Monday’s Mtg (4/17/23): Which major world religions are most likely to thrive in the 21st century?
After a lot of politics recently, let us switch to the future of religion. Many scholars and analysts have tried to project how popular the major religious faiths will be worldwide and in the United States in 20 or 30 or 50 years. Their numbers are interesting. Most project Islam will catch up to Christianity in sheer numbers of adherents, and the other half dozen or so major faiths of today will still be here thriving in half a century.
I don’t think the numbers are really what matter most. For one, as the articles below explain, they are just projections, based on educated guesses about the extent to which current trends will continue. They admit to big margins of error – especially because of the uncertain religious composition of China and a few other large countries. Also, no one can credibly predict how thousands of faiths within some religions – notably Christianity – will fare. History is even full of new faiths appearing seemingly out of nowhere and quickly becoming major faiths (Islam, Mormonism, American Methodism). One broad idea is that new religions emerge or old ones rapidly evolve when the circumstances of a new age create a need for it. Like Christianity’s meteoric rise from obscurity when the Mediterranean region needed a more universalizing faith for a more cosmopolitan, trade-driven, and migration-oriented age. Or Buddhism’s rise as an alternative to Hinduism.
What matters most IMO – and could make for an interesting Monday discussion – are the panoply of reasons why religions thrive and sink, and whether those big factors are changing in some fundamental ways in the 21st century. The suggested readings below go over some of those major factors, and we can fill in our own guesses about other ones that might become pivotal. Some of the readings are a bit long, so I will open our meeting by listing the major factors they discuss.
We have strayed from the “civilized” part of our moniker several times recently, and that will stop. Try me. More pleasantly, please remember to sign up for our Spring outdoor burger bash at Nick’s house on April 30th.
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
- Why are people religious and what circumstances help a particular faith to thrive? Recommended but long. Part of BBC’s 2019 “Long view of humanity” series.
- Why faith is becoming more popular around the world.
- Worldwide projections:
- Size of major religions in 2050 (sum of big 2015 Pew Center study). 2050 world likely around 30% Christian, 30% Muslim, 15% Hindu, 13% unaffiliated (most are NOT atheist or agnostic), 5% Buddhist, 7% others. Recommended short.
- But, no one really knows. Faiths rise and fall unexpectantly and suddenly sometimes.
- In USA:
- Which factors will matter the most? Hard to know; different assumptions lead to very different projections. (Long so skim to get main factors like fertility levels, rates of religion switching, migration, prosperity, Gen Z, etc.)
- OTOH: Why you can’t predict the future of American religion. Recommended because short + key point.
- CivCon mtgs with relevant links:
- 2019: What does religion provide that secularism does not? Discussion questions might be useful for us.
- 2013: What are Christian values for the 21st century; Can Pope Francis revive Catholicism?
NEXT WEEK (4/24/23): No mtg.
Monday’s Mtg (4/10/23): What are Americans’ worst misconceptions about the rest of the world, and vice versa?
It is a holiday weekend, not a homework weekend. For this topic on mutual misunderstandings between Americans and the rest of the world, let’s hope we can generate a lot of our discussion from group members’ direct experience. We have immigrant members from many countries, people that have lived abroad, and a range of ages. The latter is important because I do not want to get bogged down in 30–40-year-old stereotypes that newer generations have left behind. (It is true that national/religious stereotypes often last for generations, but this is a well-rounded group so hopefully we have left in the past “all Americans are rich/arrogant” and “poor countries are hellholes,” “Arabs are violent” and other hackneyed beliefs.)
The vague wording hurts us, but not fatally, IMO. Yes, there are 330 million Americans (225m adults), and asking what “we” believe about the rest of the world requires a lot of aggregating and generalizing. The same is true the other way around. The “rest of the world” is 200+ countries; thousands of cultures, ethnic groups, languages, etc.; a half dozen major religious faiths and hundreds of smaller ones; just to touch on the vast diversity of 7 billion non-Americans. What do “we” and “they” think about each other, even at one snapshot moment in time, is not really a question with an answer.
Moreover, Americans themselves are sharply divided on core facts and beliefs about our own country, as we talked about last week. Our country is in an internal Cold War over our history, culture, race, science, immigration’s value, the proper roles for govt/biz, and even the basic meaning of democracy and the Constitution. As we discussed, regional sterotypes persist here.
