Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on March 13, 2012 at 11:54pm

Many Atheists feel isolated and lonely. Some have tried to re-purpose the church model. Some try to "realizing the fundamental impulses that drive belief, and seeking secular parallels", but Reforming Counter-Apologetics hasn't been a wildly popular group either.

I think we're held back by one of the boundary conditions of the Atheist memeplex, a primitive brain fear of emotion.

Rationality emerged, according to my combination of Marshall McLuhan's ideas with Paul McLen's triune brain theory, when people began to spend long hours reading printed material. Print is very abstract, entirely visual, black & white (it was). The page held no meaning for the lymbic system or reptile brain. Our primitive brains can't understand language. Only our higher brain could make sense of it, and only through symbol interpretation. No color, movement, voice tones or volume, odors, or sensations. The habit of depending entirely on our eyes only with our higher brain laid down a new pattern of thinking, in which our higher brain was in charge. We began to think in terms of separating variables, depending upon visual proof, for the first time. Prior to this period people used all of their senses and all of their three  brains at once. The primitive brains are the seat of emotion. They also have an inherent override of higher thinking, high arousal such as emergency or excitement. This is why fire doors don't have doorknobs. When people panic, they forget how to turn doorknobs, their primitive brains just say in effect run and push. So fire doors have push bars.

We don't analyze the historical media based effects on thinking enough, or perhaps take them seriously enough. But at the primitive brain level (gut feeling) Atheists know that reason can be overwhelmed by emotion. So we avoid rituals, touchy feely stuff like swaying and holding hands while singing, cheering and jumping up and down, drumming, dancing (like a Hora), lots of candles, incense, etc. Instead our meetings resemble lectures or seminars, and people walk away feeling emotionally unfulfilled instead of connected and energized.

Were we sufficiently media savvy, I believe, we could create rituals that allowed for free thought instead of submission to authority and built into them critical thinking.

Permalink Reply by Steph S. on March 14, 2012 at 1:49am

Thanks so much for your intelligent reply! Enjoyed it!

Permalink Reply by Michael OL on March 14, 2012 at 5:51am

Perhaps rituals only have poignancy of meaning if they involve a willing suspension of disbelief?  In other words, for group members to feel united through shared ritual, those rituals necessarily must celebrate and codify something ridiculous, something inaccessible by perusal of evidence, something that was concocted?  After all, if something can be rationalized from first principles, it becomes universal and disentangled from its author.  If it's universal, if it can be shared by anyone and everyone, then it loses its specialness.  But then can it hold any claim to delineating a group identity?

The more ridiculous a myth, the more useful it becomes for establishing group identity and a cohesive satisfaction that "Yes, I belong amongst my brethren here, because we have bought into the same tripe.  That buy-in makes us brothers". 

I wholeheartedly endorse effort at community involvement amongst atheists.  I am convinced that we are missing out on the support network that organized religion - when not too mired in its perversions - can potentially offer.  But I see no prospect for atheist rituals.  And in some sense, this is deeply lamentable.

Permalink Reply by Steph S. on March 14, 2012 at 9:49am

Yes I agree we do not need rituals!