instead change the family. While it may seem contrary to the overall tone of the show, it would make more sense.
Is the woman by any chance extremely immoral? That would be a nice match-up.
When I heard of this show, before it was aired, I wondered how well it would fare, condensing a period of 30 days into one of 20 minutes.
Unfortunately I'm without cable, because you've definitely made me curious. Placing it up there with Stephen & Jon seems a tall order to fill.
Getting a christian to live as a muslim for a month is not nearly the stretch it would be to get a christian to live as an atheist for a month. What constitutes an "atheist lifestyle"? Not going to church is hardly remarkable, lots of self-styled christians find endless excuses not to go to church. We may be a nation of believers, but we are less bound to ritual than other places. What else? Maybe atheists read more books. No, that wouldn't be it, either, there are lots of intellectual christians.
I think probably the fact that other than a profession of non belief, atheists in general don't live differently than christians. In this case, it may be the shock value of shoving two such extreme worldviews together, but it could also turn out ot be a nonstarter. In spite of fundies in our midst, for the most part Americans really are pretty tolerant on an individual to individual basis.
In answer to davexy, though, when has poverty ever been the hallmark of mainstream christianity? America cannot be singled out for this obvious disconnect, not when you look at the way the Vatican is laid out and the shear economic power of the church since it became the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries. Certain orders of monks have embraced poverty, but in general that's one of those things that gets ignored regularly.
Besides, Christ never asked for poverty from his followers. That's a misreading of the parable of the young rich man, who kept pestering Jesus for "one more thing" to do to be a follower, and finally, after telling him repeatedly that he was doing fine, Jesus, rather impatiently, challenged him with something he couldn't give up. It wasn't a command to be poor, but a challenge to put nothing else first before his faith. That, among many other things in the Bible, got misinterpretted.
Besides, generosity is also supposed to be a christian virtue–and last time I checked, you can't demonstrate generosity if you don't have anything.
Hi, I got here by way of Dispatch From the Culture Wars. Good post. I haven't seen any of the shows, but the premise sounds very interesting. I like the idea of being exposed to radically different perspective. It can help all of us understand each other better, which can only lead to positive changes to our world.
Ricky: the program actually airs for 60 minutes, and Spurlock makes it a point to integrate a few spatterings of statistics and fact in between segues to make for a very meaty presentation. Last night's show looked at the oft-mentioned poll indicating that Americans trust atheists less than Muslims or homosexuals (true), and also featured a street interview that went something like this:
Spurlock: I'm going to say a word, and I want you to respond with the first thing that comes to mind: Atheist.
P1: Scary.
P2: Dangerous.
P3: UnAmerican.
etc.
This turned out to be a pretty good little show.
I'd like to add that in addition to Stewart and Colbert, 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' qualifies as appointment television for me. Keith provides rational news and enlightened commentary, which is a rare find on cable or network news these days.
check him out 8pm EST on MSNBC
Jason Rayl Said: …there are lots of intellectual christians.
I looked up Intellectual in a dictionary. Not because I didn't know what it meant, but because I wanted to make sure that the definition hadn't changed since the last time I looked.
Nope. It still says:
Intellectual
– adjective: guided or developed by or relying on the intellect rather than upon emotions or feelings; rational.
– noun: an extremely rational person; a person who relies on intellect rather than on emotions or feelings.
I don't need to look up Christian in a dictionary. A Christian is a person who believes some combination of the following:
In the time of our ancestors, a man with no biological father was born to a virgin mother. This fatherless man called out to a friend of his who had been dead for so long his body stank, and the dead man came back to life. During his short life the fatherless man performed many other inexplicable acts, he made the lame walk and the blind see, fed five thousand people with three loaves and five fishes, and many others. When the fatherless man died – to save all the people on Earth – he came back to life after being buried for three days. Forty days later he went up to the top of a hill and disappeared bodily into the sky. His virgin mother never died, but was herself “assumed” bodily into heaven.