What do “we” think about Islam and Mexico?? Many Americans are too saturated in myths and propaganda to know ourselves, much less others.
Still, two very important reason led me to suggest this topic.
- Americans must be able to see ourselves as others see us – whether they are right or wrong about us. Historically we do not do that very well, and catastrophes (for us and other countries) have followed. If U.S. influence really is ebbing, seeing ourselves through 7 billion new sets of eyes will come to matter more and more.
- There is always value in saying out loud our stereotypes and generalizations about others. It helps us examine assumptions, facts, values, prejudices, etc.
Have a happy Easter weekend and I will see you on Monday. Also, don’t forget to sign up for our spring party on April 30th at Nick’s house.
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
About us –
- 2021 Pew report: “What People Around the World Like and Dislike About American Society and Politics.” Long but recommended, at least the highlights.
- Global map of U.S. favorability by country. (2020, so Trump soured our image.) Easy overview.
- Ally or threat? To some countries we are one or other; some both.
- From a travel site: Many foreigners get false their beliefs about USA from movies, TV, other entertainment media.
By us –
- We did talk about Americans’ ignorance of other countries and cultures, in 2019.
- Video 34m – Why Americans misunderstand the world. Former CIA agent wrote book of same name. Focus on how our ignorance/naiveté about world warp U.S. foreign policy. Recommended if time.
- 27 myths the West has about developing countries. From a non-U.S., pro-foreign aid group.
- Fun comments from a Reddit thread on this subject.
- Muslims: U.S. public opinion has moderated lately. But half of U.S. adults still think Muslims are not part of mainstream U.S. society. Which Amis drive these views? Guess.
NEXT WEEK (4/17/23): How will major world religions evolve in 21st century?
Monday’s Mtg (1/9/23): What is your worldview and how did you acquire it?
In Civilized Conversation we express our beliefs week after week, often citing some facts or figures or personal experiences to back them up. How else could it really work? Yet, we seldom talk about what lies at the base of our supposedly objective beliefs: Our worldviews. At the very least, our unstated POV about how the word works and how it should work leaves us susceptible to seeing facts (or “facts”) from one point of view rather than another. This does not mean that facts don’t matter or that morality or truth are subjective, of course. I’m just saying. Worldviews are where we start from, whether we realize it moment-to-moment or not.
So, I thought a topic that explicitly asks us to speak about and explore our worldviews and their origins would be fun and illuminating – and would get more people than the usual suspects involved in the discussion. I initially imagined “worldview” both broadly and simply. Someone’s worldview is what they believe about:
- How the world works – especially for “people like me.”
- Why it works this way – God, culture, science, economics, luck, just desserts, etc.
- How the world should work; and
- What the how, why, and should imply for the way we (and other people) should live our lives.
Of course, upon Googling it, I quickly learned that theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and…everybody else that writes essays on the internet define worldview in more complicated and often very different ways. For example, one short article says your worldview concerns your beliefs about epistemology, metaphysics, cosmology, teleology, theology, anthropology, and axiology. Hey, mine too! Also, worldviews can vary a lot across and even within cultures, by religion versus secular orientation, urban/rural, race, ethnicity, gender, and many other things.
Other obvious points include:
- Worldviews are formed in large part during childhood. They are not coolly reasoned out in Philosophy 101 class or by comparing religious doctrines in adulthood, or by rationally calculating economic interests, or reading child-rearing websites.
- Worldviews are partially socially determined, and thus often highly culture-specific.
- Most people’s worldviews are based on their religious beliefs. A “Christian worldview” seems to be a buzzword among American Christians, at least based on the fact that roughly three-quarters of my Google search results (“What is a worldview?”) were about defining it and celebrating its merits.
- A person’s worldview need not be very explicit or even conscious but serve as automatic decision-making heuristics during times of stress or uncertainty or sudden change.
We have heard way too much from me lately in opening presentations. So, for this one I will offer us a quickie working definition of “worldview,” and then ask for volunteers to say, if they wish, something about their own worldviews and/or how they were formed. Of course, theorizing about the topic without a personal story would be perfectly fine. If the debate sags, I will use the following questions to guide us.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS –
- What is a worldview and what are its origins?
