Relishing Life's Teachable Moments

In a community building in a buzzing city laneway resides the University of the Third Age, where retired academics and teachers volunteer their skills in a variety of courses and the cost is nominal. If you’re over fifty you can immerse yourself in Renaissance Italy, discover the differences between Left, Right and Centre, or learn how to unleash your buried creativity. Two members of a personal growth group I attend, both in their seventies, are learning meditation there.

Is it a symptom of getting older that you start to look at all your relationships and your life itself as somehow involved with teaching? Perhaps, rather than being happy and having a family, the main purpose of life is simply to teach and to learn; we’re all moving between the roles of teacher and learner throughout our lives.

I come from a family of teachers. My father and two of his brothers are teachers, and two of my sisters are. One of those uncles married a teacher. Three cousins on my dad’s side of the family are either current or past teachers. Another sister - well, you you get the picture. My mother wanted to be a primary teacher before she met my father, but she married him instead.

My dad as I grew up was always in teacher mode, always instructing, always giving advice. I was determined not to follow in his footsteps, to forge my own path in life. Yet, not only have I ended up being a bit bossy and teacherly myself, but somehow I’ve found myself editing web-based resources for teachers.  I've also done a bit of English tutoring over the years.

One of my sisters, a former childcare manager, talks jokingly about ‘teachable moments’ for her children – times when opportunities arise to impart a little wisdom.

Teachable moments are not confined to parents and children. In my twenties I learned important things from housemates: which spices to grind for a superlative pumpkin curry; how to marinate tofu; how to arrange items on a clothes airer so they dry quickly in winter; the importance of tipping out the water after using an iron. Some skills were taught directly, some picked up by osmosis. Tanya, with whom I shared an enormous old-style St Kilda apartment in the late eighties, had a great sense of retro fashion style, a little of which rubbed off on me.

I’ve also been incredibly lucky in the mentors that have turned up in my life at exactly the right time, either role modelling what I needed to learn or teaching me directly. In my case they were mostly informal, or had another role, such as boss or coworker. Without them I wouldn’t have had any career success at all.

One of my many housemates also played the role of informal mentor. Mem was completing a Masters degree, something I’d wanted to do for a long time but felt I couldn’t achieve; seeing her day after day patiently cogitating at her desk in the neat little room across the hallway, dressed in her Japanese housecoat, must have had its effects because I finally managed to complete my Masters in 1998, six years after I’d moved out of the tiny half-house in Richmond that we shared for two years.

I continue to learn from my friends, and they from me. Simon, a telecommunications engineer, occasionally sends me short pieces of text to edit from the website he’s developing. Meanwhile he instructs me on anything to do with the mysterious workings of mobile phones and email, buying a new notebook PC, and improving the sound and picture on my telly. And we both learn from the heated political discussions we hold on the phone so frequently; some views of mine are really an amalgam of the ideas of both of us.

Another friend of mine is extremely knowledgeable about exposure therapy, a treatment for anxiety disorders that involves gradually exposing the patient to the feared object or situation. He has helped me see the emotional and social hiccups of life not as embarrassing disasters but as part of the mental toughening-up process that exposure is all about. (I don’t mean toughening-up in the sense of repressing feelings, but in the sense of mental resilience.)

Teaching is not always benign. Gender is taught by osmosis. We are constantly telling children subliminally what we expect of them as boys or girls, and surveilling their behaviour to ensure they don’t flout the gender norm. A father in a department store keeps calling his four-year-old daughter ‘princess’ when she nags him to buy every object she sees; a fourteen-year-old boy is told to ‘man up’. There are now kindergartens and that work very hard to be gender-neutral, allowing each child to flourish as an individual first.

Scripture teaching versus ethics: the fight for children’s brains

One of the greatest hopes for the future is the teaching of ethics classes in Australian primary schools. This simple enough idea is mired in controversy, because the churches traditionally have a deep hold on state governments, which administer the school system in Australia. In some states, including Victoria and  New South Wales, there is a compulsory thirty minutes of weekly scripture teaching in government primary schools. Students whose parents object simply twiddle their thumbs or read a book for the entire weekly lesson.

The schools and parents themselves have no choice but to let the proselytisers in; so much for the separation of church and state. Ninety-six per cent of the classes in Victoria are given by Access Ministries, an evangelical organisation whose rather sinister name is a perfect fit for its stated aim – excised from its website since controversy struck – to ‘reach every student in Victoria with the Gospel’ and ‘transform the nation for God’.

Unlike scripture classes, ethics classes teach children how to think. Rather than impose a moral standpoint, they encourage children to develop thoughtfully their own positions on ethical questions. The children explore topics as diverse as bullying, animal rights and homelessness. Along the way they learn the importance of listening to and tolerating the viewpoints of others within a respectful 'community of inquiry'.

Angry parents who object to scripture classes have pushed for their children to be offered ethics as an alternative to the compulsory weekly scripture class. There are pilot programs, but NSW is the only Australian state to offer ethics classes systemically. The drawback is that parents have to formally opt out of the scripture program.

Since NSW introduced ethics classes in 2010, there’s been a huge demand for these classes but Primary Ethics, which delivers the program, has lacked the resources to train enough volunteers. In contrast, Access Ministries has had no such trouble because of its ability to collect tax deductible donations. However, in April this year the federal government reversed its decision not to allow Primary Ethics to collect tax-deductible donations. This means the organisation will now have the funds to train the many volunteers who have registered their interest.

Some parents want ethics to become part of the Australian Curriculum instead of being an alternative to scripture classes. They'd like to see the classes themselves become a study of world religions, teaching the children tolerance and understanding of other cultures.