If you talk to yourself, out loud or in your head, the fatherless man and his “father” who is himself, can hear you, understand you, and will sometimes make your wishes come true. He can simultaneously do this for all the other people in the world whether they believe in him or not. If you do something good or something bad the same fatherless man will know, even if no one else does, and you may be rewarded or punished for your acts even after your death.
Now, is it only me or is there a disconnect here between "a person who relies on intellect rather than on emotions or feelings" and a person who thinks that an invisible fatherless man who lives in the sky will sometimes make his wishes come true?
Let's face it Jason, there is no such thing as an intellectual christian. The term is an oxymoron.
Martin,
All I can say is, you don't know many christians. I agree, christianity requires a certain suspension of skepticism, but when you go down the roster, the great thinkers who destroyed the superstitious hold of what we think of as medieval christianity demonstrated a capacity for reason and the application thereof which was epic, and yet few of them became atheists. I am refering go the fact that there are many christians who are also impressive intellectuals. They may not be intellectuals by virtue of their christianity—although the christian church, through the monastic system, did save a lot of works of literature and science and worked to translate the rediscovered treasury from the Middle East of the Greek philosophers-cum-scientists—but they are nevertheless both intellectuals and christians. All this demonstrates is the human ability to hold two seemingly exclusive concepts to be true simultaneously. This is not just exampled by religion. Sociology is rife with examples of contradictions manitained simultaneously.
Besides, it is always dangerous (and wrong) to speak in superlatives (he says with tongue in cheek).
Just in case any of you should think I am being a little unfair on our christian friends, I thought I would share with you a fine example of what passes for critical thinking in the christian community.
First, take a look at this website.
http://www.pyramid-circle.com/example8.htm
This is a link to a site where they explore what they are calling the Bible Code. The basic idea is that they take "significant words", convert them into numbers along the lines of a = 1, b = 2, and then they do some very trivial maths with their numbers and claim to see something significant in the numbers that come out.
For example, if you take the words "The Simple Truth", and code them up and do the math the "significant" number that pops out is 1014 which, in the weird logic of this website translates into Ezekiel 10 v 14. [We are naturally referring to the New International Version of the bible here].
So what does Ezekiel have to say? Well, the relevant quotation is: Each of the cherubim had four faces: One face was that of a cherub, the second the face of a man, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.
I'm sure none of you need me to point out the totally obvious connection between that and "The Simple Truth".
No, thought not. Me neither.
What really convinced me that these guys are actually on to something (or maybe just on something) was when they took the numbers 91, 91, 91, 91 and coded them. Where did they get these numbers from? They are the number of steps on the four sides of a pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico.
I have to admit that my own bible study classes failed to mention the world famous christian site at Chichen Itza, including the Temple of Kukulcan also known as El Castillo (the castle), which is in fact a temple to the Maya rain god Chaac. Near the temple is a natural sink hole, or cenote, known as "Cenote Sagrado" or Sacred Cenote, from which have been excavated artifacts of jade, gold, pottery and incense as well as human remains bearing wounds consistent with human sacrifice. So there's obviously a strong christian link here then?
After the guys coded these numbers in their rigorously intellectual way, what did they come up with? Well, believe it or not out popped the number 1776, which no American will need reminding is the year they signed their Declaration of Independance. And, in the words from the Bible Code website itself: "This is thought to be significant because the world's largest volcano at Yellowstone (in the USA) is overdue to erupt which when [it] happens will be a disaster on a global scale". Thanks guys.
Now I have to admit that the specific christian connection between a temple to a Mayan rain god and a volcano in Yellowstone National Park is proving slightly elusive at the moment, as is the reason for homing in on that one specific part of the United States when all they had to go on was the number 1776, but I feel sure that you would have to agree with those intellectually rigorous guys over at the Bible Code website that this "proves the Bible Code is fact".
Just one question, really. Is this available in other languages, or is it just us lucky English speakers who have the chance to commune with god in code?
