The Great Debate: Is there a God?

Tonight, our high school's spiritual life department hosted its annual debate: "Is there a God?" This is at least the third or fourth year now that they've had this debate, though I still haven't been able to attend and see what all the fuss was about. I like to imagine that one of our handful of Hindu students might be sitting there wondering "How about the debate 'are there gods?'" but that's really a digression on my part.

I just like the fact that our spiritual life department--which, after all, is made up of protestant and Catholic ministers--is committed to this event, to raising the question. The debate participants are all teachers, so there's a sense in which no matter what the actual content of the debate is, one of the messages is that there are intelligent, thoughtful, nice people on both sides of the issue--or perhaps I should say all sides because I gather at least one person on the panel answered the question as basically a believing agnostic or a deist. And a related implicit message is that it's possible to disagree about something that's fundamental to one's outlook and to still be civil and even friendly.

Now, that said, I heard some of my students talking about the debate--which, I would reiterate, I have never been able to attend--and one of them was particularly vehement about his dissatisfaction with the debate. As he said, there's nothing new, both sides just made the same arguments they always make. As I probed a bit more, there seemed to be a strong sense in what he was saying that there wasn't a lot of engagement between the two sides. One of the science teachers basically said that the scientific evidence is against God, or makes God an unnecessary hypothesis, or whatever he actually said, and the pro-God response was basically you can't prove God doesn't exist and I feel God's presence. Again, I'm paraphrasing from a 17-year-old's not-totally-coherent account of this debate. So any commentary I'm about to make--and I'm about to make some--is poorly informed. There's a good argument here for avoiding speculation until I have more information, but to meet my Holidailies obligation, I need to get something out and I've already got this much written, so....

My suspicion here is that one of the very strengths I cited earlier--the civil nature of the debate--also defangs both sides to some extent and makes for a less interesting, less convincing debate. You can argue in fairly abstract, non-confrontational terms, but when it comes down to it, the more compelling arguments are also significantly more threatening, in the sense of calling strongly into question a person's deep-held beliefs (and, for that matter, those of the student's parent, you might not appreciate a teacher precipitating a crisis of faith for their son/daughter). Also, if participants were to argue in the strongest terms, students might feel as though a teacher who is arguing the other side from what they believe is unsympathetic or even hostile to them and not just to their belief system. So I suspect it's a challenging line to walk for the participants, to make a case, but to do it in a way that tends more toward interesting than to threatening or uncomfortable.


For my part, I've always had considerable tolerance for strong argument on both sides of this subject, because I've always felt that truth was important. Weird, I know. Hearing the best arguments, the strongest arguments of people on the other side of the issue from me always seemed like an important exercise, because either result seemed positive: either I would be convinced and change my mind, presumably moving closer to the truth--whatever that is--than I was before, or else I would feel that I had refuted the opposing arguments and thus had even better reason than before to believe what I already believed. Of course, this places a lot of trust in my own judgment. The alternative--turning over responsibility for one's beliefs to someone else--seems very problematic to me (even though I could argue in the abstract that it's possible that one could be better off relying on the judgment of someone else). But I have a hard time really believing that argument.

All right, this entry has been a bit scattered and it's not really ending with much of a bang or with a bow on top, but there it is. I welcome your thoughts on any of the matters raised.

Christmas: Wars, Battles, and a General History of a Major Holiday

Many social conservatives want to see a "War on Christmas," but probably more accurate a description comes from the title of Steven Nissenbaum's history of the holiday, The Battle for Christmas. It's not so much that we have a war on Christmas as we have had over the centuries a lively debate about what Christmas is and isn't. And yes, through the years some people have wanted not to celebrate it at all (but mostly those people were Christians--more on that later).

The date December 25 was taken for Christmas back in the 4th century, not because anyone had evidence that this is when the famous little tyke was born, but because those crafty Christians wanted to annex the pagan winter festival. From the Roman Saturnalia onward it was--and remained--a time of drinking and debauchery for many centuries. In 16th-century England, it was the center of a festival of misrule, in which people boozed it up, and the poor went door to door essentially demanding "trick or treat"--give us good food or money or gifts or we'll wreck $#!+. Think of carols like "We wish you a merry Christmas" and all its demands for figgy pudding, as well as all the wassailing songs and their demands. "Here we come a-wassailing," for instance, first reminds the listener that "We are not daily beggars / That beg from door to door, / But we are neighbors' children / Whom you have seen before"--and then they go on to ask for money, cheese, some of the Christmas loaf, and (of course!) some wassail. And in "Wassail, wassail," after they spend innumerable verses building up the master of the house, they get to the point, asking for drink and to be let in by the fire.

