![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Julia Sweeney’s Celebrity Atheism
Remember Pat from Saturday Night Live in the 1990’s? Everybody laughed because they couldn’t figure out if the character was supposed to be a man or a woman. Looking back it seems really stupid, but I remember laughing at the time. However, I’m not laughing now at “Pat” actress Julia Sweeney’s latest foray into ontological uncertainty: high-profile celebrity atheism.
The SF Gate has a little interview on her which is worth reading, if only because it’s kind of confusing. Sweeney seems to be describing a personal journey from organized religion into no religion, but the parts she describes don’t seem to fit together to me. What I mean by that is that when asked where religion started to dissolve for her, she basically describes a personal experience of God touching her life:
I was 38, and I was going through a personal crisis where this guy I’d been dating for four years and totally expected to marry and have a family with abruptly broke it off. It really sent me into a tailspin. I was praying quite a bit — “God, help me through this time” — and waking up crying a lot.
And then I had one night where I had an experience that I considered to be religious — it’s not like God’s face came and talked to me or anything, but I just felt a presence in the room, and then I felt really kind of healed.
She goes on to describe how she consequently became more involved in the church, and the study of the Bible, only to realize that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Later on in the interview, she’s asked how she deals with people who strongly believe in the Bible:
If somebody has credible evidence that there is a supernatural power that knows what I think and cares about me and offers me a life after death, I would look at that evidence with an open mind. On the other hand, I can’t imagine there would be that evidence.
I guess my main question for her would really be: what kind of evidence does she really need? Didn’t she just say that she felt the presence of God in the room and it healed her? That sounds like preeeeettty strong evidence to me - but hey, what do I know? Anyway, this whole thing would make more sense to me if she was simply advocating the point that what she found in organized religion didn’t match up with her personal experience of God. I can totally jive with that. But as it stands, I just can’t grasp the usefulness of the point she is trying to make.
- Notes: Gribbitz Gribbitz
- Characteristics of a religion
- Is Atheism A Religion?
- Celebrity
- Pop Tarot - The Empress (and others)
- Prev: Zetetic Astronomy
- Next: Breaking the Intellectual Code
December 13th, 2005 at 7:35 pm
She didn’t say it was God in the room…maybe she thought it was aliens.
December 13th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
i like how she claims jesus changed people into pigs in the bible. maybe it’s just me, but i don’t remember that story . . . .
December 13th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
re: pigs. I think she was trying to be funny! Maybe it sounded funnier in person when you could hear her making a silly voice…
December 13th, 2005 at 8:03 pm
A belief in God is hardwired into the brain and so is reason and logic. Perhaps she has lapses in which one side dominates the other. It is possible to be an atheist on Monday and ‘believer’ on Thursday so to speak. God is such a loaded word- if God exists then surely it would be like the God in Monty Phyton’s Meaning of Life.
Did biology hardwire the belief in divinity into the brain to help us cope with death? Or did the divine do it to make sure the consciousness of human beings develop a metaphysical sense of reality? I am an occult novice so I am learning.
December 13th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
It wasn’t really clarified, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility that she has written it off as a grief-induced delusion. It’s certainly a fair conclusion to draw if the rest of the evidence lends itself towards God not existing.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
Does the difference really matter? If so, what would you think or feel if you found out one or the other was conclusively true?
December 13th, 2005 at 11:40 pm
I’d be interested to see the evidence that drew you to that conclusion, if only to understand the basis that the rest of your post seems to be based on, S.M.R.
That said, supposing that it was true…
First we need to unpack the questions. Here’s what I read from it (and I may have just misunderstood):
The idea that “biology hardwired us” for any specific purpose is contrary to the theory of evolution. Cumulative mutations over an extended time frame are not the same thing as nature having an intended purpose for those mutations (belief in God as a coping mechanism). If one supposes that Nature had a grand plan when it came to evolution, they’re basically just believing that something with a purpose is pushing evolution with specific aims in mind, and that really isn’t much different than saying that God did it.
In the first question, it is suggested that Nature did it so we could cope with death. In the second question, it is suggested that God did it so we could realise his immanent reality. Both questions are connected in that they presuppose that there is a purpose to the biological hardwiring, which presupposes that a creative force made it that way.
Both questions begin the same: The Creator hardwired us to believe in it.