Jason Rayl said: …but when you go down the roster, the great thinkers who destroyed the superstitious hold of what we think of as medieval christianity demonstrated a capacity for reason and the application thereof which was epic, and yet few of them became atheists.
Jason,
Your statement makes a rather obvious assumption. You are assuming that the "superstitious hold of what we think of as medieval christianity" has actually been destroyed. So I am going to start by examining whether that assumption is correct, or even plausible, because if it isn't then your "roster of great thinkers" who achieved that watershed is nothing but a chimera.
One of the most vivid images conjured up by the expression, "superstitious hold of what we think of as medieval christianity" is witch burning. A woman suspected of being a witch would have her arms tied behind her back and then thrown into the village pond. If she sank she was not a witch, but if she floated she was and would be hauled out and burnt at the stake.
I can think of a number of words to describe that practice, and although superstitious would be among them it would not be near the front of the queue. I am sure that many modern christians are ashamed to know that such things were done in the name of their religion. But, surely, we don't do such things now, do we?
For a long time, but principally since 1969 there has been a history of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, where "sectarian" is taken to mean conflict between different sects of one particular mode of thought. The mode need not be religious, it could also be economic or political thought but in Northern Ireland it is principally religious thought with violence between the Protestant and the Catholic communities.
Nearly all the people living in Northern Ireland identify themselves as belonging to either the Protestant or the Roman Catholic community. People of no religion and non-Christian faiths are still considered as belonging to one of the two "sects" along with churchgoers. In this context, "Protestant" means essentially descendants of immigrants from Scotland and England settled in Ulster during or soon after the 1690s; also known as "Loyalists" or "Unionist" because they generally support politically the status of Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom. "Catholic" means descendants of the pre-1690 indigenous Irish population; also known as "Nationalist" and "Republican"; who generally politically favour a united Ireland.
The significant point to note here is that although the dispute began as a purely religious divide, both sides have developed a number of non-religious labels in an attempt to distance their atrocities from the cause for which they are fighting. Labelling yourself a Unionist or a Nationalist is supposed to make it sound as though you are fighting for something noble and worthy, while a Protestant or a Catholic is simply fighting over a disagreement about belief in an imaginary sky fairy. The labels are meant to obscure this distinction and give credence to the cause. But they do nothing of the kind, do they? Labelling people as death-deserving enemies because of a disagreement about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is beyond tragic and superstition doesn't even get a look in.
Between 1969 and about 2001 there were 3,523 people killed in this conflict, of whom 1,855 were civilians, 499 were British soldiers on active service, 301 were Royal Ulster Constabulary – which you can read as being effectively the local police – and various other aspects of the security forces including 24 prison officers.
In addition the war (there is no more appropriate word) was taken out of Ireland to England, Germany and the Netherlands where bombings and shootings accounted for approximately 60 further fatalities. For example, on November 21 1974 the Irish Republican Army placed two bombs in pubs in Birmingham, England which killed 21 people and caused a further 182 casualties. At three O'clock in the morning of 12 October 1984 the Irish Republican Army exploded a bomb in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, England, killing 5 people and injuring 32 others. Margaret, the wife of Norman Tebbit was left permanently disabled by her injuries.
Warrington, England, was the scene of two attacks by the IRA. In February 1993 a bomb went off at a gasworks in the town. A police officer attempting to stop a van fleeing the scene was shot and killed. The following month two bombs went off in the busy shopping centre on a Saturday morning. Both bombs had been placed in cast-iron litter bins causing extensive damage due to flying shrapnel. The first bomb went off at 10 minutes past twelve killing 3-year-old Jonathan Ball and seriously injuring several others close by including Jonathan's babysitter. People fleeing the scene of this explosion ran headlong into the second bomb only two minutes later. 12-year-old Tim Parry was sitting on the litter bin when the bomb went off and he took the full force of the blast and died five days later in hospital. An additional 54 people were injured, four extremely seriously.