The holiday as a festival of misrule was basically accepted by the upper classes, too, as a sort of pressure valve for the lower classes. The social hierarchy is inverted once a year: no big deal. The wealthy would get angry with particular wassailer or particular acts (the common folk could get pretty rowdy and destructive if their demands weren't met!), but overall the drinking and singing and demands for food and drink and gifts were tolerated.

For exactly this reason, Christmas had a hard time making its way across the pond. The Puritans outlawed it on the basis of its nature as a holiday of drinking and debauchery, as well as on the argument that the Bible doesn't indicate when Jesus's birthday was, thus God has no interest in having us celebrate it. Nonetheless, people rather like an excuse to drink and revel, especially in the bleak midwinter, so it continued on the edges of legality in New England and had a bit more success in other parts of the country. Since it couldn't be ended, it ultimately ended up tamed--by a rather unlikely force.

In the mid-to-late Nineteenth Century, retail stores were just starting to take off. Standardized manufacturing was just getting going on a large scale, and retail stores were outlets for all these material goods. The problem? America was firmly entrenched with the so-called Protestant Work Ethic. That is, people worked hard, saved their money, and didn't buy stuff they didn't need. Retailers knew this would never do, so they are the ones who took the largest steps to inventing the Christmas holiday as we know it. They made Santa Claus big (okay, years of cookies and 2%-to-whole milk did that) and they marketed Christmas as a time of love and good-will and--you guessed it--gift giving. They employed writers to create the stories that presented this kind of Christmas. They made people nostalgic for a type of Christmas that hadn't even existed before: a warm, cheery, wholesome holiday--and it became precisely that. The St. Nicholas mythos got drawn into it (and St. Nick pulled to Christmas from his normal place at--duh--the feast of St. Nicholas in early December). And some of our ideas were just flat-out made up. In the process, Christmas went from being a public holiday to a private one, from one celebrated in the streets with the community to one celebrated at home with the family. From a drunken revel for adults to a child-centered holiday of gift giving.

I didn't get much further in the book, but I reckon it likely that, once commercial forces had sanitized Christmas and made it good and pure, Christianity decided it was high time to get back in the Christmas game, and they set about re-holy-daying it. That is, they claimed it for their own now that it was a wholesome time. And who can blame them? It's a nice little holiday.

But, of couse, retailers did their job too well. We've gone from the protestant work ethic to the consumerist spend ethic, and whether we work enough or not, by Visa we can spend! We don't just spend the money we have, we spend the money we will have, which is just a more positive way of saying the money we haven't. As the culture has changed and become more materialistic, so too has the holiday become ever more materialistic. Religion, naturally enough, fights against this tendency (we're reminded that "Jesus is the reason for the season," i.e. not Santa Claus or gift-giving). So, too, do more secular types who nonetheless see something negative in crass materialism.

Secular though I may be, I have at least that much spiritualism that I mistrust unchecked materialism--even as I enjoy the hell out of a limited degree of it. Because yes, I like stuff, just like most Americans do. But not to the exclusion of all else, and not beyond a certain point. There's a limit to how much stuff any person needs, and there are a lot of things more important than stuff. As long as we don't lose sight of those philosophical touchstones, gift-giving during this season is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Gift-giving is--to steal a phrase--an outward and visible sign of an inward condition. It's most meaningful when it comes from the heart and speaks to the heart, when it's freely given and not expected as a duty.

For me, Christmas isn't a religious holiday, though they're welcome to keep claiming it. It's a social institution that's evolved through many different forms and ultimately is--or will be--whatever we make of it. Although the name puts a distinctly Christian stamp on it, our brief look at its history shows us what an uneasy time religion has had throughout the centuries in trying to claim it. That's why I say it's a social institution: it has shaped our culture and been shaped by our culture, and anyone who participates in that culture, it seems to me, has a claim on that tradition in whatever form they choose to stake that claim. There was a festival at the winter solstice before Christianity claimed it by naming it Christmas, and I'd wager that in many places there was such a celebration long before Jesus was born. We need a holiday at this time of year, which is probably why many religious traditions--as well as non-religious traditions--have a holiday at this time of year. I suspect that even if something happened that caused everyone to cease believing in Jesus, we'd probably still celebrate Christmas, because it's just the sort of thing we want.

