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Another boring backlash against the godless
Among the books I’m reading — I need another lifetime to read the books I want to, preferably one running concurrently with this one — is an intellectual biography of one of the most surpassingly influential men in US history.
Who is it? Let’s see if you can guess. I’ll list a few salient facts about the guy.
• He was a scientist and social theorist and writer, and achieved remarkable accomplishments in all three fields.
• One of the largest natural features on the planet, equalling the Amazon Basin in size, is named for him.
• So is a 300-mile-long river in the United States, a bay, three counties, two mountain ranges, and numerous towns.
• And a “sea” on the Moon.
• He was gay, and more or less out about it.
• He spoke out against slavery, and his ethnological writing and research was held up by the Abolitionist movement as proving that all humans are essentially equal.
Let’s see a show of hands for those who’ve guessed who he is.
OK, let’s not always see the same hands. Someone other than Rana and Jennifer?
No?
OK: more hints.
• He conceived and established the first wide-range weather monitoring system.
• He proved conclusively that igneous rocks were formed by cooling of molten rock.
• Thomas Jefferson consulted him regarding potential mineral resources in the western Spanish territories.
• It is likely that he played a key role in Thoreau’s falling away from Transcendentalism.
• He laid the groundwork for C. Hart Merriam’s well-known “life zones” concept.
• Edgar Allen Poe dedicated a prose poem to him in gratitude for the inspiration Poe derived from his work.
• Washington Irving and George Catlin claimed his work inspired theirs as well.
• He discovered that the earth’s magnetic field is stronger near the poles.
• He was a close personal friend of Simón Bolívar, Liberator of South America, and visited Italy with him.
• Charles Darwin referred to his work numerous times in The Voyage of the Beagle. Geologist Louis Agassiz also counted him a major inspiration, despite being a major opponent of the theory of evolution.
Give up?
Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt was a Prussian nobleman, genius polymath, progressive anti-racist speaker, and the namesake of the Humboldt River, which runs for 300 miles across northern Nevada, the Great Basin’s largest river, and a pair of mountain ranges nearby, the East and West Humboldt Mountains. There’s a national forest in Peru named for him, and a broad grassy Olmsted-designed parkway leading to the Buffalo Museum of Science, which parkway, I am given to understand, was lovely before the city planners put a freeway on it. There’s Humboldt County in California, and its namesake State University and variety of marijuana — which might have pleased Humboldt the botanist greatly, even if he didn’t inhale. There’s also the Humboldt Current, which stretches from northern Peru to southern Chile and as much as 1,000 kilometers west into the Pacific, and which is the major geographic feature of which I spoke above.
Humboldt was a passionate advocate of science, a defender of cultural diversity, and a sharp critic of the worst (and the most banal) aspects of European culture. He included the US wthin the clade “European culture,” as made sense especially in the early 18th century, but as a Jeffersonian agrarian libertarian he hoped that the US would evolve within its borders a renaissance of free thought, inquiry, art and science. He did, however, fear that the iniquity of slavery and the US’s increasingly heinous treatment of indigenous people, as well as the mercantilistic demands of emerging capital, would likely derail his vision — shared by not a few of his contemporaries — of the US’s becoming a liberated, culturally diverse federation of pastoral communities and urbane cities, encompassing people of native, European and African ancestry alike.
And, we all know how well that turned out. Arguably, some of the indigenous North Americans of the 19th century might have lifted an eyebrow if, say, the Lakota had been cordially invited to petition for statehood. “We’re from the government and we’re here to help you!” Still, I’m thinking it would have been a better course than shooting everyone.
Alternative visions of the North American future abound in 18th century letters, and I’ll definitely have to write about them at some point soon, though I do risk embarrassing myself in writing about cooperative economies in the Western territories seeing as there are actual Mormons who read this blog. But I’ll have more to say about that when I finish reading the book.
Oh yeah, the book! The book is The Humboldt Current
But one thing I’ve learned about Humboldt has stuck especially in my mind this week. Humboldt was an agnostic. He was a bit of a sharp-tongued critic of Christianity as practiced by the official churches of his day. From page 58 of the book:
As Humboldt hinted with regard to the young Spaniard’s last rites, Western traditions bore the seeds of a connective unity, but they had become corrupted during Europe’s long period of expansion. “The Christian religion, which in its origin was highly favorable to the liberty of mankind, served afterwards as a pretext to the cupidity of Europeans,” he explained, noting the proximity of missions and slave markets in every part of America to which he traveled.