- What is your worldview and how did you come by it?
- Personal: In general, or for you, what role is played by childhood…
- Parenting and siblings.
- Nurturing, stress, insecurity, or instability.
- Religious faith of the family.
- Friends. teachers, romantic experiences, other outsiders.
- Culture:
- How socially- or culturally-determined is a person’s worldview?
- Religion’s/churchgoing’s role. Secular worldviews.
- Experience of racism, sexism, other discrimination.
- Western and non-Western worldviews.
- Change:
- Can your worldview change in adulthood?
- Can a society’s dominant worldview change? How: Economic development, immigration, war/conquest, racial/ethnic conflict or healing, etc.?
- Politics: How can politics change a dominant WV – especially one that holds us back from progress and greater shared prosperity and justice?
- Social media/internet: Do these new tools alter or warp people’s worldviews? How?
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
- RationalWiki’s brief list of the main types of worldviews.
- Nice, but medium-long, breakdown of what comprises a personal worldview. I like this one. It points out your worldview is the framework for how you think, not just how you behave. And it distinguishes “depth” (core well thought-out) in one’s worldview from “breadth” (the practical knowledge it leads to). Both are important. Recommended.
- What is a non-religious worldview, and do Atheism or Agnosticism amount to one?
- Philosophy-heavy essay on the elements of a worldview. The article that identified the 7 elements mentioned above: Epistemology, metaphysics, cosmology, teleology, theology, anthropology, and axiology.
NEXT WEEK (1/16/23): How has the meaning of freedom evolved in U.S. history?
Monday’s Mtg (12/19/22): Deism – Is religion meaningful without the miracles and supernatural?
Since it is the holidays, there is no need to make a big intellectualized deal about this topic. Still, whether religion is fundamentally ethical and moral versus supernatural is an intriguing question.
Most religious people I have met seemed to me to look at their faith mainly as a guide for living and a source of moral and ethical authority. Yet many of them said they feel its spiritual power and personally connected to God and/or the divine. Most believed God had intervened directly in human affairs, at least in a much earlier “age of miracles. Surveys show that one-half of Americans say they pray often and believe God sometimes answers prayers.
Yet there are many other ways of viewing the divine, without rejecting its existence. This is true even in Western culture, before considering the variety of spiritual beliefs in, say, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Taoism. One such other way evokes the archaic term, “Deism.” Deism is the belief that there is a God or creator being, but one that does not intervene in the world. God made the universe, gave us reason and free will, and lets us be. Deism’s god was often called the “god of the philosophers,” I believe. Plato’s unmoved mover. In Thomas Jefferson’s (never published in his lifetime) Bible, Jesus is history’s greatest ethical teacher, but he is not divine.
About 90%+ of Americans believe in God and 65% or so are Christians. I thought discussing the hugely different implications of a personal, intervening God versus the God of the Deists/philosophers would be enlightening, so to speak. Deism is not atheism, but its implications take us to far different places than the activist God most Americans (and most people in the world) believe in.
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
- It’s the holidays, so we can chill. Or, try these:
- What is Deism? Recommended.
Or try this definition by, IMO, a rather intolerant Deist organization. - Why Jefferson edited the Bible to leave out Jesus’ miracles, the resurrection, and all other supernatural parts.
- When Americans say they believe in God, what do they mean? Recommended.
- Who cares? For one, unlike secular Americans most U.S. Christians believe most things in society can be split into either good or evil.
NEXT WEEK (12/26/22): No mtg.
Monday’s Mtg (11/21/22): Are equity and inclusion evolutionary, political, or religious concepts?
This topic idea of Fred’s is a mouthful, but it’s a great discussion topic. Ever since mass support for equity (maybe the same thing as equality, maybe not – see below) and inclusiveness (tolerance or non-discrimination, maybe) grew strong enough to support modern democracy and human rights, people have been pondering where these key concepts came from and how they grew so popular. How did these moral values, however unevenly applied in practice even today, become universal values?