Let's just review that for a moment because I don't want you missing the point here Jason. Two groups of christians are having a dispute about which one of them is going to decide who runs their country. To further their cause, one of these groups of christians go to a foreign country, put a bomb in a litter bin in a crowded shopping centre and blow a 12-year-old boy to bits.
Now, just exactly how proud are you to say that you are a christian, Jason?
These were people who were specifically targeted for death in a dispute about a belief in an imaginary sky fairy. Does that put it into an appropriate perspective for you, and are you still claiming that the "superstitious hold of what we think of as medieval christianity" has actually been destroyed?
Martin,
You're making assumptions. First off, to asume that irrationality requires in any sense a religious basis to assert itself. More often than not, the religious basis is used to mask the simple idiocy of the irrational practice. Nationalism is an irrationality requiring no religious component. You can't blame christianity for Ireland—were they all still Celts, the fight over who runs the place would still obtain and would lead to similar uglinesses. In fact, even if they were atheists you would probably find that—they are nationalistic atheists and they are no more rational about it than theistic nationalists.
Second, you take an example of one kind of irrationality that has in the past flown a religious flag, claim that it hasn't changed just because it is now political (in other words, the names have changed but they're still fighting over "sky fairies") and used this to argue that is the religious aspect they share in common with many other people that de facto makes all those other people raving irrationalists as well. You've c=got your causation screwy.
Thirdly, you make the enormous assumption that because I make the case I do that I must be a christian. I am not. I am an atheist.
Fourth, you seem to think that a good dose of rationality is a kind of cure-all for ALL forms of irrationality. If that were so, human beings would be extremely simple organisms. Unfortunately, rationality is a discipline which requires practice, and it does not apply to all aspects. Everyone is irrational about something, no matter how rational they may be in most things. I would point to the irrationality of sports fans, the irrationality of political fanatics, the irrationality of racism—none of which has ever required a religious aspect to exist.
It is a mistake to discount the attributes of many people based on a single aspect of their belief systems by saying "because you believe this, you must be utterly irrational." Look around. It simply isn't the case. Trying to make it the case by cherry-picking history is…well…irrational. And unproductive.
Yes, I do think medieval christianity has been destroyed for the most part. The church simply no longer has the temporal power it once held and people would think it insane to suggest that it should. Most people. Most people who themselves would be considered christian would no more grant their religious leaders autocratic power than they would burn a woman for having the audacity to float on water.
But you have to understand that irrationality is the natural condition of human animals, and that rationality can push it back, control it, contour it, mediate its worst manifestations, but can't purge it completely. Nor should it. After all, love is not rational. Lots of good things are not rational. Aesthetics, while "rationalized" through analysis, is a purely sentient response, a limbic system reaction that happens in spite of any rationality. Some of the finest moments in life are born out of irrationality.
Point being, it is just as wrong to say that religion makes someone irrational as it is to say that rationality makes someone an atheist. It just ain't so.
Martin, some thoughts:
1. Not sure where you got your definition of intellectual, but I think Jason probably meant someone who was interested in the life of the mind, likes to read a lot and think in abstract terms. It would certainly be very limiting to restrict the life of the mind to rationality alone, ignoring the non-rational and irrational elements that are so essential to creativity (truly innovative scientists are just as creative as artists IMO)
Knowing what we do about the human mind, it's hard to take anyone seriously who claims to rely on rationality rather than emotions or feelings. We usually make our decisions first, and come up with reasons for them afterward. We are terribly prone to fundamental errors of attribution and to the narrative fallacy. Rational, objective thinking requires a lot of effort and can usually only be applied to a few domains in our intellectual repertoire. People who rely on intellect alone rather than emotions, are actually not able to lead a normal existence, as Erich points out in this post.
2. You say of the conflict in Northern Ireland that "although the dispute began purely religious divide, both sides have developed a number of non-religious labels in an attempt to distance their atrocities from the cause for which they are fighting."
This does not hold up to much scrutiny. Ireland was one of England's first, and most brutally exploited, colonies. In the 19th century, an insurgency against the English occupation arose that was almost purely nationalist in character. A good many of the early Irish nationalists would have liked to chuck the priests as well as the English out of Ireland.