In place of religion, Humboldt held faith in connectedness; faith in the ability of the human intellect to discern the workings of the world as a global set of complex systems, and faith in the ability of the human heart to appreciate the sublime and grandiloquently pleasant terror of it all. Which sounds good to me.
More backlash against atheists rages in some quarters of the blog world, this time kicked off by a relatively tame statement by noted atheist Richard Dawkins. I always appreciate reading what people like PZ have to say about such things, and Michael’s penultimate post is an especially lovely addition to this latest go-round.
But you know what? Despite the existence of talented and engaging writers taking heartfelt stands, and despite my fervent belief that atheists are granted only a second-class sort of religious freedom in the US, which amounts to “we won’t force you to go to church as long as you shut up,” I have a confession to make.
This whole “dispute” between atheists and people who believe there’s a supreme being? Booo-rrring.
I’m not an atheist. Or at least I don’t think of myself as one. I don’t believe in a supreme being, with the possible exception of Coyote, and I’m never sure whether I’m kidding about believing in Coyote, as is of course appropriate. Neither God nor Zeus nor Allah nor Satan nor L. Ron Hubbard, no personified Gaia, no invisible purple unicorns. I don’t believe in any of them.
But to me, the word “atheist” has a certain connotation that I do not wish to apply to myself. (I recognize that readers may disagree here, and hell, I am arguing semantics. Feel free to dicker in comments.) To me, the word “atheist” implies that the person so labeling thinks the designation is important. “Agnostic” implies to me that the person being labeled cares enough to have reserved judgement for some later date.
As for me, I do not think that the question “is there a god?” is in any way an important question.
Really. If the existence, or nonexistence, of your preferred supreme being were proven to you beyond a shadow of a doubt, how would it affect your life? If you as a Christian learned that the Jehovah of your childhood was truly a myth, would you go on a killing spree? If you as an atheist found out that Pascal nailed you on a sucker bet, would you suddenly be a nicer person?
On a side note, any supreme being who’d accept devotion based on as flimsy a rationale as Pascal’s Wager has got really low standards. “I’ll believe in you to be on the safe side in case you exist?” That’s not religious belief, that’s covering your ass. If God buys that, heaven’s a Dilbert cartoon, and no way am I singing eternal posthumous hosannas to a Pointy-Haired God.
Really though. I have a moral sense, and it is bound up in earthly phenomena such as empathy and experience of suffering, and the existence or not of God is wholly irrelevant to it. Discovering incontrovertible evidence of God would be, to me, like discovering 1940s-era Nazi secret rocket mission relics from an abandoned base on the far side of the moon: potentially fascinating, and affecting my life not one whit.
Finding out that a man died 150 years ago who blended scientific method with aesthetics and a fine sense of justice: utterly relevant to the core of my life.
Two hundred years ago Humboldt was traveling in South America, the first western scientist to make a formal attempt to describe that continent. His was science as it should be: he listened to indigenous botanists and agronomists and geographers, people who many scientists of his day — and ours — would never dignify with the terms. He pled for the preservation of native languages, each of them a library of knowledge of place, a staggering number of them now lost. He looked for connections among disparate places and phenomena. He strove to synthesize, and felt the best way to perpetuate this more benign form of discovery was to appeal to the aesthetic sense of budding scientists. Few now know he existed and yet his influence on modern life is immeasurable: the opposite of God as described by those who carry pitchforks.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Some further discussion of Humboldt can be found in this Radio 4 programme: In Our Time. Hope there’s something in there you haven’t/won’t get from the book!
By: By Ian on 2007 01 09
I’m definitely in tune with your feelings about the “atheist” label, although I generally accept it out of laziness. I’ve thought of it this way; someone professes a belief that the moon is, after all, made of cheese, and they demand that people announce themselves as cheesers or non-cheesers. It’s somewhat, um, confining.
Anyway, a commenter at Majikthize once informed me of the correct technical term for the (non) position you take, but I’ve forgotten it. My own preference is Smiteworthy Godless Heathen.