Let's hope that the importance of what's been achieved in NSW doesn't get lost in the debate. Disenchantment with politicians is at record levels; the media tell us to vote for the party that will put the most money in our pockets; multinational corporations are trampling over our democracy more flagrantly than ever. Teaching our children to come to reasoned, empathic, morally thoughtful positions is one way to produce citizens whose hearts and intellects are united, and who can understand the notion of a public good beyond their own narrow interests.

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Reluctant lover of Big Love

I wrote this blog entry while the third series of Big Love was still playing in Australia, and then got caught up with writing about diet and food intolerance, so it’s a bit out of date. But I couldn’t stand to hang onto for another year so have decided to give it an airing now.

I have a big but in some ways reluctant love for the HBO television series Big Love.

This long-running drama series centres on polygamist Bill Henrickson and his three wives, Barb, Nicki and Margene. The family live in three neighbouring houses in a suburb in Salt Lake City, Utah, with their numerous offspring.

Bill and his wives are renegade fundamentalist Mormons who have adopted polygamy because they believe that producing as many children as possible will increase their favour with their ‘heavenly father’ in the afterlife.

With a fifth series in the pipeline and seemingly as popular as ever, the show details the never-ending dramas as Bill tries to financially care for his large family while hiding his polygamy from the world. There are also the tensions cooked up at Juniper Creek, the rural compound housing an oppressive Mormon sect that Bill and Nicki grew up in and are still entangled with. Dynamics among the three wives, the criminality of Roman, the patriarch of Juniper Creek, and the endless obstacles to Bill’s business ambitions are complicating factors.

I watch the show for the drama, but find myself wanting the family to ‘make it’ and stay together because they obviously gain strength from the deep bonds they’ve developed (in plural marriages, it seems, the women are married to each other as well, but as sisters rather than lovers, which of course begs its own questions).

The show is honest in its portrayal of human dilemmas, including sexual dilemmas, while also being, in its own way, conservative. Each of the personal conflicts ultimately gets resolved, although they may continue for several episodes and even from one series to the next (although I can only speak for what I’ve seen so far, and I’ve just reached the end of the third series, whereas the fourth has recently been screened in the US, and seems to herald some changes). But the resolution always occurs because the character concerned decides for themselves that they are going to ‘behave’. They make a choice based on their feelings of love and of belonging to the family group.

And that’s why the show is ultimately a fantasy – the characters must always make this conservative decision for the series to continue. In real life such intelligent, complex characters might well end up separating and living their lives on new and broader canvases. Or, as many women in polygamous marriages must do, they might simply continue with the status quo even if they were basically unhappy. The relationship conflicts in Big Love give a nod to realism (even if the interiors are usually preternaturally clean and ordered, and even if Margene looks impossibly fresh-faced despite having three toddlers to look after) but the never-endingly peaceable resolutions don’t (again, this may have changed in the fourth series).

Not only that, but the show goes to great pains to portray Bill’s plural marriage as one that is relatively enlightened. We know that not all polygamous marriages are as equitable as Bill’s, and deeply inequitable and often criminally abusive marriages take place on the Juniper Creek compound, sometimes between elderly men and teenage girls. Some of the wives on the compound are portrayed as living restricted lives of deep unhappiness.

In contrast, the individuals in Bill’s plural marriage are always free to leave if they choose – the only catch is that staying involves accepting the ‘principle’, which means having as many children as possible. That’s part of the show’s cleverness – the members of this marriage are portrayed as ordinary people in a very challenging situation. This impression is reinforced by the back story, in which Bill and Barb, the first wife, originally had a conventional marriage before deciding to embark on polygamy in order to live the principle and keep reproducing. Also, it’s constantly emphasised that Bill is in love with each of his three wives.

The makers of this series have been ludicrously clever in their ability to pitch it to a range of audiences. Mormons are a tiny minority in the USA, making up only 1.7 per cent of the total population, and probably mostly object to the show; but Big Love is likely to appeal to a wide swathe of non-Mormons who are religious in some way. According to Wikipedia, in 2008, 76 per cent of Americans identified as Christian; Protestants made up 51.6 per cent of the population, that is, they were a majority of the country’s population. Meanwhile, 3.9 per cent were part of non-Christian religious communities; this figure included Muslims and Jews.

The members of Bill’s marriage make huge sacrifices to maintain their complex arrangement. I’d imagine that many conservative Christians, and perhaps even Muslims and Orthodox Jews, might enjoy watching the show to receive affirmation for the sacrifices they themselves make for their religion, such as abstaining from alcohol, not using contraception, or marrying young to avoid having sex before marriage.

But the show’s target market is wider than that. Women who watch this show may think ‘There but for the grace of God go I’. But some men may watch it because they like the fantasy of having three wives. That relates to what I think could be another reason for the show’s attractiveness. Given the in-between status of this family, sitting somewhere between the oppressive world of Juniper Creek and the uncomprehending secular world from which they must hide their illegal arrangement, their situation has glaring similarities with much more progressive forms of polyamory. Surely this would be part of the subliminal appeal of the series?

Genuine polyamory has to hide in the USA just as polygamy does. An interesting documentary shown on Australian television last year featured an arrangement between a man and two women living together, all of whom were in love with each other – in other words, there were three sexual relationships going on. One of the women was a lawyer and she had to hide the nature of her relationship in her workplace, just as do the characters in Big Love.

But the interdependence that characterises the adult family members (when they’re not warring with each other) also reminds me of the first share house I lived in, a communal arrangement in which we ate and shopped together, and had a food kitty and a cleaning roster.

Communal share houses can have polyamorous undertones (mine certainly did) but don’t rely on polyamory as a structure for the relationships of the members. They offer a different version of adulthood from the one that involves breaking away from one’s family of origin by living in an adult sexual relationship. Share houses allow a form of adult cooperation that helps young people to separate from the family, but also enables a great sense of autonomy and freedom for those not yet ready to form lasting ties (of course, share houses may also involve established couples, and the arrangement may give rise to new relationships). And yes, share houses are, like polyamory, difficult to get right.