Religious affiliations had a role in the insurgencies, civil war, and partition agreements, and rerouping of insurgency that followed. Mostly though they were a marker for political affiliation and social class. The IRA (official or Provisional) as far as I know did not use religious language or religious justifications for its actions. Back in the day, (late 60's/70's) people who wanted to throw bombs and cause mayhem were all about the Liberation Front of the People, or the People's Front of Liberation, or whatever. The Weather Underground, SLA, Red Army Faction, Baader-Meinhof Brigade et. al. found enough justification for violence and murder in political ideology, and the IRA and even the PLO at the time also used the language of political ideology. If the 20th century proves anything, it's that people don't need supernatural justifications for creating hell on earth. Ideology, and our capacity to rationalize our actions, suffices.
3. When you say "One of the most vivid images conjured up by the expression, 'superstitious hold of what we think of as medieval christianity' is witch burning."
you repeat a common misconception about this period in history.
In fact, witch burning peaked in the 17th century – the age of Newton and Descartes. Throughout most of the medieval period, belief in the reality of witches was held to be heretical under Church law. Civil law, deriving from Roman and Germanic law, did penalize witchcraft. The first witch trials were initiated by villagers seeking redress in civil courts for harm caused by witches, late in the 14th century I believe. The church became involved when tracts accusing witches of communion with Satan were published and became highly influential among the educated elite. Why the mania for burning witches took off in the late medieval/early Renaissance period is open to debate. Maybe the interest in magic and alchemy that spread through Europe (and also led to the development of science) made it easier to believe that witches and sorcerers could manipulate nature to cause harm. Or maybe it was the breakdown of traditional social structures and economic pressures that led villagers to seek scapegoats when a cow died or a crop failed.
If you look at the distribution of witch executions across Europe, the majority occured where unlimited torture was sanctioned. In the Scandinavian countries, where confessions extracted by torture were not allowed, there were far fewer witch burnings.
Many witch hunters argued that witches were so dangerous that the ordinary rules of prosecution need not apply:
The sordid history of witch hunting is worth remembering, in an era when highly cultured men are once again advocating the use of torture.
PS. If I recall from his other posts, I think Jason is an ex-Christian.
It is now four O'clock on Monday morning. I have just got up to go to work for the week and seen your two posts. I will not be able to respond until Friday, so I just thought I would let you both know that I appreciate your comments, don't agree with all you have said but admit you have given me much food for thought.
I will reply in a more appropriate manner on Friday.
First, I think the problem with the original story is that there seems to be a difference between the mythical Christians and the mythical atheist. First of all if you take the simplistic dictionary definition of a Christian there is no difference between a Christian and an atheist save two points. One point is that there is a God and there is no God or gods. The second point is that after death where one goes. After that a person’s methods of thinking, ways of living, morality, and ethics are in the realm of the person’s personal choice. A Christian can be mean and unethical. That is that person’s choice is outside of the ideal Christian definition. But, as I mentioned, according to the most simplistic Christian definition he is still a Christian.
So, whether the show is an atheist who lives in a Christian house or a Christian who lives in an atheist’s house is moot. Unless, you find a bad example of a Christian or a bad example of an atheist there should be a very boring show. If the people involved are without human prejudices (religiously there should be no prejudices per what are a Christian and an atheist) the producer will be hard pressed to create antagonism to save the show.
I believe that Martin believes in that intellectual thinking is only in the realm of atheists. A person totally bereft of any gods or superstitions and by his definition any emotions at all. A person that is passionless, emotionless, everything driven by cold logic. Last time I walk through town I could not find anyone fitting that definition. In fact a person who is the perfect intellectual is a myth in itself (as mister Spock points out a number of times in Star Trek that humans are emotion driven beings.) On the other hand, if you take the definition he gave with the true value in which the dictionary gives it (originating in or chiefly guided by intellect rather than by emotion or experience), at the time a person arrives at decisions he uses a process that requires him to use a thinking process using values or facts that are without emotions and irrationality then it can come out with a good answer. So, if Martin into splitting hairs, then the fact is that there are no intellectual anybody , even Martin is not an intellectual (at least I hope that there are no intellectual anybody. If there was one he might say, 99% of the humans are not intellectual, if they were to die off to create the perfect race on intellectual race he may just do something to move on his agenda. Bereft of emotion and goodness it is the most logical thing to do.)