By: By Rob G on 2007 01 09
I can’t really agree with the bit on how knowledge that God existed wouldn’t change behavior. If I were convincingly threatened with extended (or eternal) torture if I didn’t believe, then sure, I’d do my best to believe and act accordingly. That’s why the religions that involve some version of Pascal’s wager are evil, and characterizing oneself as atheist or agnostic is a worthwhile public gesture against social evil.
At which point people often bring up Buddhism, or Coyote, or any one of a number of other belief structures that First World atheists or agnostics carelessly reject. Well, those aren’t the religions oppressing us, so I don’t see why it’s important to be clear. It’s like demanding that the street protestor being carried off by the police not yell something without qualifying it with a careful explanation that perhaps not all police share the same problems.
The counterargument is that religious oppression in the First World is really not a big deal; no one is being carried off. Sure, that’s a defensible position. I think that it’s dependent on not seeing what’s gone missing, though.
By: By Rich Puchalsky on 2007 01 09
Alas, your respect for me outstripped my knowledge - I’d never heard of Humboldt before this. Thanks for telling us more about him!
I sort of waffle about the agnostic label, because I do have a difficult-to-describe gut level feeling (instinct?) that there is something out there connecting everything together, that there is something sacred about worms and orangutans and dung beetles and crows… but I’m hesitant to call it “god” because my gut also wants to tell me that I can affect traffic lights with my mind, my gut feelings aren’t necessarily Truths, and it would be impolite to impose my instinctual gropings on others.
Yet I can’t discount that feeling. It’s about as “real” as anything else intangible I feel.
By: By Rana on 2007 01 09
Oh, damn. Now I have to spend MORE money on books.
Maybe I can find it in the library.
This whole “dispute� between atheists and people who believe there’s a supreme being? Booo-rrring.
I agree absolutely. HOWEVER, the supreme-being-believers, as they are at present in the U.S., scare the holy shit out of me.
Imagine scientists and free thinkers as brick masons, building up a world of freedom and civility. The “supremers� are the un-masons, the eager breakers and takers of that world. They’re out there with their picks and sledgehammers, avidly whacking away at education, at government, at science, at medicine, at Reason itself.
Civilization as it is falls too far short of my ideal world of freedom and civility ... and vastly short of a generous understanding of the independent value of the natural world. But the supremers have been largely friends of that failure, rather than its enemy.
Scratch a devout godder and you just may find someone who doesn’t even understand the dangers of overfishing, or pollution, or of running dirt bikes over cryptobiotic desert soil, because (as a member of my own family once said) “God can fix all that in two seconds.�
Postulate active and self-admitted enemies of science, in the form of creationism advocates, or of education, in the form of shills for “intelligent design,� or of medicine, in the form of opponents of stem cell research (or blood tranfusions), or of the environment, in the form of millennialists who think the end of the world is near, so screw it.
If those guys are theists, it’s just one more reason I’m definitely an A-theist.
By: By Hank Fox on 2007 01 09
Wonderful post/essay. Thank you.
By: By leigh on 2007 01 09
I lived in an apartment on Humboldt Avenue in Minneapolis more than 20 years ago. I had heard of Humboldt, in a vague way, but had no understanding of how important he was/is. As Hank Fox says, yet another book to buy.
A commenter to the post on Michael’s blog to which you refer captures all too tellingly the Christianist mindset. In one swell foop he mixes in arrogance, undeserved moral superiority, poor reasoning, and gratuitous personal insults.
I agree with, and really like, the connotation of the word “atheist” which you identify. Some of the atheists I’ve encountered proselytize nearly as aggressively as the Christianists.
By: By Charles on 2007 01 09
You might not consider it a viable career choice, but you write a remarkably compelling sales pitch for a personality and the book that tells his story—when I get a book written, I am sending you a review copy, a check, and a reminder of the considerable size of my blog crush on you.