The difference is in motivation: One Creator did it to ease our suffering as mortals doomed to die. One Creator did it so we might realise it is an active force in our universe and lives.
Circles, circles…
Having unpacked it all, now I can start answering your questions… but I think I’m going to need to go make some tea before I get started on that.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:29 am
Hm, thats not how I would have “unpacked” it, but I’d like to see your conclusions…
December 14th, 2005 at 1:32 am
I went with the literal slant of the question (Nature has an agenda) rather than just going with the assumption that the first question was just expressed oddly (Nature is a blind force).
In any case, I think that the two questions are vexing if you apply the horrifying logic I did (both presuppose a Creator). There is some kind of difference between the motivation, but it’s hard to see how either motive ends with a different outcome. In that way, no, the difference doesn’t matter.
At the same time, it also gives us two different pictures of the nature of the Creator. The first as a kindly parent, wishing to ease us by making certain that we are possessed of the capacity to know that the Creator exists. The second as an almost self-important deity, wishing us to know and acknowledge the Creator exists.
“Does the difference really matter?”
If we’re concerned with ends, no. If we’re concerned with motives, yes.
“What would you think or feel if you found out one or the other was conclusively true?”
If God was shown to be a loving parent, it’d be easier to accept it, serve it. Positive - God wants you to be happy. Believing in God makes you happier, more easily able to accept death.
If God was shown to be an arrogant task master, it’d be easier to resent it, defy it. Negative - God wants your attention. Believe in God because that’s what God wants.
All that said, if it was a fight between Atheistic Evolution and Theistic Creationism that was hoped for, the first question is presenting an initial premise that doesn’t support evolutionary views (as I said in the last post).
I do go on, don’t I?
December 14th, 2005 at 1:58 am
I’ll throw this one out there for you all:
If we create God in our own image, does that make us God?
I ask because if we create God in our own image, I believe we do such as a means of unconscious evolution in consciousness. We create these various models and interpretations of gods and God as a way of connecting ourselves to the unknown (what some may call the “divine”). As society and culture grows and changes, so do our models of God because we are constantly creating God as a future archetype of our own evolution.
I would argue that we do this because we are “God”, and we are slowly but surely trying to piece together the bits of our shattered selves (imagine what the Big Bang would do to someone, especially if they made that decision).
In this light, the ideas of god slowly change from objects (animal, tree, etc. spirits), to all of the Earth (Mother Nature, Gaia, etc), and now, it has stretched to infinity. Also along the way were ideas of ancestor worship and parallel universes or realms.
I believe all are true. I think we are all connected as one being that decided to “destroy” itself, thus giving birth to the “Big Bang”. This being still permeates within everything, but is less concentrated. As everything spreads out, this being is less and less concentrated, thus harder to “feel”, but it is there within and around you, if you take the time to feel it.
This would fit almost seamlessly into evolution and creation. Evolution is a natural process back towards infinity, much like the death of a pregnant mother can give rise to a new being, a being that will one day become like its mother. Are we pre-programmed to create God? Of course, it’s in our DNA, it’s in our Ashakic Records, it’s within ourselves, as conscious experiencers of our own creation. It’s taken a while for this small section of space to realize it, much like it takes time for certain parts of the brain to develop into full use and realization, but we’re moving there.
It’s hard for us to imagine ourselves as insignificant as a single neuron (or even an atom), but as above, so below. The ego creates a monotheistic God as a mirror unto itself, but the mirror must be shattered to move on. The ego must be broken. The atheist/agnostic doesn’t shatter the mirror, they just stop looking into it. The delusional sets up two opposing mirrors to create an infinite regress, and thus explains their madness. It is only when the mirror is shattered, and we are left with just ourselves, that we can truly realize our full and infinite potential.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:06 am
Your last metaphor is beautiful, Ktulu. Like Bruce Lee at the end of Enter the Dragon.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Hmmm… i feel like the odd woman out (not a rare experience) because i get what Sweeney is saying. She describes what a religious person might call an epiphany, but a belief on God isn’t necessary to have them, and having one doesn’t always mean the person will conclude that God is the messenger and experience a conversion.
i’ve had several such experiences throughout my life; powerful, unexpected, and life changing, as though a compelling internal voice is resetting me. Though i have experienced these events and they seem to be beneficial, i’ve never seen any reason to leap to the conclusion that some guiding godhead personality or master designer is delivering anonymous messages. Perhaps it’s just me, flexing atrophied internal resources. Perhaps it’s God, but (S)He’s not inclined to state it conclusively. Perhaps it’s something else.
