Ben Casnocha: The Blog

Spiritual But Not Religious

"Spiritual but not religious" is an increasingly popular way to describe one's religious views.

What does it mean to be spiritual but not religious? Everyone seems to define the term differently. I do know that if you tell me you're spiritual I feel like I know more about you, even if I have a hard time pinpointing exactly what new knowledge I tote. I would probably peg you a person unusually self-analytical, interested in inner peace, health-conscious, and someone who thinks more than usual about emotions and relationships. But that's a pretty random list of characteristics, and that's part of the problem.

Another common definition: Spirituality is about reverence for nature. Spiritual people display a certain wonderment at the majesty of everything around us. This was the consensus in a recent roundtable discussion on religion that I facilitated. This amusing page of atheist motivational posters contains one emphasizing secular awe at natural beauty.

Me? I'm not affiliated with an organized religion and I do not believe in a higher power. I do not evangelize my atheism and am uncertain about the correctness of my view. Am I spiritual? By the above definitions, yes.

But I am reluctant to self-identify as spiritual.

For one, many people I know who wear this label and wear it proud are fuzzy thinkers and too enthusiastic about new-age texts. Second, I am suspicious that people who check the "spiritual but not religious" box are taking advantage of semantic ambiguity to absolve themselves of actually forming a belief about God.

Utilizing ambiguity in this way is similar to people who casually call themselves agnostic. Historically, agnosticism has meant that you believe that you cannot know whether or not there's a God (this is different than saying "I don't know"). Modern agnostics tend to be all over the place. "I don't know, I don't care" is the most common translation I discover when I probe. I also encounter many "agnostics" who are really atheists but don't want to say they are or do not understand that the absence of a positive belief in God is atheism.

In any event, I have no problem if someone's stance is, "I'm not sure where I stand on the God / religion question." For that matter, I respect any stance - believer or non-believer or confused. But a clear, understandable stance on religion is what I respect most, and I don't think "spiritual" counts as one. And as a supplementary label, absent additional explanation, it can be interpreted in too many ways to be useful.

One friend offered perhaps the cleverest answer to whether he is a spiritual man: "Other people consider me spiritual." Ha! He gets all the associative benefits with being spiritual, whatever those might be, and yet since he doesn't think of himself in this way he is relieved of the fuzziness charges.

Bottom Line: "Spiritual but not religious" is in vogue but fraught with ambiguity.

(thanks to DaveJ for helping explain the agnostic point and the absence of positive belief = atheism point.)

Me on Happiness

Gretchen Rubin of the excellent blog The Happiness Project interviews me on the topic:

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Ben: Stimulating, soulful, laughter-filled conversation.

Gretchen: Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Ben: Dwelling on a negative thought that seems to just cycle through my head. Wish I had better mind control so I could say to myself: "Accept thoughts on X, deny thoughts on Y." The passage of time, I've found, is the only reliable way a negative thought flushes out of my system.

Gretchen: Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful?
Ben: I collect tons of quotes and mantras. One I read yesterday I liked: "The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable." - Martin Buber. Not sure it's my ultimate mantra, but it's a good one. I spend most of my cycles trying to figure out why things work they way they do, and I need to remind myself that some things just *can't* be rationally, logically explained.

Gretchen: If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
Ben: Treadmill and push-ups. Talking to family and long-term friends. And trying to cheer other people up (in the process, I cheer up myself).

Gretchen: Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy -- if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
Ben: I'm more even keeled. I think I have a high set point. But, the past few months I've felt more funks than usual, and while it has been difficult I think hitting lower moments makes you appreciate the highs more. How am I dealing with it? Confronting the unhappiness directly and moving swiftly to eliminate what I see as the causes -- the events, people, things, etc -- from my life. And trying to be at peace with the fact that life is cyclical and some days / months / years will be better than others.

Gretchen: Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
Ben: I think about it / work on it. If you don't actively think about it, you outsource what it means to others, like the media, and they tend to promote a materialistic conception of the word. So I do think it's possible to pursue happiness without ever really knowing what it means, or without ever thinking you'll actually *arrive*.

Of course, one of the main ways I think about happiness is by reading the blog The Happiness Project. Have you heard of it? Some great stuff there. :)

You Just Have to Keep Breathing

Take a deep breath. Focus on your breath. Breath.

So have advised everyone from Eastern spiritual gurus to basketball coaches before the big game. Focusing on the breath, they say, grounds you in the present moment. Easier said than done, but I try to follow this wisdom as much as I can.