By: By Hugo Schwyzer on 2007 01 09
that sounds like a terrific book. what an amazing person! i wonder where the idea of having and pursuing multiple interests got lost? we tend to put labels on people, on ourselves, and let the other interests rot away or go unrecognized. since life and the universe are gloriously complex, it is liberating and more accurate to look at the connections between formal disciplines, the unique combination of things that make us tick as individuals.
about god—i went with agnostic for a while after deciding i couldn’t believe in a god, because i knew for sure that i had a moral sense of how to relate to people, animals, and the world around me. not a perfect moral sense, and one that was clearly informed by all those years of church and a religious school, but it was independent of the belief/faith thing. i could be a good human without taking communion!
since my moral sense was independent, though, i started feeling dishonest saying i was agnostic—i only called myself that so that religious people wouldn’t hate me. there are a lot of decent, honest, caring, and smart religious people around, ones who don’t particularly fear for my immortal soul, folks who think everyone should decide for themselves what is important and what they believe.
the ones who do worry about my alleged afterlife are people who don’t know me, and feel annointed to decide what is good or bad for me and everyone else. i think this is a small, rich [maybe not individually, but as a set], loudmouthed set of people, and not representative of religious people overall, much less the populace as a whole.
they are the trolls of political life—we should stop feeding them. our government especially should stop with idiotic concessions to their ill-founded, pathetically small beliefs. the grand canyon is 6,00 years old? ID is science? a vaccine against cervical cancer will convince 13 year old girls to have sex? bah.
By: By kathy a on 2007 01 09
As for me, I do not think that the question “is there a god?� is in any way an important question.
This is exactly my position as well. If pressed I call myself an ‘anti-theist’ in that I regard the very question as irrelevant.
One of the few collectable treasures in my library is a three volume first edition of Humboldt’s jourrnals from his Central American explorations. With his maps included. A gem.
By: By handdrummer on 2007 01 09
Great entry from top to bottom, and that’s saying something coming from a guy with the attention span of a gnat.
Thanks.
By: By david on 2007 01 10
dang, handdrummer. chris would probably sell his immortal soul for a look at those books. if he had one, i mean.
By: By kathy a on 2007 01 10
there is something out there connecting everything together
Yes, and calling it “sacred” or even “God” is as good as any other label for the ineffable mystery of being. But leaping from that to “old guy in the sky who created quasars but hates fags”? Not so much. Okay, not all theists insist on the last bit, but they do seem to insist on a Creator who cares what we do when naked. Weird.
By: By Rob G on 2007 01 10
Rob, I have to disagree.
Some words are so freighted with other people’s meaning, if you use them at all, you create an instant miscommunication. The meaning you intend gets lost, and unfortunate side effects take over.
If you say “Godâ€? and mean the delicate and subtle “ineffable mystery of being” but many of your listening audience hears the oppressive “vengeful omnipotent superbeing who’s coming back this year to destroy the world,” maybe you’ve only failed to communicate. But maybe you’ve also empowered millennialists who pray for nuclear war in the middle East, and who think yet another person agrees with them.
My philosophy: Use words as carefully as possible. Think about what they mean to your audience ... especially if that audience consists of idiots with power.
By: By Hank Fox on 2007 01 10
You’re right Hank. Audience is important, as is clear from the misinterpretation of Einstein’s use of the word “God”. From now on I will use “Dog” or “Coyote”. Or “Fox”! ;)
By: By Rob G on 2007 01 10
I gave some sustained attention to the whole “god” issue, in spite of being allergic to religion, when I started attending Al-anon meetings and realized that if I was going to bother to go and take it seriously, I had to decide what I thought about the whole higher power thing, and whether that had anything to do with a god. I ended up in a position somewhat similar to what you’re describing here (I know I"m not god, and that’s about it). I do remember that back in the seventies in some of the classrooms at Berkeley, someone had written “Praise Betty!” in the little space over the blackboard, so I tend to use that as my fall-back invocation, when I need one.
I guessed about Humboldt because I’m indirectly familiar with his writing on Latin America (since people like Mary Louise Pratt have looked at his “contact scenes” in thinking about discourses of imperialism and the land), but I didn’t know about so many other aspects of his life. Another book for the list!
By: By Joanna on 2007 01 10
Xopher; potamosphere? River Globe?
Maybe it’s my sheltered upbringing, but I don’t know any people who would call themselves atheists, and subscribe to (2), (3) or (4). Certainly Richard Dawkins wouldn’t, although I’m not sure you’d classify him as an Atheist™.
My understanding of the word “theism” is belief in a being (or beings) who are both Creator(s) and moral guides. As opposed to “deism”. But then a lot of the discourse in this area is semantically fraught. I should read more theology (just joking!).
By: By Rob G on 2007 01 10
I meant the sphere of people around the Creek
D’oh! I shoulda got that. Although I could point out that it should probably be kolpiskosphere, that wouldn’t be worthy.