Has anyone here read Jaynes’ Origin of Consciousness? Of course it’s not verifiable, but if you entertain Julian Jaynes long enough to follow his theory it can put a new spin on many points people are making here. And what i got out of it is the possibility that our understanding, and possible creation of God, may be part of our evolutionary process. As is the modern religious/secular conflict. i respect Julia’s position because i think we have insufficient evidence about what god(s) are or are not. What we’re left with is a very large area of unexplained phenomena that we like to attribute to a god, but why? Is there a logical or a practical reason to believe in God before we have material evidence? i do wonder how Sweeney gets from agnosticism to atheism, but then i always wonder that. Why is everyone, including Julia Sweeney, so sure? i suppose i’m sure i’m not sure!
December 14th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
Hrm. Well, I deny that you can derive claims of fact about external reality from inner experiences; like juana, I can see why someone who has had a profound religious experience might not believe.
I’ve spent a lot of time and effort on learning to take inner experiences seriously as inner experiences—without their emotional power being diminished by being less related to outer reality. I’ve had inner experiences which, if I were religious, I’d describe as ‘unmerited favor and undeserved divine grace’. As an atheist, I don’t believe in anything capable of giving divine grace, but trying to get rid of that psychological stance because I want my emotions to always be justified intellectually would be really rather soul-killing.
In that way, I can relate to some religious believers on an emotional level, even if I think they are drawing unjustified conclusions from their experiences.
December 14th, 2005 at 4:44 pm
Well I’m glad that you, as an atheist, can relate to some religious believers. Most atheists I know are too closed-minded (though they claim to be open-minded) to even give credence to the believer’s experience, they just cross it off as being delusional.
Personally, I think it takes more faith to believe in an external reality, than it does to believe in the validity of one’s own inner experiences. Cuz when you get down to it, it’s all just electrical signals and EM fields (in your head).
December 14th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
BTW Tim, in the vein of all these religion and logic discussions, I really should link you to Beyond Born Again, which is written by a person involved in the evangelical Christian movement, both criticizing some aspects of the mentality and clarifying and justifying others. It’s really quite good—he’s basically exploring the psychology behind religious inner transformation in a very aware way, and he even quotes Levi-Strauss’s The Effectiveness of Symbols. ^.^
December 14th, 2005 at 8:10 pm
Atheism means “Without deity/god,” which just means that a person lacks a belief in the existence of a god.
Agnosticism means “Without knowledge (or unknowing),” which normally means that a person believes that it is impossible to know if God exists or not, either eternally or just for now. Huxley coined the term, who supposed it was “suggestively antithetic to the ‘gnostic’ of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.” (source: Wikipedia)
The definition of agnosticism could very well be extended to include any claim to truth.
Having defined the terms, the direction of belief has to move from atheism / theism to agnosticism, not vice-versa. If you start with a basic disbelief / belief in God, you may concede that it is impossible to know for certain if your belief is valid. You cannot move into agnosticism without having an initial belief that you lack of knowledge of.
Why agnosticism? You can not know if a god exists or not. The evidence isn’t there.
Why atheism? You don’t believe in a god. The evidence isn’t there.
Why theism? You believe in a god. The evidence is there (or the evidence isn’t there but you hold faith to be more important).
I should stop going on. In any case, I lack belief in a god, but I acknowledge that it is impossible to confirm one way or another, which just cycles back into why I lack a belief in a god.
… and Relative State put everything much better than I would have, so I’ll just wave my hand around, adding “Me too! Me too!”
December 14th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Juana:
Yeah, it’s interesting and opened a lot of doors for me, but I think may be is a little too mechanistic of an approach for my tastes. I think if he had tried to marry his ideas to Jungian archetypes & complexes, it would have been a lot more interesting.
Well, I think we have insufficient evidence about what ANYTHING is or is not, really.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
Ktulu:
Says who? On what grounds?
I think that’s kind of a bold statement to get into, trying to “explain” other people’s “madness.” Maybe they aren’t crazy at all. Maybe it’s just different. Who’s to say?