I think there’s something similar between this kind of arrangement and the way the family in Big Love are housed: the family live in three adjoining houses but are always in and out of each other’s homes.

The share house model is very much evident in the way the show is marketed. The youngest wife, Margene, has a blog in which she talks frankly (ie bitches) about the goings-on in the family. (The comments from viewers that appear on this blog suggest that some at least have trouble distinguishing fiction from real life).

These echoes of the share house no doubt help to explain why the show also appeals to a lefty feminist like me. But I think it may be the very lack of political correctness that is the clincher. I enjoy the drama of the continuing conflicts, but can ultimately blame the Mormon lifestyle for causing the conflicts in the first place, thereby avoiding the need to feel guilty about the show’s political unsoundness. I get to have my self-righteous cake and eat it too.

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'God, the universe and everything': Part 3

In my last entry I looked at the reasons why I disagree with Richard Dawkins’ dismissal of the existence of some version of a non-scripture-based God that can co-exist alongside Darwinian evolution. In this entry I’ll talk further about my experiences, and detail my problems with Dawkins’ critique of the spiritual marketplace.

Introduction

Years ago, long after they had originally parted company, religion and science were able to exist quite comfortably side by side. Each more or less kept out of each other’s realm. Then Creationism began advancing like a cancerous growth, attacking science on its own territory. Scientists rightly felt that they could no longer simply defend their territory, but had to attack the very heart of the enemy, its truthfulness. Hence, Dawkins led the charge with his masterpiece of reasoned argument, The God Delusion.

Yet there were people who, while in favour of science, acknowledged a layer of experience that seemed to supplement the known material world. These people were willing to live with uncertainty about what that extra layer consisted of, given the limited scientific knowledge we currently have about how the material world actually works. Many of them retained from their religious upbringings the idea of a higher intelligence that was a force for good in the world, but, sometimes through studies of Eastern religions and practices, were able to experience this force rather than merely believe in it intellectually. When scientists began attacking the values of these people, and telling them their precious layer of experience was purely a product of their imaginations, they had gone too far, way beyond their authority and expertise.

Such scientists also failed to acknowledge that the demand by feminists and civil rights activists that doctors take account of human rights, agency and subjectivity had improved the practice of medicine, while their own protocols had also benefited from this demand.

Experiences of the spiritual in a 12-step program

One way in which I’ve experienced some kind of spiritual force at work is through membership of a 12-step program.

Most people will have heard of 12-step programs. They seek to help members beat various addictions by using the 12 steps originally created by Alcoholics Anonymous. Members supposedly gain freedom from addiction by undertaking various tasks and practices as they work through the steps.

Although 12-step programs aren’t religious, they are usually spiritual, as the second step indicates: ‘Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity’. The process of letting go control to harness a Higher Power is seen as a necessity for beating the addiction; the belief that willpower alone is not enough is an important aspect of this process. (Atheists can also benefit, as there is no restriction regarding what one’s Higher Power actually consists of – some believe it is a kind of higher self. And an atheist might view the letting go process as acceding to, say, the healing abilities of one’s unconscious mind.)

I was in a 12-step program for about six years. I don’t believe these programs are perfect, nor that they’re suitable for everybody – there are many aspects of my former program I’m now critical of, and perhaps I’ll detail them in a future blog entry. But for those who can ‘take what they want and leave the rest’ (as the programs themselves advise) they do provide a structure for developing a spirituality that is neither captive to the materialism and positive thinking of some of the new age spiritualities, or dependent on belief in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.

Many people in my program developed their spirituality very consciously; a few went on to join Christian churches while others embraced or flirted with Eastern religions. It was common for members who ‘shared’ (spoke to the meeting about their ‘experience strength and hope’ with the program) to relate some of their spiritual experiences.

As I said, my 12-step program was far from perfect. But the meeting I mainly attended was in the inner city, and there were plenty of creative types who, while they took the program seriously, didn’t get religious or overly hung up about it. They were trying to let go of ‘self-will’, which led them not only to a compulsion for the addictive substance but to behaving in ways that were generally harmful. Letting go of self-will meant, for these people, finding a kind of authentic path that was a mixture of their own deepest desires and the will of this Higher Self or Higher Power.

I know it sounds kooky, but for people who really grappled with it, this process seemed to result in an ever-increasing experience of their humanity. I saw men and women who’d never had relationships get married and have kids, I saw the career-focused get promotions, the work of the artistic types flourish, and throughout this the grappling and the letting go continued but the joy also increased. Of course I saw much failure and many setbacks as well (mine included) – I hope I’m not glossing this. And the program says you need to stay in it forever to avoid the addiction, but eventually many people seem to simply grow out of it.

Members of the program seemed to be helped along by some of these spiritual experiences I’ve been talking about, particularly synchronicity. One of them put it this way: ‘There are subtle energies …’ I think I know what she meant.

I wonder if, for some members, being sensitive to the feelings of others and the suffering of the world in general helped to fuel their addiction in the first place. I recently heard a writer on the radio referring to such people as ‘empaths’ – those with a surfeit of empathy with the world and a high degree of sensitivity to others. When you drop the addictive behaviour, you return once more to a sometimes painful openness to the world, and you have to learn to deal with it. You may then start to experience the kinds of uncanny connections that I discussed in the previous post.

I see the difference between spirituality and being religious this way: life is suffering, but it can also hold joy. Learning how to deal with the former and grappling with faults in order to reach more of one’s potential and experience more of the latter are worthwhile human projects. Some version of God and a spiritual ‘layer’ over everything is helpful for some people in this process.