Martin is on the otherhand, either censoring the dictionary or using a child’s dictionary as mines states as well, having intellect to a high degree: engaged in or given to learning and thinking (an intellectual person) This fits the statement intellectual Christian to a ‘T’.
By the way, many of the SF horror movies, the main antagonist that creates the problem is the intellectual person. He is driven by the belief that he pocesses the perfect intellect and knows all the answers and steps into realm of self godhood. He then driven by his own hubris he creates the ultimate creature or computer or virus that turns on humanity and starts killing everyone (including his creator.)
Jason and Vicky have taken us down a couple of blind alleys, so let's first go back to what this thread is actually about. Or at least to what it has become about, it was originally a thread about a TV programme so I guess we should apologise to Erika for hijacking her thread.
What it has become about is:
I said that there is no such thing as an intellectual christian; the term is an oxymoron.
To refute this, Jason claimed that there was a "roster of great thinkers" who "destroyed the superstitious hold of what we think of as medieval christianity.
To demonstrate that this is not true I gave an example of two proximate communities of modern christians behaving toward each other as though they were no better than animals. Morally and intellectually they might as well have been medieval witch burners because on any meaningful level there is no difference between burning a woman as a witch because she floats and blowing a 12-year-old boy to bits in an attempt to prove your point.
Whatever that point might be.
That's it. There is no need for you to go on about the causes of irrationality or to debate the point at which the maximum rate of medieval witch burning occurred, or even to try to argue, as Jason does, that I have my causation screwy. Because none of that is in the least bit relevant.
Forgive me if I missed the bit in the bible where it says thou shalt, with impunity, bomb and shoot those with whom you disagree, but what I think is relevant here is that being christian didn't stop the people of Northern Ireland from bombing the shit out of each other for thirty years. Did it?
It doesn't matter what they were arguing about; being christian should have given them some other way of resolving their dispute.
Let's face it; this was not just a couple of guys going crazy one weekend, or some drugged up teenage tearaway with a grudge. This was several hundred people on both sides of the fence, continuously, over a period of thirty years, murdering thousands of people. And that is, IMO, something that any claim that christians have left the superstitious immoral medieval era behind has to seriously address and explain. Next to which Jason's argument that "they are nationalistic atheists and they are no more rational about it than theistic nationalists" isn't just ducking the issue, it is positively limbo dancing beneath it.
Vicky does, however, raise a valid point when she asks: "Not sure where you got your definition of intellectual".
Really, Vicky? Perhaps you should try reading my post; I specifically said I got it out of a dictionary. You seem to have got yours out of Erich's post.
Here's an experiment you might like to try. Go out into the street and ask the first two hundred people you meet the following question: If you wanted to know the definition of a word would you look it up in,
a) a dictionary
or
b) Erich's post.
Erich seems like a nice enough guy and I tend to agree with most things he says, but I doubt that even his mother would consider him a quotable authority on the meanings of words. So forgive me if I presume that most answers to your question would be a) a dictionary, with not a small number of people replying, "Erich who?"
Specifically, I got my definition out of Dictionary.com
Comparing that with some other dictionaries, we find:
Cambridge Dictionary
intellect – noun – a highly educated person whose interests are studying and other activities that involve careful thinking
intellectual – noun – a highly educated person whose interests are studying and other activities that involve careful thinking and mental effort
Merriam-Webster
intellect – the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will
intellectual – adjective – developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience
Oxford Dictionary
intellect – noun – the faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively
So a consensus would seem to require objectivity, careful thinking, mental effort and to avoid feelings and emotions. Doesn't fit very well with Vicky's "act first and reason afterwards" hypothesis, does it? In fact "act first and reason afterwards" sounds to me like the child who acts on her impulses and then tries to justify her actions afterwards. Whatever that might be it certainly isn't intellectual.