Knowing how equity and inclusion “won” the war of ideas depends on what the terms mean, of course. As the readings explain, there are some controversies you might not know about concerning their meaning and importance to a modern, just and free society. Getting a better handle on their meanings might help us in our current struggle to prevent democratic backsliding or even to expand to whom and how equity and inclusiveness might be applied in the future.
Fred’s trichotomy is a pretty good one, IMO. His origins/processes are –
- Evolution: Altruism, for example – helping other people in exchange for no immediate personal benefit – may have developed via evolution. In pre-history, the unit of survival of the fittest was the small group of humans, not individuals. So, maybe we evolved to help our neighbors/clansmen because it conveyed a survival advantage. Fred mentioned another one: Discrimination is wasteful. A society that, say, enslaves people or won’t let women be educated deprives itself of their talents. Thus, less discriminatory societies might have out-competed more bigoted ones.
- Religion: One scholarly POV, like this one here, is that when European religious leaders surveyed the wreckage of the wars of the Reformation, they began to rethink Christian doctrine. Maybe God wanted us to tolerate other faiths instead of converting the heathens at any cost, and this idea progressed into the idea of faith as a matter of individual conscience. (Yeah, for centuries this was not applied to indigenous or enslaved peoples that needed “saving.” Still, in this POV religion was a driver of equity/inclusion, not just an impediment to it.). Buddhism and other non-Western faiths have been sources of egalitarian values and tolerance, too. Other scholars say the idea that tolerance was a product of religion itself is inaccurate.
- Politics: Enlightenment political theorists like Voltaire, Mill, and Rousseau argued the virtues of (at least some) equality and inclusion. Practical needs to keep the peace and limit (White) inequality led political leaders to turn those abstractions into reality. Using constitutions and laws and other tools, they institutionalized equity and inclusion via universal rights, equality before the law, social contracts – and eventually anti-discrimination laws.
I would add economic transformation and the right to vote itself as other important engines of equality and tolerance,
We probably should begin our discussion by considering which values really serve as bedrock values for a democratic society. These days, a lot of people question whether equity and inclusiveness go far enough. See the link below on the dark side of “tolerance,” for example.
To open our mtg…TBD. Fred might clarify what he had in mind by this topic and/or DavidG might do a blurb. For purposes of organizing our thinking on this sprawling topic, how about these simple questions?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS –
- How should we define equity and inclusion for this mtg’s purposes? AND, do they go far enough to be the foundations of a free and just society?
- Evolution as a cause/driver of belief in equity and inclusion.
- Religion as cause (and obstacle). Not just Western religions.
- Politics same.
- Other factors; e.g., economics, mass literacy, expanding the vote, communications technology.
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
- NOTE: Hard to find ones exactly on point since what the point should be is one of our questions.
- Definitions: Equity vs. equality. Inclusion vs. tolerance.
- The evolutionary biology of altruism. Short.
- Tolerance: Long articles but great.
- Tolerance came out of politics, not religion! At least in Europe.
- But tolerance is not a good foundation for a modern society.
- Inclusiveness:
- The persistence of gender discrimination. Short.
- The persistence of U.S. racial discrimination. Long.
- Our “mutual respect deficit” is as big a problem as economic inequality. Recommended.
NEXT WEEK (11/28/22): No Mtg.
Monday’s July 4th mtg: Are good and evil best explained by religion, philosophy, or science?
Happy Fourth of July weekend! Thanks for spending it making fireworks rather than watching them. Okay, it is a heavy topic, but it should be a fun meeting too. We can only scratch the surface of this one, of course. The origin and nature of good and evil are core concerns of every religion I know, most philosophical disciplines, and lately science.
We did try the science piece of this topic in 2015 – What Does Science Tell Us About Good and Evil? – and we had a few related meetings since then. I would recommend clicking on this meeting.
But we never have tried to compare how religions, philosophers, and scientists approach the problems of good and evil. That we cannot really do so might be kind of the point. Arguably, the three realms of thought aren’t really trying to answer the same types of questions. Certainly not in the same ways, using the same methods and types of evidence. OTOH, maybe many religious traditions, philosophies, and recent science agree more than they disagree on what good and evil are, if not on their causes. Anyway, do some reading if you can this weekend – or, better yet, think of some probing questions to ask the group.
See you on Monday. Both good and evil group members are welcome. You know who you are.