What religion does, in contrast, is acknowledge that life is suffering and promise the seeker some kind of refuge from it. But in doing so, it imposes a whole extra layer of suffering by placing bans on perfectly normal human behaviour, mainly relating to sex and reproduction. It then offers the ‘carrot’ of salvation for bearing this extra burden of suffering. Meanwhile, the person’s original faults and difficulties are still not attended to, or not in a way that’s always helpful or realistic, and they will probably develop additional faults while trying to stick to the bans.

Dawkins debunks the spiritual

When the spiritual aspects of life are mixed up with making money, there is the capacity to mislead, and I can understand Dawkins getting angry about psychics and spiritual practitioners who do so. In his television series The Enemies of Reason, he sets out to mock and dismantle what he sees as outrageous claims of psychic abilities by self-styled mediums and mystics and of healing by alternative health practitioners. He believes that this sector has become popular because people have been dumbed down and have no idea of the important role of science and medicine in maintaining health and technological process. Yet he makes his point in a peculiarly disingenuous way.

Anyone with any interest in this topic would assume that, with the resources of a network at his disposal, Dawkins would go straight to the top, interviewing internationally successful mediums like Alison DuBois and John Edwards and paranormal researchers like Rupert Sheldrake and Gary Schwartz (Dawkins did interview Sheldrake at some point, but, according to the latter, dismissed his evidence without being willing to discuss it).

Instead, Dawkins is shown popping along to a psychic fair and choosing the first person he sees to give him a reading. The male ‘medium’ uses tarot cards to direct his intimations. He proceeds to state a number of propositions about dead relatives of Dawkins, none of which appear to be even remotely accurate.

It would be clear to an amoeba that the guy was giving what’s known as a cold reading – fishing about for information or presenting information so general it could apply to almost anyone. You didn’t have to be psychic or even particularly intelligent to work that out. Later in the program, Dawkins visits a whacky woman who waves her arms in the air and tells him she has healed his damaged DNA.

Of course, the point he’s making is that the selling of such ‘services’ is totally unregulated. And yes, much of it is a sham. Homeopathy is just water. Chinese medicine is a fascinating area worthy of exploration (it’s based on herbal medicine after all) but much of what is taught may not have kept up with medicine’s ever-increasing knowledge of bodily processes, and needs to be much more integrated with this knowledge.

Positive thinking, meanwhile, has been shown to be damaging. (However, more and more personal growth teachers seem to be ditching positive thinking and embracing mindfulness, while mainstream psychology is also embracing mindfulness as a treatment for anxiety, depression and chronic pain – a fascinating convergence of the alternative and mainstream.)

When people are making money out of this realm it’s quite proper to start asking questions. But fully qualified doctors aren’t pilloried because of the existence of quacks. More disturbingly, as a side issue, there seems to be an astonishing lack of regulation when it comes to conventional over-the-counter medicines. Many of them seem to provide the most superficial short term relief with dangerous side effects if taken in the long term; synthetic antihistamines, and nose drops containing cortisone, are just two examples. Yet Dawkins isn’t at all interested in the shortcomings of conventional medicine – shortcomings that are responsible for people seeking out alternatives in the first place.

When it comes to regulating mediums, the answer is simple: establish a registration process that is overseen by a peak body. The registration process would include completion of an accredited course that culminates in an exam. However, I can’t see Dawkins advocating something like this. If phenomena such as mediumship and psychic healing are in all cases a sham, then there is no point in regulating them – thus creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. The genuine seeker can’t win in Dawkins’ universe.

Sadly, in this television program, Dawkins makes the same mistake that he accuses the subjects of the program of making. While complaining about dumbing down, he dumbs down his own message, oversimplifying the issues that surround the spiritual marketplace and public attitudes towards science and the medical profession.

Some problems with Dawkins’ brand of scepticism

Something I find particularly annoying is the intellectual inconsistency of scientists working in this area. For example, scientists are constantly discovering neuroscientific explanations for formally inexplicable phenomena, even the grief-stricken receiving visitations from the dead. In such cases, when scientists think they can explain it as a product of the known universe, in many cases the brain, they will listen to and respect the truthfulness of such anecdotes. However, when they can’t, they will simply ridicule such evidence.

The Third Man phenomenon is a good example of this. A recently published book by John Geiger details this fascinating experience, which is now recognised by scientists. As mountain climbers toil up a slope in freezing storms, as lone sailors stare death in the face in raging seas, or single pilots lose sight of the horizon in the pure white of a snow storm, they often see and feel a calm, wise, loving presence close by them. Sometimes the presence is just there to offer a sense of reassurance, while in other instances it steers the ship or plane in a storm and holds course, sometimes almost miraculously.

This very common experience suggests that a kind of ‘higher self’ actually manifests as a separate entity in situations of extreme danger. The book includes many, largely consistent, examples of this ‘third man’ (the experiencers were usually men) feeling and seeing this loving, guiding presence.

Neuroscientists now believe that this phenomenon is purely a function of the brain, and that it’s a marvellous survival mechanism. If so, that raises the question of the kind of feats of knowledge the brain might be capable of. How does this presence know how to lead these adventurers out of danger? If it’s a hallucination, why is it always so reassuring and kind? I don’t dispute that the Third Man seems to be a kind of brain projection; but it certainly raises questions about the kinds of knowledge and guidance that the human brain has access to. Again, it confounds the dichotomy between the inside and the outside of the self.

In the case of the Third Man Factor, a large number of anecdotes were eventually treated as data by scientists. But what about the kind of anecdote in which the subject senses a loved one is going to be badly injured or die before they hear the bad news, or actually sees an apparition of a person they thought was alive, only to hear a few hours later that they’re dead; or has a disturbing, very emotional dream of the loved one’s death or injury?