My brother pointed me to a scene from the 2000 movie Cast Away that articulates this spirit. For those who haven't seen it, Tom Hanks' character is the sole survivor of a plane crash that leaves him stranded on an island for four years. He survives thanks to some supplies in the plane and more importantly the memory of his girlfriend Kelly with whom he was in love. One day, the tide washes ashore the remnants of a portapody which Hanks uses to build a raft and ultimately get rescued.

He returns to Memphis to the shock of his friends and family who had held a funeral for him years ago. His girlfriend had mourned but then married another man and had children. In the below three minute clip Hanks talks about what he did, the sadness of losing Kelly all over again, and how he needs to just "keep breathing." Here's a shortened clip with only the end part.

There's elemental wisdom in those last words: "And I know what I have to do: I have to keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide could bring?"

Pledging Abstinence Is Only Cool If I'm Alone

In Margaret Talbot's thoroughly interesting New Yorker piece on why so many evangelical teenagers are having sex, there's this nugget about teens who pledge abstinence:

...in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost.

Fascinating. Underdog status really does matter.

Movie Review: Religulous

Bill Maher, the always provocative comedian-cum-commentator, has a new movie out called Religulous, a round-the-world documentary on the irrationality of religion and those who believe in it.

I saw it last night. There were many laugh out loud moments and some truly frightening scenes of religious extremists off the deep end. Occasionally the movie was sad more than anything, such as the scene of John Westcott who was once gay but has "cured himself" and now, in the name of the Lord, helps other gay men rid themselves of homosexuality via Exchange Ministries. The irony is the guy still looks so obviously gay -- haircut, voice, etc. Or the man who told Maher he believes in miracles and as evidence relayed a story of how one day he prayed it would rain and 10 minutes later -- wait for it -- it started raining! Unbelievable!

While I'm sympathetic to Maher's basic points I have one stylistic complaint and one philosophical complaint. Stylistically, he repeatedly interrupted his interviewees and brought to the conversations a clear agenda for the answers he was looking for. Philosophically, he treated all believers the same -- bozos through and through. The movie opens with Maher visiting a "trucker church" -- a very small trailer in the middle of nowhere America where truckers gather together and pray. Maher, the smooth talking, blazer-wearing, L.A. comedian berates the overweight, blearly-eyed, not well educated truckers for their lack of skepticism about their faith. Huh? Why not let them be religious in peace?

Here's the thing: Maher is convinced religion on the whole does more bad than good in the world. I entertain the notion that in the end religion does more good than bad. Take the truckers with whom he opens the film. Sure, I'm concerned about the slippery slope argument (if you're willing to suspend rational faculties in this area, what else might you be irrational about?) but on the whole I bet these truckers derive a certain comfort and security from their weekly prayer sessions.

Later on, Maher interviews a senator and prominent God-believing scientist with these folks I do share his concern about how they're letting religious doctrine influence their thinking. I'm totally fine with a trucker talking admiringly about God. I do get concerned when President Bush says God's will informs his foreign policy, or when a CEO cites God as reason for doing something.

At the end Maher insists that if you're atheist and quiet about it, speak up! To wit, his prime audience: passive atheists. Hard core believers won't watch a movie like this, hard core atheists will love it but they were already sold. It's the light weight non-believers who just might be moved.

One last point. Religulous suffers from the limits of the medium (film). It's very hard to explore a topic like religion in any kind of depth and near impossible to resist the kind of emotional cheap shots that video and music and animation allow. Just like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a perhaps entertaining but shallow way to understand the lead up to the Iraq war, Religulous is a rather shallow way to explore the atheist argument.

Bottom Line: As entertainment and comedy, Religious is well worth it. If you want an atheist treatise on religion, there are many books which explore the topic better.

When In Doubt, Offer a Blow Job

That's Sharon Stone's advice to girls, as noted in this review in the conservative magazine American Spectator of Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!):

"Young people talk to me about what to do if they're being pressed for sex. I tell them what I believe... if you're in a situation where you cannot get out of sex, offer a blow job. I'm not embarrassed to tell them." - Sharon Stone

Obviously, idiotic (though hilarious) advice. I'm equally dismayed, however, with the suggested path offered by religious or conservative organizations around abstinence-only education, particularly if it comes at the cost of real sex ed in the classroom. Sharon Stone, after all, does not speak for the pro-sex ed, pro-individual choice, pro-"have-sex-if-you-want-to-it-feels-great-just-be-safe" contingent.

The book Prude, by the way, seems like the latest book to sensationalize the sexualization of America's youth, replete with dirty little anecdotes designed to shock and awe parents into a state of oblivion. Enough, already.