I read (2) as giving the same weight to supernatural beliefs, as to empirical ones. No matter.
By: By Rob G on 2007 01 10
xopher, i can see where you are coming from—although statement # 2 required the clarification of applying scientific principles to religious belief systems.
i am weary of everyone trying to label everyone else with some kind of trademarked pigeonhole. i’m especially weary of being pigeonholed myself. go forth and do good, and leave me alone.
By: By kathy a on 2007 01 10
How can anyone doubt the existence of Divine?
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 01 10
Oh, like he doesn’t live on in all our hearts.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 01 10
Defecation and deification are almost homonyms. Just sayin’.
By: By Rob G on 2007 01 10
xopher, i was merely expressing a piece of my worldview, and my general crabbiness today. or is it just today? hmm.
it is hardly fair to call in the divine, chris, when you know perfectly well he is right there on film. ;)
By: By kathy a on 2007 01 10
Lauren is indeed a wonderful designer, but this isn’t her work. Credits for the design can be seen at the bottom of each page.
As far as getting your own nifty graphic goes, you need to haunt http://www.gravatar.com until they come back online and then register one with them.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 01 10
You have become my personal hero with the phrase:
“No way am I singing eternal posthumous hosannas to a Pointy-Haired God.”
By: By somebody on 2007 01 10
Xopher, you’ve polluted your #2 with the word “scientific.” If it read: “Religious beliefs are the same type of belief as other beliefs” then (a) it would be true of atheists, (b) it would be true of lots of lots of theists, (c) it would be obviously true, and (d) it would be unobjectionable except by crazy people.
I don’t understand the negative connotations that Chris and others ascribe to “atheist” except as part of the spin of the radical religious right, the same way McCarthy labeled people “communists” or other people sling the word “fascist” around. Essentially as a pejorative with no real meaning rattling inside.
I was happy to sit on the sidelines, tolerant of liberal theists of all stripes, until the Falwells and Robertsons turned it into a bare-knuckled brawl. Now, I think liberal Christians and others have to take a side: are they going to be the enablers for the anti-Darwinists, the anti-scientists, the anti-women-are-whole-peopleists, the we-can-screw-over-the-planet-because-
it’s-all-over-when-Christ-returns-and-all-
that-matters-is-whether-you’re-savedists.
Call us atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, or anything else; there are the sane people and the crazy people, and it didn’t used to matter, but now the crazy people are ready to destroy the world and it matters greatly. And if you’re going to spend all our time and energy debating a word, then the crazy people will be watching and laughing and chortling and winning.
By: By steven on 2007 01 11
I didn’t ascribe any negative connotations to the word “atheist.” I merely attributed an implied sentiment in the word which I’m not comfortable applying to myself.
That quibble aside — and with the obligatory raised single eyebrow at the notion that having a blog comment thread is “spending all our time and energy debating a word” — right on, Steven.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 01 11
Xopher: “I was in fact complaining about the tendency of some atheists to narrow the term to mean only THEIR kind of atheist, and marginalize people who simply don’t happen to believe in divine beings.”
I already wrote about this one in what I think is comment 2 (after it got approved); you’re doing the same thing as someone who expects a street protestor to shout “Stop the police! Altough many police are really fine people, and I don’t oppose *all* police, only those who maintain oppressive regimes such as those now using nigthsticks on the crowd.”
Of course atheists overgeneralize. It’s a political word, not a dissertation.
By: By Rich Puchalsky on 2007 01 11
It’s like demanding that the street protestor being carried off by the police not yell something without qualifying it with a careful explanation that perhaps not all police share the same problems.
It’s more like the street protestor kicking the guy next to him and saying “I don’t care if the police beat you up, too. You’re not a protester like me, so you’re JUST LIKE THEM.”
Thanks for the book recommendation, Chris.
By: By mythago on 2007 01 15
It’s funny, Xopher, Chris, how much your positions look to me like my own religiousness. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
Besides, Xopher, I’m pretty comfortable calling myself a henotheist, as in, “You may have your gods and versions of reality, and I’m perfectly willing to accept those things as true, especially if we’re talking ‘true for you.’ This is mine over here, the bits I choose to care about more, or that choose to care more about me.”
It’s about accepting multivalent reality and still allowing some to take personal priority.
Still: it’s the ineffable latticework of connection that gets me, every time.
By: By little light on 2007 01 15