Martin: Intellect and emotion are not mutually exclusive attributes. From your own selection of definitions: An intellectual is one who is "chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion". Guided by, not controlled by. Not in exclusion to. Not instead of.
A dictionary only gives a brief and abstract definition. If you really want to know what a word means, you need to know the explicit cultural context, the related implications, where the word came from, and its role among synonyms (things that a dictionary usually doesn't provide).
If you've been keeping up with fMRI studies, you'd know that quick decisions are made before the intellectual basis for those decisions is composed, contrary to how it feels.
As Heinlein put it in the 1960's, "Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal". His proclamation was prophetic of the understanding that is being developed as we learn more about how the mind operates.
Vicki, Erich, and others I personally know on this blog have spent around 35 years each thinking about thinking, reading about psychology, anthropology, sociology, and comparative cultures, and avidly following the evolution of thought about the evolution of thought.
Our respective assortments of college degrees are varied, and none of us are authorities likely to be cited.
But we do know a little something about intellect and those who regularly exercise it.
Dan Klarmann: I do not believe that I either said or implied that intellect is ever exclusive of emotion, or that an intellectual has no emotions or feelings. What I said is pretty much what you said, an intellectual is chiefly guided by her ability to think objectively, rationally and critically. Emotions and feelings take a back seat, but are not necessarily excluded completely.
Where I think we disagree is that you – and you claim Erich and Vicki as adherents – seem to think that we make our decisions first and then rationalise them afterwards. On this I must disagree, even if only for the obvious reason that this does not leave any room for rational, critical thinking. What this "theory" gives us is the situation that if there happens to be a rational explanation for our decision, then it is there purely by accident. We made the right decision, but we only worked out that it was the right decision after we had decided to act that way.
Where does that leave critical thinking?
What is the point of even having a college degree if your decisions are made by your emotions before your intelligence kicks in?
If that were really true then the only difference between me and a slug is that I (or my ancestors) happen to be lucky at making good choices.
Is that really what you are saying?
Incidentally, I would not argue that ALL choices are made intellectually. I can think of many choices I have made this morning that had no intellectual component at all; what to have for breakfast, for example. But I am strongly resistant to the idea that intellectual, critical thinking requires decision making before reasoning. So if that is really what you are saying then you will have to come up with something a bit more persuasive than "we have a lot of degrees between us and we have been thinking about this for 35 years" which I recognise – and reject – as a rhetorical device called argument by authority.
Martin,
You seem to think that because someone claims to be something that they actually are that something. But aside from that, the Bible–the Old Testament–is filled with examples of the Chosen People not only killing others who are different but being instructed to do so by Yahweh. Christianity evolved out of that tradition, and culturally if not philosophically the actions you cite in Northern Ireland are perfectly consistent.
But it is not a defensible argument in any Western court. "He was of a different sect, he did not believe the way I do, and I am a christian," will not get a sympathetic hearing anymore, where once it actually might have.
Martin: You make good points in your latest rebut.
I hope that I was not claiming authority, but pointing out that considerable intellectual exercise went into the development of our opinions.
Intellect presages planned decisions, but not everyday choices such as our first response to unsavory arguments. The mind is made of many parts, parallel processes, of which intellect (and the cerebrum in which it resides) is a relatively new addition.
Most of the intellectuals I know are socially stunted. They are unable to behave rationally in many contexts. As a pack-organized social species, we instinctively trust authority. It takes considerable training to see past authority and judge evidence directly. One can learn how to do this in the course of a college degree, if one is ready and willing.