(Hat tip to the single-best source on the internet for stimulating links, BookForum.com)

Sunday School for Atheists

Chris and I have kicked around the idea of starting a secular church that would try to offer the community and values of a regular church, without the brainwashing. According to this article in Time magazine, some Palo Alto parents have actually taken action: a Sunday school for atheist children. Excerpt:

The Palo Alto Sunday family program uses music, art and discussion to encourage personal expression, intellectual curiosity and collaboration. One Sunday this fall found a dozen children up to age 6 and several parents playing percussion instruments and singing empowering anthems like I'm Unique and Unrepeatable, set to the tune of Ten Little Indians, instead of traditional Sunday-school songs like Jesus Loves Me. Rather than listen to a Bible story, the class read Stone Soup, a secular parable of a traveler who feeds a village by making a stew using one ingredient from each home.

Makes sense. I know a bunch of atheist parents who struggle with how to transmit values and talk about morality with their children. Religion makes it easy. In particular, the reward/punishment structure around enforcing the values is absolutely brilliant.

Scariest Paragraph I Read Today

From The Economist's very worthwhile 18-page special report on religion and public life:

In global terms the most remarkable religious success story of the past century has been the least intellectual (and most emotive) religion of all. Pentecostalism was founded only 100 years ago in a scruffy part of Los Angeles by a one-eyed black preacher, convinced that God would send a new Pentecost if only people would pray hard enough. There are now at least 400 million revivalists around the world. Their beliefs are not for the faint-hearted. According to a study of ten countries by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, most adherents have witnessed divine healing, received a “direct revelation from God” or seen exorcisms.

Religion Quotes of the Day

Ross Douthat, on the danger of conflating the experiential and ideological aspects of religion:

But the "mainspring" of religious faith for most believers - and particularly for a mystic like Mother Teresa - is the personal experience of God as a being who loves them and communicates with them, rather than the intellectual experience of Catholicism (or some other specific faith tradition) as a philosophical system that persuades them.

---

Mark Lilla, in his long and interesting NYT Magazine cover story, on why the Great Separation of church and state is not and will not be a given in most of the world:

As for the American experience, it is utterly exceptional: there is no other fully developed industrial society with a population so committed to its faiths (and such exotic ones), while being equally committed to the Great Separation. Our political rhetoric, which owes much to the Protestant sectarians of the 17th century, vibrates with messianic energy, and it is only thanks to a strong constitutional structure and various lucky breaks that political theology has never seriously challenged the basic legitimacy of our institutions. Americans have potentially explosive religious differences over abortion, prayer in schools, censorship, euthanasia, biological research and countless other issues, yet they generally settle them within the bounds of the Constitution. It’s a miracle.

Here's Christopher Hitchen's response to Lilla.

How a Religion Reporter Lost His Faith

William Lobdell, the religion beat reporter for the L.A. Times, has an interesting first-person column out about how covering religion for the newspaper made him lose his faith.

He traces the arc of his faith and his job. How, when he was first assigned to the beat, he reveled in the opportunity to cover religion seriously since so many mainstream media treated it like a "circus". Then he immersed himself in the Orange County religious community, his reporting of others' faith and spirituality deepening his own. And finally the disillusionment: Catholic sex scandals, intolerant sects, and money-hungry TV preachers, causing him to not only stop attending church but to disbelieve in God altogether.

It's a sobering tale that speaks to me as a "soft" atheist who -- like Lobdell, I presume -- envies the community and comfort religion affords some people, but in the end cannot make the leap of faith.

Quote of the Day - Vulnerability

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries,” said the poet Theodore Roethke. To be vulnerable to the mystery of our life as it presents itself requires forgoing our hopes and fears for the future and being willing to taste what is here before us, in all its poignant bittersweetness. For the only richness that leaves a trace, the only happiness worth living for, is the full-bodied sensuous and sensual experience that is possible now, right now. When we can let down the barricades and allow that we are not built to last, this moment will shine as sweetly as the moon, and we shall feast on our life.

– Roger Housden (via Gayle Margolis)

Web Pages Immortal, Lives Not

An old classmate of mine died the other week. He was 22. I didn't really know him, but it's always a little bit of a shock to see an announcement that one of your peers has passed. Apparently, he had a heart condition that doesn't rear its ugly head until something bad happens -- and by then it's usually too late.

In the age of Facebook and blogs, how we commemorate someone's death is changing.

My classmate's Facebook profile is still up. In fact, he is tagged in photos as recently as week or two ago. What's most creepy is his Wall, the public place where people leave messages. One day he has the stream of normal messages ("Wanna play golf sometime soon?") and then -- just like that! -- the next message starts a string of remembrances, "You will be missed, you're shining down on us from heaven." Wow.