This is an incredibly common experience, yet because there’s no way scientists can explain this experience in terms of existing knowledge about how the brain works, they simply dismiss it as coincidence: a certain percentage of people will think about a loved one on any particular day; a certain percentage of those loved ones will happen to die on that day. This response ignores the subjective power, the emotional quality, the sense of presence that characterise these experiences.

This is part of the cause of the problem that Dawkins’ television program, The Enemies of Reason, compounds – if we ridicule everyday experiences of the unknown, then those who experience the world in this way will simply turn away from science because it is not interested in their reality. They will turn to the world of the occult and the new age because this area seems to be willing to countenance a wider definition of what it actually means to be human.

There’s one more thing I need to say about this before the end of the post. Of all the abilities that rationalists like Dawkins dispute, the one that surprises me most is telepathy.

Non-human mammals can communicate using noise but they can’t express ideas in words like humans can, nor do they have the technology to communicate when they’re a long way away from other members of their clan or pack. It seems that some kind of basic telepathy within a clan or pack would be incredibly useful for evolutionary purposes. One of Sheldrake’s areas of research interest is the seeming ability of some domestic cats and dogs to know when their owners are on the phone or about to come home (excluding other factors, such as routine, that might alert them).

It would seem logical, too, that if humans had once had this capacity they would quickly lose touch with it once the written word, and later communications technology, could do the job so much better.

Anyway, these three blog entries have detailed some of my thoughts on a huge topic and I’m quite happy for readers to disagree with anything I’ve said. Most importantly I now have Richard Dawkins out of my system – for the time being!

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'God, the universe and everything': part 2

In my last entry I looked at Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, a stunningly effective attack on the evils of organised religion. In this post I’ll try to explain why I disagree with Dawkins’s accompanying dismissal of the existence of some version of God.

(I'm a bit worried about revealing my views on spirituality as blatantly as I do in this entry -- I'm concerned that some readers will judge those views as, well, very nutty! So be it. I welcome comments, although I'm having a bit of trouble with comments being only partly legible at the moment, and am trying to sort this out. )

As outlined in my last post, I share many of Dawkins’s concerns about religion, and, given the rise of the Religious Right and creationism, I have a huge amount of sympathy with his fears for the future of Enlightenment thinking.

What I don’t agree with is his complete dismissal of a non-denominational belief in some kind of divine intelligence, or at least a spirituality that can encompass human capabilities that scientists are yet to explain.

The central problem with Dawkins’s stance is that he mishandles the very thing that is most oppressed, enslaved and exploited by religion – humanity’s capacity for spirituality. Dawkins ends up doing exactly the same injustice to spirituality as religion does. (Admittedly, the same accusation can’t be levelled at all atheists.)

In this regard, the devil is in the detail, so to speak.

The God of Dawkins

Part of the problem with Dawkins’s broad approach is that the God he grapples with is always, within human culture, first and foremost a set of conflicting concepts rather than a being. Whether or not you believe in a divine intelligence that’s exterior to the human brain, an invocation of God can enable access to one’s most altruistic, positive aspects; it could also be an incitement to feel hatred and do evil. Even prior to the question of his or her independent existence, the God Dawkins seeks to pin down is a moving target.

Nevertheless, Dawkins makes very clear from the get-go the kind of God he is disputing:

An atheist …is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to … embrace it within the natural. (p. 14)

Elsewhere, Dawkins defines the God he is critiquing as ‘a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us’ (p 31).

Dawkins bases his non-belief in this kind of God on probability theory. He asserts that, although we can’t actually prove that there is no God at this point (and an extremely unlikely proposition shouldn’t have to be proven anyway), we can be almost certain there isn’t.

I don’t argue with Dawkins’s insistence that it’s absurd to have an abstract belief in God without any evidence. But personal experience, for the average person, does itself constitute a kind of evidence.

So it’s tempting for me to pore over the above quotes like a progressive biblical scholar trying to give a challenging scriptural passage the interpretation that favours my view of the world, and try to find an opening for a belief in a layer of spiritual experience that could perhaps encompass some notion of God. That’s not impossible to do: the qualification ‘except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand’ seems to leave the way open for scientists to validate everyday ‘spiritual’ experiences that are yet imperfectly understood.

Further, Dawkins does not dismiss transcendental experience, only what he sees as the false premises it is often based on. He wants readers to discover an awe and excitement in the universe that science is revealing to us. He describes his unending wonder at this universe and nature in general as ‘a quasi-mystical response’ that is ‘common among scientists and rationalists’ (p 11). He believes that humans can feel a transformative wonder simply by observing the accidental beauty of the world.

So perhaps Dawkins is, after all, cautiously open to the idea that humans may possess spiritual capabilities yet to be discovered by science? Perhaps he can validate the aspects of lived experience that materialists so often dismiss? Perhaps we’re simply talking about a different level of materialism?

Unfortunately, Dawkins soon puts the lid on this possibility. Of personal experience as an argument for belief, he’s disappointingly cliched and reductionist. Think you hear an inner guiding voice? Check into the nearest psychiatric facility.

Dawkins sees no difference between a religious delusion (Bush thinking the Old Testament God is telling him to bomb Iraq) and the painstaking task of uncovering and starting to listen to one’s innate inner guidance. (Is a strong inner force pushing you away from a particular job, relationship or trip, despite the urgings of your rational mind or the insistence of a loved one? Better ignore it.) It’s no surprise that ‘spirituality’, ‘non-denominational spirituality’ and ‘near-death experiences’ aren’t included in the book’s substantial index.