The bulk of intellectuals are scientifically challenged. Their intellects are essentially constructed in the Aristotelian mold; pure philosophers detached from worldly evidence. They base their world view on a particular authority, such as Aristotle, Nietzsche, the Bible, or such.
btw: Among the differences between us and those very distant cousins (the slugs), is that we have more complex decision making apparatus. That this is one of the differences is luck of the draw. After all, slugs have been around (survived) for much longer than us primates with our big, expensive brains.
One of my math teachers gave some excellent advice on how to understand a difficult trigonometry concept. She said, (quoting one of her own professors):
"Just believe it! It will make sense later."
Relax, Martin, nobody's trying to force you to mix up your rational and religious categories, or your mashed potatoes and your peas, or whatever. 🙂
To me it seems senseless, and dangerous, to divide humanity into 2 camps, the rational and irrational, with all forms of religion on the other side of the barrier. The dividing line between rational and irrational goes down the middle of each one of us.
Obviously, there are habits of mind that minimize the potential harm of our irrational tendencies. One of these habits of mind is to be aware of our innate tendency to rationalize our behavior, rather than rejecting what scientists have learned about human cognition because one finds it threatening to one's self-concept. You might find Malcom Gladwell's book "Blink" to be an interesting read on rapid cognition and decision-making.
Personally, I find the Theravedan Buddhist practice of cultivating moment-to-moment awareness of consciousness to be very helpful in helping me not to believe everything I think.
I apologize for the discourse on witch-burning, I realize it was a tangent, but hey, tangents "R" me. I recognize in myself a (perhaps irrational?) tendency to dislike the imposition of rigid categories on phenomena, and neat story lines on history.
BTW, you seem to have shifted the ground in your argument about Northern Ireland
At first you say:
implying that the conflict in N. Ireland was primarily about religion. When the problems with this view of the conflict were pointed out, you say:
which seems to me to be a different argument. In fact very few of the groups advocating violence in N. Ireland used religious language to justify their actions, while many of the groups advocating peace and reconciliation are religious in character.
Also, I didn't mean to cast aspersions on your dictionary skills. When I asked where you got your definition of intellectual, I meant which dictionary. Definitions will vary from source to source. Also, when it comes to language and usage, I am a confirmed descriptionist rather than a prescriptionist, so I prefer to figure out how a group or individual is actually using a particular term, rather than how they are "supposed" to be using it.
Vicki said: One of these habits of mind is to be aware of our innate tendency to rationalize our behavior, rather than rejecting what scientists have learned about human cognition because one finds it threatening to one’s self-concept.
I am going to presume that you are refering to: If that were really true then the only difference between me and a slug is that I (or my ancestors) happen to be lucky at making good choices.
In which case I perhaps need to point out that I do not reject the hypothesis because it is threatening to my self-concept. Au contraire, I reject the hypothesis because it contrasts with my understanding of how evolution works.
I am genetically different to the slug; it is the differences in our genes that make me not a slug, and AFAIK, there is not a gene for making lucky choices. The difference between me and a slug has nothing to do with me (or my ancestors) making lucky choices, it is to do with evolution, which is not a process over which I can make choices.
Malcolm Gladwell's books are interesting social science written by a journalist with a history degree.
[I do not imply that there is anything wrong with being either a journalist or having a history degree, or even both. It is a way of saying he is not a scientist. So when you point me in his direction you are not giving me anything a Scientist has learned about human cognition, are you?]
What Gladwell gives us are some examples of situations in which a snap decision was useful – and possibly even life-saving – and some examples of situations in which such decisions were either lethal or plain wrong due to unconscious bias. But they are just examples and, to misquote Eratosthenes, examples do not a theory make.
And, I'm afraid that Science does not advance by approval in the popular press, which includes your previous reference to Dr. Demasio who also published his "theory" in a book for public consumption but notably not in a peer reviewed journal.
When you can point me to an article in a peer reviewed journal about this theory of yours I might begin to take it a little more seriously. All I have had so far is an appeal to authority, a lot of handwaving and a vague reference to fMRI.
Tangents R U.
Okay, I can live with that. As long as you realise that Science R me.