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
Philosophy –
- Good and evil are fluid concepts. Basically, good = empathy + compassion; Evil = selfishness, narcissism, and cruelty.
- Well, it’s a lot more complicated, says the field of moral philosophy.
- “The kinds and origins of evil.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Long, but gets into specific philosophers/philosophies.
Religion –
- Theodicy, or the “problem of evil” in religion. If God is omnipotent and loving, then why does he let evil exist? (Because He gave us free will is a common religious answer.)
- Catholic Church’s definition of sin. Evil is when a grave sin is committed out of deliberate malice; bad effect + bad motive. h/t Fred.
- Buddhism has no use for “evil” concept. (Beats me, but author is a well-known American Buddhist.)
Science-
- “Moral psychology” field explained in review of book, “Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil.” Recommended.
- Neuroscience is getting closer to explaining why regular people can act evilly.
- Key! Don’t forget the power of deliberate, slick propaganda!
Related CivCon mtgs –
- 2015 – What Does Science Tell Us About Good and Evil? Recommended.
- 2020: Why is religion so often used to justify war and violence? and The psychological roots of political beliefs.
- 2015: Is There a Universal Human Nature?
NEXT WEEK (7/11): Supreme Court, Part II – How radical will its agenda be – esp. economic agenda?
(An I told you so mtg.)
Monday’s Mtg (6/13/22): Supreme Court, Part I – Conservatives’ abortion and social/civil rights revolution.
Congress’s January 6th insurrection investigating committee has begun public hearings. We will discuss its findings on 6/20. While shocking, I hope the hearings don’t totally overshadow the dramatic Supreme Court term that will end on June 30th.
Since the mid-1980s, SCOTUS’s conservative majority has been slowly implementing a very ambitious agenda to rewrite core elements of American constitutional law. Much of that strategy was accomplished, as we have discussed many times, although some was thwarted. Last year, the Trump-completed 6-3 ultra-conservative majority hit the ground running and has never stopped. The words of one analyst I quoted last year have proven spot on:
“[T]he conservative Supreme Court will continue its long-running effort to redefine the relationship between voters and government, citizens and non-citizens, employees and employers, consumers and producers, and the United States and the world. How much of this agenda will be enacted is not yet knowable, but its breathtakingly ambitious scope is.”
This revolution is so broad and deep that I divided the topic into two meetings this summer. Part I next Monday is, “Roe and the conservative social and civil rights agenda.” The mtg will emphasize cases this term (since last Oct.) and preview big ones TBD in the next 2 weeks. Yet the revolution is so mature now that we might need to touch on older precedents of the last 10 years to explain what’s happening.
I’m not kidding when I say SCOTUS is rewriting the meaning of many of our constitutional rights. Not completely, of course, but in substantial ways that will impact most Americans. Off the top of my head, SCOTUS has or soon will change the meaning of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 14th, and 15th amendments; and probably more. To quote another Court watcher:
In the coming weeks, the court will hand down a series of potentially transformative, intensely political decisions, driven not by some incontrovertible and objective reading of the Constitution but by their own equally intense ideology and policy preferences. The political effects will be — and should be — enormous.
Monday, we will tackle some of the Court’s major civil and political rights rulings, including those re:
- Abortion and reproductive rights. (2019 CivCon mtg what if Roe overturned.)
- Religious rights: Religious exemptions from general laws(2016 2013.) School prayer. Church/state separation (2020 mtg SCOTUS bulldozed the wall. Student aid to religious schools.
- Voting rights (2014), gerrymandering, state voter suppression/integrity laws 2018).
- Affirmative action in higher education.
- Gun rights. (TBD; could states requiring gun licenses almost impossible.) (2018, 2012)
- COVID public health regulations: Masks, vaccines, reopening economy.
- Criminal Rights: Rights of the accused, the convicted, death penalty.
- Campaign finance (as a free speech issue).
Doubtful we will get through all of these.
On July 11 we will do Part II: The 6-3 conservatives Court’s economic, regulatory, and biz/labor agenda. These decisions often get less attention than easier to grasp social issues but can affect regular Americans enormously.
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
The revolution has hardly been televised –
- Republican leaders are reversing the rights revolution of the last 50 years. SCOTUS, everywhere. A must-read.