December 14th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Relative State:
I’m not saying that you should “derive a claim of fact”. I’m simply saying there’s a point when you have to just trust what happens to you.
I guess my big question is: can you show me an absolutely foolproof way of determining if/when something is an inner experience with no corrolation to outer events, or an outer experience with no associated inner event?
December 14th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
I was referring to the “delusional” as those who cannot cope or deal with reality (or realities). I was not using that as a reference to the scientific terms of “delusional”. People who can cope and deal with their reality (or multiple realities layered overtop of each other) are not delusional in my mind. Again, the inefficiency of language sometimes prevents me from fully relating what I am thinking at any given moment. I agree that some people are not really crazy at all (sometimes people view me as crazy), that’s why I tried to use the word delusional as a separating term.
I made my statements based around the entire concept that man creates God in his own image. If that is not true, the almost every part of my statement falls to pieces, and I will be the first to admit it. But if man does create God in his own image, then “god” is merely the image in the mirror. In order to evolve one’s relationship with “god”, one would therefore have to shatter the “mirror”, the reflection of the ego, cast as a monotheistic entity. Once the mirror is shattered, the narcissistic obsession of the ego would then experience the necessary cognitive dissonance for the conscious being to evolve beyond the ego. Once the ego is broken, or moved beyond, the person is now able to move on in their journey “out of the cave”, towards enlightenment, towards self-transcendence, etc.
Shattering the ego is much like breaking out of the heirarchy of Maslow’s NEEDS pyramid. If the ego is shattered, you are no longer bound to fulfilling it’s needs. Likewise, one “could” interpret Jesus’s walk in the desert, and “fight with the Devil”, as a symbol of him dissolving his ego. The same could be said with Buddha’s fight with Maia. Each time, the individual ignored or transcended their ego (and physical wants/needs).
I think the same applies with everyone. The whole idea of “Christ Consciousness”, is a consciousness that is not ruled by the ego. And like I said, IF man creates god in his own image, then “god” is a reflection of the ego.
Does that make sense at all, or am I “crazy”? LOL
December 15th, 2005 at 1:03 am
JP - Are you saying that Jesus can’t turn people into pigs?
December 15th, 2005 at 1:09 am
Maybe she was thinking of Circe…
December 15th, 2005 at 1:26 am
No, not Circe! Jesus…If he can curse a fig for tree for not bearing fruit out of season then he can turn people into pigs.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Not as I understand the scriptures:
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. -John 5.30
December 15th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Huh?!
December 15th, 2005 at 8:51 pm
“I don’t do anything. It’s God, not me, that does things.”
I love how the interviewer doesn’t bat a textual eyelash after the ‘Jesus turned people to pigs’ line. That’s great. “Annnd.. Moving on.” Unflappable interviewers.
I think a little too much emphasis was on the religious experience, and not enough on the studying the Bible aspect of her falling away. As this discussion has shown, plenty of atheists have ‘internal’ religious experiences - the label internal cages these experiences off from spreading into the rest of their worldview. Pretty understandable.
I’m glad that she admits that atheism is a kind of leap of faith. That’s always a + mark. And I love her brother’s reaction to her coming out as an atheist - “Well, Julia’s looked into it — I guess there is no God!” He goes: “She does good research. I believe her, because I would never read all that stuff! Well, she just saved me a lot of time!” That’s some good shit. I love that she talks about evolution with her daughter as a bedtime story.
What’s funny is her definition of God - a big bearded guy in the sky. Like an article on Dodging Invisible Rays - here. Which contains a link to the article in question, right on top. A link to a link. Jesus, I’m online too much.
But, with that definition, who the hell can blame her? ‘Um, yes, I believe in this great beared white guy, sitting on a can, reading a newspaper called EXISTENCE, smoking and laughing. We call him Bob. Bob is God. We love our God.’ Yeah, that does make you sound pretty silly. Too bad it ignores all the good definitions of God that fly about.
I was really in the same boat - until I heard about Gnosticism, I didn’t think the Bible made any sense, what with the transition between the Old and New Testaments, among other things. I don’t really see how mainstream Christians make total sense of the Bible, even now. And hell, I had some religious experiences on par with this a number of years ago, when I was still a teen and a Christian. They certainly served to drive me out of that religion. I didn’t go the atheism route, but it’s an understandable route.