These are bleak alternatives indeed: a purely materialistic universe that abhors any aspect of human experience that cannot yet be explained by science; or a rigid, judgemental god who hates the erotic urges of the human body. In both cases, some aspect of the human is being repudiated. Although I disagree with those critics who accuse Dawkins of being religious about atheism, I can’t help seeing a connection between the different ways that both science and religion deny aspects of human experience. In both cases, they are telling us we can’t trust ourselves.

Evidence for God?

Given that there’s so much still to discover about the material world, it seems an odd time to be totally dismissing some version of God, and particular human capabilities often associated with such a belief. How can we, at this early stage of our knowledge, claim that we know enough to dismiss a dimension of the body and the mind that is only termed ‘spiritual’ because we haven’t yet pinpointed how it operates?

New findings in physics continue to upend accepted ideas about how the world works. We now know that energy and matter are interchangeable – scientists can turn energy into matter and the other way round. Furthermore, some kinds of subatomic particles that have once been linked together continue to act as if they are still linked, even when they’re separated; this is one of the mysteries of quantum mechanics. It’s a mainstream scientific fact, but it raises many basic questions about how legitimate it is to assume that, in the absence of technology, communication can only take place between living creatures if they’re in actual physical proximity to each other.

Physics also shows us that the very idea of objectivity is flawed. A number of experiments have demonstrated that particles behave differently depending on how they are being observed. In other words, subjectivity is built into the operations of matter on a quantum level (this is not to denigrate scientific attempts at objectivity).

Since the nineteenth century, parapsychologists have been investigating layers of experience that appear to defy scientific understandings of the material world. These researchers seek to ‘investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method'.

What they are investigating are the scientifically inexplicable experiences of hundreds of thousands of people throughout human history. These include telepathy, premonitions, serendipity, apparitions and intuition. These experiences and skills don’t actually require a belief in a supreme being, but they’re often associated with a non-denominational version of God, and placed under the umbrella term ‘spiritual’. The consensus in most scientific circles is that they are either a load of hogwash, or emanate purely from the brain.

I think that the way these experiences are represented in the media is part of the problem. For example, in popular culture telepathy is as an ability of some superheroes. (Ironically, some prominent sceptics mistakenly use telepathy as an explanation for the power of mediums – they find it a more ‘rational’ explanation than communication with the dead.) Meanwhile, the US army has received funding to develop a kind of synthetic telepathy, although it’s quite different in kind from the one I’m talking about.

Unlike popular culture representations, my experiences of the 'uncanny' are always very subtle and always tied up with relationships. For example, I only experience some version of telepathy once in a blue moon, and with someone I’m connected to in some way; it’s not that I’m constantly picking up on other people’s thoughts. Similarly, the only premonitions I've had are very occasional strong images of some emotional or physical state being experienced by someone I’m close to; feeling inexplicably sad before receiving very bad news; or having a strong sense that a particular outcome that a friend was hoping for wasn't going to happen -- all very subjective, of course.

For me these experiences are short flashes; I don’t at all see myself as particularly psychically gifted. This presents a central problem for science: none of my experiences would be remotely testable in a laboratory.

Intuition, similarly, is an inner guiding force that I’d be lost without. It was there all the time, but I’ve had to gradually uncover it and to some extent I’ve learned to trust it. Usually it’s a feeling or intimation within, but seems to come from a deeper place than everyday emotions. I’ve learned through painful experience to follow my intuition – and I would like to think that I’d do so without hesitation if I was about to walk down the ‘wrong’ dark street, catch the ‘wrong’ plane etc.

For most people, the experiences I’ve described are never going to constitute a gift that they can make a living out of. They’re simply a utilisation of part of the brain that was ignored or closed down in the past, often simply through a conventional upbringing and education.

However, scientists like Dawkins ignore the fact that an openness to non-rational aspects of the world is not always voluntary, but may be a byproduct of an adverse event like an addiction or even a near-death experience. When we discover new aspects of ourselves we encounter the world in ways that are sometimes deeply uncomfortable.

When Dawkins tries to tell me that these experiences are bulldust, it’s a bit like him telling me that he can't see, and therefore the belief that I can is simply an illusion; and that he won't rest until I’m walking around with my eyes closed, bumping into things that I would otherwise see coming and be able to avoid.

Certainly science needs to avoid strenuously a belief in ‘common sense’; but that’s quite different from dismissing the lived experiences of millions of people – in fact, common sense might be the unacknowledged basis of the excessive scepticism of some scientists in this area.

Parapsychologists are not the only scientists who swim against the tide. A minority of scientists in a variety of fields have rebelled against a scientific establishment made up of what they call ‘pseudosceptics’ rather than the open-minded sceptic that a true scientist needs to be. These maverick scientists claim that, in debunking any human capability that threatens their worldview, such as telepathy, pseudosceptics fall back on grossly inadequate evidence and faulty logic.

Rupert Sheldrake, for example, has developed a theory of morphogenetic fields and of morphic fields to explain respectively the growth of plants and animals, and mental abilities like telepathy (interestingly, his theory does not rely on, and appears to be uninterested in, a belief in God).

Further evidence – near death experiences

Of course, the weirdness of physics and unexplained psychic experiences isn’t in itself evidence of God. However, evidence for the existence of some kind of non-denominational higher intelligence can be found in the extensive field of near-death studies, which is a subject of interest not only to neuroscience but also to sociology, psychology and philosophy as well as theology.

One of the most common experiences in a typical near-death experience (NDE) is an encounter with an energy that seems to radiate infinite love, security and compassion on a scale not experienced in normal life and not easily described. Neuroscientists have been quick to offer brain-related explanations for this experience, in particular the ‘dying brain hypothesis’ developed by Susan Blackmore and others, which suggests that hallucinations occur at the time of death.