- Sotomayor stunning dissent: Trump’s SCOTUS is obliterating rights at will.
- Study finds Supreme Court on far right of American public.
- Can conservatives’ revolution be challenged?
Upcoming decisions –
- 5-minute video describes the dozens of major decisions coming in June! Recommended.
- DavidG will briefly go over some of the other civil rights areas, above, like guns and affirmative action.
- Roe: Overturning Roe would endanger contraception access, LGBT marriage, and anything else based on a constitutional right to privacy. Or, even more.
- Voting: Brief history of SCOTUS’s voting right’s atrocities. As of Sept. 2021.
NEXT WEEK (6/20/22): January 6th – What did investigators find? Will the public care?
Monday’s Mtg: What is a Free Thinker?
The term, Free Thinker dates to the 17th century. It meant someone that abjured settled religious dogma and tried to form their beliefs about religion based on reason and empiricism. It often was used as a euphemism for “atheist” or agnostic, since being labelled as one often was literally dangerous back then.
Skipping a lot of its history, free thought as a legitimate POV experienced a kind of revival in late 19th century America as the scientific revolution spread and immigrants with many different religious beliefs (some fleeing religious persecution and some actual atheists) flooded into the country. If you get a chance sometimes, look up the most famous free thinker of that time, Robert Ingersoll. Known as the “Great Agnostic,” Ingersoll’s books and lectures were best-sellers, and in an age before radio or TV he barnstormed the country giving lectures and debating religious figures in front of packed crowds. Here is a recent biography of the man, by one of today’s most well-known advocates of free thought, Susan Jacoby.
The free thinker moniker may be undergoing another mini revival. Maybe it’s because everybody thinks they can “research” all of their beliefs on-line until they are smugly satisfied they are empirically right. Or maybe it’s because conservatives have appropriated the label recently, robbing it of its cache for liberals. Some anti-Vaxxers and White nationalists call themselves free thinkers, bravely refusing to be “sheep” in the face of politically correct cultural repression, blah, blah, blah.
YMMV. I thought free thought would be a good topic for several reasons other than the narrow political angle. The compatibility of religion and science/reason has been a lively topic for Civilized Conversation in the past (this one, for example). Second, IMO I see less and less evidence that many Americans do much self-reflection before spouting their beliefs on religion, politics, or much else all over public and social media. (Susan Jacoby wrote a spot-on book on that in 2008, The Age of American Unreason. In it she criticized both Limbaugh/Fox News and New Age pseudoscience. She’s about to publish an updated version blaming growing public ignorance and sloppy thinking for the Trump era.)
Lastly, whatever your beliefs, declaring them to be a product of reason, empiricism, and independent thinking seems a little too conveniently self-congratulatory to me. Of course, free thought was and still is in part a reaction to religious people who insist that their beliefs are The Truth because their source is a revealed ancient text that is inerrant and above criticism. I am agnostic myself, in the dictionary sense of the term (see link #1 for terms definitions). But, maybe it would be good for CivCon to discuss whether we could all use a little more humility and self-reflection and a little less smugness in this age of internet truths and social media silos.
I will give a short opening on Monday and then we can talk. I think the recommended readings are pretty good this week.
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –
What is a Free Thinker?
- Brief explainer: Seven different types of non-believers, including Atheist, agnostic, free thinker, humanist, skeptic, others.
- Rational Wiki Free Thinker entry.
- 12 traits that make you a free thinker (Maybe true, but still self-congratulatory.)
- A humbler definition. Recommended. A more stereotypical, hostile-to-religion definition.
- Susan Jacoby, humanist advocate and author: 35-minute interview with Bill Moyers.
Thoughtful (IMO) critiques of free thought/some free thinkers:
- Free thinking does NOT mean unbiased or objective! No one can be free of bias or influence or form core beliefs using only innate, neutral reasoning. A good freethinker knows this and doesn’t overestimate her/his objectivity. 6pp but highly recommended
- Beware stereotypes too. Religious faith doesn’t have to come from blind dogma, and atheists/agnostics don’t have to get there using reason or empiricism. Recommended.