Last September I posted about a friend of a friend, Suzanne, who started a blog chronicling her fight to survive ovarian cancer. I helped her get going on Blogger. Suzanne died last month. Her blog, though, is still up. Her last living post starts, "There comes a time when you have to face the facts and as much as I have been fighting, these last turn of events have really set me back." Suzanne may now be gone, but her words will live on.

Cathy Seipp, an LA-based journalist, died not long ago and her daughter took over her blog to post updates and remembrances. The archives remain.

For those of us bloggers, we can only hope that if we were to suddenly die our last post is not some bitchy rant about how hard it is to open a can of dog food.

But even if you don't have a blog, you still might achieve an immortal online presence. Check out this touching memorial site for Anoopa Sharma, who was a PhD student at Emory University when she died in a car accident. A blog, photo slideshow, and this YouTube video ensure that Anoopa's light will continue to shine. What a wonderful thing her friends did. For some reason that banner picture of her reading really touches me -- maybe because I myself have spent much time reading in trains. So peaceful...

My Basic Beliefs When It Comes to Religion

I recently had the pleasure of meeting two loyal blog readers who are both self-declared evangelical Christians (ambiguous terms I know).

Although we overlapped in agreement on many "life" topics, we didn't seem to overlap on the polarizing social issues which dominate American politics. This made the conversation fascinating.

As we chatted I was asking myself questions such as, Why wouldn't you let a woman have an abortion if she wanted to? What's so bad about pre-marital sex? Why would I want to consider myself a "sinner" the moment I pop out of the womb? Why wouldn't you let gays marry? Is it really that bad to have a divorce? How can you possibly, rationally convince yourself that you know the single Truth when, had you been raised by atheist or buddhist parents, you might well believe in some other truth?

All questions with obvious answers to me. I realized in this conversation that I had never really argued in support of my stances on the above issues with anyone who saw the answers equally obvious -- and exactly opposite. It was an awesome, perspective-broadening experience. And it made me think about my general principles when it comes to these issues.

I hold the following basic beliefs:

1. I support anyone's right to believe in anything they want (with only a few constraints). Moreover, the social issues above are hardly deal breakers for me. That is, I would never not be friends with someone because they see the matters of abortion or god or marriage differently than me.

2. I believe that religion does more good than bad in the world. (Although John Derbyshire of the National Review says in an interesting Q&A about how he lost his faith that he no longer believes this.)

3. I encourage everyone to sample from the smorgasbord of religious and spiritual options to find your center "pole". Life gets crazy sometimes -- we all need something to swing around. Check out all the wisdom traditions.

4. I find "evangelical" behavior terrifying -- trying to inform or persuade others about your religious views without invitation. In other words, if I ask you about your faith, tell me. If I don't ask, feel free to tell me what you are, but don't go a step further. You do not have the right to impose your religious belief on me -- even if you think it's in my best interest.

It is a massively complicated, infinitely interesting topic. To make up for huge gaps in my knowledge I will spend time in college wrestling with the theology. In the meantime, maybe I should read C.S. Lewis, since every hard-core Christian (without exception - must be part of the playbook) has recommend him to me.

"But Ben," you might be asking yourself, "What are you? You still haven't told us!" Well, since you asked, I would call myself "Spiritual but not religious". What does this mean? I have no idea. But I intend to spend my whole life searching for the answer! (And hopefully changing my mind several times along the way.)

Sam Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan on Religion

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, and Andrew Sullivan, Atlantic editor and prolific blogger, duel online in this Beliefnet debate. Both are articulate and forceful. One's a staunch atheist, the other is a "moderate" Christian (Harris believes moderates are perhaps more to blame than fundamentalists).

I printed out all 32 pages and read it slowly and carefully. It's a great read for anyone interested in the Questions of Life such as, "Can religion and science co-exist? What to say to moderates? Could and should children be raised from a 'clean glass' totally devoid of religion?"

The Oprah Culture: Self-Love Before Self-Knowledge

Peter Birkenhead, in Salon, takes a whack at Oprah: he starts with her latest self-help project "The Secret" (which does sound pretty sketchy) and then zooms out and tries to tear down all of Oprah Culture:

For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character." It's a culture where people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you took offense at what I said," and forgive by saying, "I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you." And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented.

He concludes by essentially calling for more scrutiny of Oprah's humongous cultural influence:

If you reach more people than Bill O'Reilly, if you have better name recognition than Nelson Mandela, if the books you endorse sell more than Stephen King's, you should take some responsibility for your effect on the culture. The most powerful woman in the world is taking advantage of people who are desperate for meaning, by passionately championing a product that mocks the very idea of a meaningful life.

Related Post: Lee Siegel TNR article on Oprah

(Hat tip for Salon article: Chris Yeh)