However, a huge array of anecdotal evidence, including reports of NDEs resulting from car accidents, suggests that some experiencers are able to witness the events that take place immediately after their supposed deaths. Also, many subjects come away from such experiences profoundly emotionally and spiritually changed and with a more accepting, loving and grateful approach to life – a transformation that would seem beyond the ability of a mere hallucination to produce. Many of those who experience NDEs were not interested in spirituality beforehand; yet some seem to have emerged with healing or psychic abilities they did not have previously.

But a belief in God shouldn’t rely solely on abstract evidence. Either you experience a sense of something larger, something both in and outside of yourself, or you don’t. The evidence above would hardly impress Dawkins, but it merely confirms something I’ve experienced. Like Dawkins I abhor the idea of ‘faith’, because it asks people to suspend their thinking abilities and also leaves them open to manipulation. If you haven’t experienced a sense of a force for good, then there is no reason for you to develop a cognitive belief in such a force.

In my next entry I’ll talk about my experience of this force for good. I’ll also return to Dawkins and a more detailed attempt that he’s made to debunk the spiritual.

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'God, the universe and everything': My take on Dawkins, the God Delusion, and 12-step spirituality

Ever since I started my blog I’ve been champing at the bit to write a partial rebuttal of many of the ideas of Richard Dawkins, biologist, television presenter, writer of (among other books) The God Delusion and passionate crusader for atheism. A recent blog entry at What The Hell is This? (see link on right) has spurred me on, as well as the twin aim of writing something of my experiences in a 12-step program. So here goes.

This is turning out to be by far my longest rant ever, so I’m dividing it up into three blog entries.

Dawkins mounts his challenge

In The God Delusion, Dawkins throws down the gauntlet at the God industry on both sides of the Atlantic. He argues passionately that religion – whether the fundamentalism of the Taliban or moderate versions of traditional religions – threatens our civilisation by causing widespread death and human rights abuses and by attacking the science teachings that have produced so much medical and technological progress. He contends that it’s behind many of the most evil acts and movements in history, and presents atheism as the only rational alternative.

Now, I have much sympathy for aspects of Dawkins’s project and I can understand the sense of urgency, indeed of being embattled, that led to the writing of this self-styled polemic. For example, a little-discussed aspect of The God Delusion is its references to the oppression of atheists and atheism in the USA; in one US town, police who were themselves religious refused to protect from violence peacefully demonstrating atheists, and there are documented cases of atheists being victims of ‘harassment, loss of jobs, shunning by family and even murder’ (p. 45).

Similarly, the rise of creationism and its offshoot, so-called intelligent design, is a social, technological, environmental and economic disaster in the making. As Billy Connolly put it recently on the television show Shrink Rap, Sarah Palin, if voted in as the USA’s vice-president, could have become president and therefore the most powerful person in the world – and she believes that the Earth is 4000 years old. That's scary!

Creationism seems to act a bit like a virus – it’s not just the province of evangelicals but is being spruiked by conservative elements of existing religions like Catholicism. (Although the Catholic position is an increasingly firm support of evolution, it doesn’t appear to be church dogma; Catholics are free to believe in creationism, and there are a number of Catholic groups that advocate it.)

Dawkins doesn’t confine his ire to religious fundamentalism – quite the opposite. He believes that moderate religion paves the way for fundamentalism because it’s based on the central concept of faith; and that this concept is seized on by the fundamentalist mindset and taken to its illogical conclusion in the case of terrorist bombings, or opposition to ‘victimless crimes’ like homosexuality.

Although I have sympathy for this argument, Dawkins seems to suggest that fundamentalists, who go all the way with even the most bizarre scriptural pronouncements, and who in extreme cases are willing to kill for their cause, are intellectually more consistent than religious moderates who would support his pro-science stance. And he's often criticised for this by those very moderates, who are as pro-Darwin as he is.

Religion – creating hell on earth?

In The God Delusion, Dawkins mounts a nuanced argument about the links between human evil and religion. He acknowledges that evil occurs in all societies independently of religion, but provides telling examples of the ways in which religion either worsens existing tensions between separate groups, or fosters the separate identities of otherwise similar groups. It does this through labelling children from an early age (eg ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’) and discouraging marriage between the groups.

The results, whether it's the death of more than 1 million Hindus and Muslims during the partition of India, the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust or the cruel kidnapping of a Jewish child in nineteenth century Italy simply because he’d been baptised as a Catholic by the child’s 14-year-old nanny, are chilling indeed.

One of the reasons for the continuing power of religion, despite such horrors, is the spurious respect with which religious sensibilities are treated. But the tenor of such sensibilities can be nothing short of murderous. It’s evident that particular kinds of religious thinking encourage and justify evil attitudes and acts against outsiders – Catholicism, Islam and Judaism have all spawned terrorists.

In one study quoted in the book, 66 per cent of Jewish children between the ages of 8 and 14 thought that the biblical Joshua and the Israelites had acted righteously when they sacked Jericho and massacred its inhabitants. However, when the children were asked to give their opinion on similar actions carried out by a mythical non-Jewish figure, 75 per cent disapproved.

Elsewhere, Dawkins argues that there’s a remarkable degree of consensus among different racial groups on basic moral precepts, and that this is totally independent of religion. The study described above suggests that, rather than being a moral force, religion can actually destroy this consensus and give tacit permission to morally repugnant actions.

But religious absolutism means that ‘insiders’ – members of a religion, not always voluntarily – are also vulnerable to harsh religious laws that demand severe penalties if breached.

This is particularly so in the case of women. Dawkins shows an admirable recognition of the horrors that patriarchal religion has foisted on women’s bodies, minds and hearts, mainly in the case of fundamentalist versions. These include publicly sanctioned rape (ie forcing marriage on underage girls); forcing them into early childbirth; withholding education from them; severe punishment and death for offences against ‘modesty’; honour killings and mutilations.