- The problem of thinking you’re a “free thinker” when it comes to politics. Amen, Deacon!
- Bertrand Russell, 1957:
“What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.”
Old CivCon mtgs –
- 2019: What does religion provide that secularism does not?
- 2018: Are atheists intolerant?
- 2016: Are religion and science compatible?
NEXT WEEK – No mtg on 4/25.
May 2nd: Do our political parties win appealing to the “base” or to
moderate voters?
Monday’s Mtg (3/7/22): Are Americans Puritans or Libertines?
This one is kind of a combined social psychology and why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along topic. Obviously, the United States has a lot of puritans and a lot of libertines (sometimes the same people), depending on how the terms are defined. Most of us are probably in-between; pleasure-seeking and/or tolerant in some ways and self-denying and/or judgmental of others in other ways.
There are a lot of roads our discussion could take, therefore. We could talk about one or the other trait. Either Americans’ famous hedonism and materialism or our equally famous moral rectitude and judgementalism. (Again – there are not just two ways of being or only two “sides” here.)
But IMO there is cause to worry about one particular road we’re on. The culture wars burn hotter than ever and are even expanding into new territories. We are reaching a climax in the abortion wars, and the procedure probably will be banned in at least one-third of the country within a year. The education wars are exploding over the usual (sex and moral education) but also over LGBT rights and racism and basic U.S. history instruction. Transgender rights and equality seem to be a step too far for the religious right and are under broad assault. Or, maybe the liberal PC police are trying to impose their libertine moral relativism on other people’s kids, if that is your POV.
What is fueling this fire – and both the negative and positive changes in private and public morality, mutual tolerance, and equally? We have always been a combustive mix of Calvinist-inspired religiosity, city-based liberalizing cultural change, racial and ethnic divides, immigrant-inspired cultural change, etc. To all of these you can add the constant “creative destruction” of traditional culture that is always a byproduct of capitalism.
Plus, the new tinder: The Internet and social media. They allow people with similar moral values to find each other and help to normalize what was once labelled deviant. OTOH, it does the same for cultural revanchists, especially with conservative news media helping them to feel victimized by rapid social change. And to be fair, so does all that free pornography their kids can view; public shaming of cultural conservatism; growing sex and violence in entertainment (even TV); etc.
Whatever happened to libertarianism conservatism and live and let live would be worth discussing, too, as would whether “liberal” no longer has its original meaning of supporting the right to dissent.
To open our meeting, I will just try briefly to frame my topic idea little better. Then, we can talk, and I might throw in a few questions for the group to ponder as we go along. CivCon has done many meetings that touch on puritan versus libertine values. You might want to glance at some of them, like:
- 2013 same topic: Are Americans Puritans or Libertines?
- 2021: Religious fundamentalism’s psychological and sociological roots.
- 2019 How has universal, free porn affected society?
OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS – (all are short this week)
- “America’s sexual hypocrisy addiction:” What we tell pollsters we disapprove of versus what we actually do. Recommended.
- “Still puritan after all these years.” Free pdf of a 2012 NYT essay. Recommended.
- TV/movies reinforce both libertine and puritanical stereotypes about sex. Recommended.
- The Clinton marriage is a Rorschach test for sexual anxiety/attitudes.
- What is the relationship between hedonism and happiness?
- America’s addled puritanism. Conservative POV.
NEXT WEEK (3/14/22): TBD shortly.
Monday’s Mtg (12/20/21) How do Americans find meaning in the Holidays (+ life) in more secular times?
As Jon Stewart once said, it seems like the War on Christmas starts earlier every year. Seriously, though, in a more secular-oriented country, how do Americans derive meaning from the holiday season and in life in general? Of course, many of us still are quite religious. But, as Suzanne, whose idea this is, noted, all of the survey evidence says that secularism is growing quicky and the sheer numbers of highly religious Americans is in decline.
So, where’s the meaning of life if all we are takes place here, in this life not the next, and there is no one above humankind judging our actions? Join Suzanne and the group on Monday, December 20, for a roundtable on this idea. Andre will lead his own topic on January 3rd and DavidG will be back January 10th.
Suggested readings (optional, as always) will be at the Meetup site this week. You might find these CivCon mtgs of interest:
Civilized Conversation 
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