I’d also add that a religion (ie Catholicism) that says a young person with a vagina can never aspire to be a priest is committing religious abuse; and the culpability of the Catholic church in helping the spread of AIDS, STDs and unwanted pregnancies by preaching against the use of condoms doesn’t need to be reiterated here.

Religion isn't wholly responsible for the misogyny practised in its name. But patriarchy is self-perpetuating, and religion provides a convenient excuse for barbaric practices that keep women powerless.

For example, society long ago left the churches far behind on the matter of social change. Equality in the workplace is still a long way off in Australia, but at least equal opportunity is on the statute books. Yet it's absolutely fine for the Catholic church to openly discriminate against women, and for the Anglican church to tear itself in two over the issue of female clergy, because these trends supposedly have nothing to do with deep, unacknowledged sexism: they're about sensitive religious beliefs and feelings, which must be respected at all costs.

Like Dawkins, I believe that religious dogma has inherent psychic dangers for both sexes. Religion fosters emotional and intellectual retardation – an authoritative, all-protecting god demands a childlike position and a willingness to obey authority without question (I can still see this operating in my father's sometimes excessive piety).

It can lead to mental suffering and illness associated with excessive guilt, while ‘moral’ positions derived from the Bible can encourage people to judge others harshly. The religious right gives its members permission to project their unwanted qualities and desires onto others, a recipe for hatred of and discrimination against the other – thus, instead of spending their energies assisting the poor, some so-called Christians fight to overturn laws that allow gay people to marry.

Religious abuse of children

What I find most offensive, and I agree with Dawkins wholeheartedly on this, is society’s tolerance of children being forced into a particular religion from birth.

Sexual abuse of both males and females is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s arguable that every child indoctrinated into a religious faith suffers a form of religious abuse, however welcoming and loving the religious community.

For example, supposedly ‘mainstream’, sometimes government-funded Catholic schools in Western countries are telling their pupils that 2,000-odd years ago a virgin gave birth to a baby who was actually the supreme being; that when he grew up, he was cruelly killed to pay for the sins of those very children; and that he miraculously rose from the dead three days later. And the fear that they will burn in hell, alone and far from family and friends, causes very real suffering for minds too young to know the difference between myth and reality.

The extent to which more serious religious abuse of children is tolerated in the USA is nothing short of tragic. This includes some evangelicals leaving extremely ill children untreated and sometimes in great pain for days and weeks while relying on ‘faith healers’, or sending them to camps where they are brainwashed to support far-right religious Republicanism.

Australians shouldn’t feel too complacent: this country has no constitutional separation between church and state, which means that taxpayer dollars are freely spent on funding religious schools; some of these schools teach creationism, and it’s perfectly legal for them to do so.

Meanwhile, in Queensland, bible instruction is now being provided at non-government schools in ways that appear to contravene the Queensland Education Act. As well, the National School Chaplaincy Program provides federal funding for chaplains in government schools – schools that could well be in need of social or welfare workers, not to mention teachers or infrastructure – and funding for this program has been extended by prime minister Kevin Rudd.

The securities of religion

Despite all this, I don’t share Dawkins’s optimistic belief that it’s possible to eradicate religion.

For one thing, some people will always want to be spiritual within a community, to ‘worship’ in a group of fellow ‘believers’. Others will turn to structured religion for security in an increasingly insecure world, or simply because they want an outside authority to direct their lives.

Creating an ‘out’ group, as religion does (even if it’s just the secular world with its many temptations), strengthens bonds within the group. I’ve seen this up close, both in what I’ve heard about the early lives of my Catholic dad’s family of origin, and what I’ve seen of the close relationships of some overseas cousins of mine who follow a fairly fundamentalist version of Catholicism.

In the case of my cousins, their common passion for the dogma and rituals of the church helps to keep the family together. Similarly, in a recent television series that satirically explored his guilt about wanting to marry outside the Jewish community, comedian John Safran demonstrated his love of the Melbourne Jewish community and its often endearing quirkiness, even as he exposed the exclusivity of some of its members; at one point one of his best friends tells Safran that if he married a non-Jew, he’d feel compelled to boycott the wedding!

But there’s something else. Like it or not, religious rituals can provide a way to access a spirituality that is experienced through pathways in the brain. I wonder if, when repeated often enough, rituals can act like signals to the brain that activate these spiritual pathways.

I am guessing here, but that’s why I imagine Muslims find it so important to pray five times a day in designated prayer rooms; the rituals they enact and the words they recite during prayer may amount to a kind of moving meditation. Perhaps, rather than invoking Allah, they are accessing a force inside themselves that is beyond religion. The same applies to any kind of religious worship, although Western religions are generally poor at bringing the body into it. Perhaps this is one reason why evangelicals are popular: believers in these churches are free to dance, sway, and even throw themselves on the ground.

One of my sisters, recently qualified as a primary teacher but never particularly religious, used her background to get a job in a Catholic school. She remarked that the children were calmer, the general atmosphere more peaceful, than in the government schools she’d taught at. This Catholic school wasn’t in a wealthy area and would have included disadvantaged kids. One reason for the calmness might have been the religious prayers and rituals the children spoke and enacted.

For historical reasons I don’t think that in Australia an end to funding for religious schools is electorally possible. Instead, it should be impossible to actually join a religion until you’re 18, just as you can’t vote until then. Religious schools could still exist, but should be permitted to teach their students only the broadly ethical, spiritual aspects of the religion, not the dogma or so-called ‘morality’; nor should they be permitted to put down other religions or spiritualities. Once they turned 18, young adults could be free to join any religion they chose; this would be a perfect time for them to study the dogma and decide for themselves.

So Dawkins is totally justified in his attack on religion, but I'm much less sure about his dismissal of God -- in my next entry I’ll look at why.

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