Never has that been more true than now, when I have one little girl and another on the way--the magic of Christmas has become for many of us the magic of childhood, as we adults are fueled by their excitement. And really, both of our mythologies speak to this reverence for childhood, whether it's the story of Santa Claus bringing toys to good little girls and boys or the story of a child born in humble circumstances and destined to change the world.
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In the interest of full disclosure, I should say two things: 1) this is based almost exclusively on Nissenbaum's The Battle For Christmas and 2) I've published versions of this in three previous years on this and my former blog.

Choices, Virtues, the Mind

"Think of a reasonably consequential decision or choice you made recently. Tell yourself why you made that choice."

This is how one of the presenters at the previously-referenced faculty development day began her portion of a presentation. She went on to cite research that I'd read in another forum explaining how our decision are often, in fact, influenced by factors in our environment that we may not even be consciously aware of. As she said, "We are good at inventing stories or explanations to describe how we arrived at a certain decision, but actually have little sense of what really went on." For instance, she gave the example of performing some kind of charitable act. We may tell ourselves that we performed some act of kindness because that's the kind of person we are--someone who does good things. The research suggests, however, that we're more likely to be good to others when, for instance, we've just had something good happen to us. Or when we're in a nice environment (for instance, outside a bakery from which wonderful smells are emanating). Likewise, we may not help someone in need because we're in a bad mood, or because we're in a hurry or because we're in an ugly, smelly part of town.

I'd previously read research along these lines, so this wasn't a surprise to me. It's really just an extension of a long history of research going back at least as far as the Milgram experiment, all suggesting that our ethics and behavior are more than a little circumstantial, as opposed to be merely an extension of our "character."

At least, that is, as we commonly think of character. As the presenter noted, our ordinary conception of character seems to be certain characteristics (often thought of in terms of virtues and vices) that we "have" that we then act on. For instance, I am generous, so I give things freely to other people. I am honest, so I tell the truth. I am lazy, so I sit around eating Cheetos and putting off my work. It turns out that it's more complicated than that.

I think Aristotle, over 2300 years ago, had some handle on this, or at least helps point the way.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

In other words, these "characteristics" are simply ways that we characteristically react, ways that we respond more often than not (at least in view of the person judging us to be so). It is, though, too simplistic to say, simply because environmental factors play a role, that decision making--moral or otherwise--is merely a matter of context. Even in the original studies, there are people who go against the statistical tendencies, who behave a particular way despite their circumstances. We can't discount the effect that environment can have. As educators, for instance, we should be keenly aware of the kind of environment we are creating for our students both inside and outside the classroom. Part of what we are doing, I suspect, if we're doing things right, is creating an environment where students will build habits of excellence or virtue (along these lines, I think I need to read more about the Habits of Mind). We should also be educating our students to be more conscious of the subtle influences can alter their behavior away from what they would want their behavior to be. Of course, we adults need to cultivate the same consciousness.

Happiness: commitments, chasing dreams

Recently, I  blogged about the "pursuit" of happiness and the problematic nature of that pursuit. And now, it's graduation season.

If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front. -- David Brooks, "It's Not About You

Brooks is considering a different problem, but I think he has some interesting things to say on the same subject that I was writing about some days ago. He continues:

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

 I was struck by this formulation of what adulthood is really about and it struck a chord in me. Perhaps because of "expressive individualism" we are resistant to this, to being "tied down," yet historically speaking that has been precisely the way that humans have constructed meaning for their lives--through the webs of their interpersonal relationships, through their relations to a community, as well as through their achievements. 

All of this, however, is not necessarily and either/or prospect. The point of life is not simply to tie ourselves to commitments and, mule-like, slog them through our three score years and ten, whether we like it or not. There is an art to choosing our commitments, not to mention revising our commitments, de-committing, moving on. 

Nonetheless, I do think that if we buy into the ideas of expressive individualism too uncritically, it leads us to unhappiness. We chafe too easily at our commitments, we desire freedom and change for their own sake, rather than because our situation really needs them. We are, to go back to the way I put it in my other post, chasing happiness instead of chasing the other ends that offer significance to our lives. 

There is a balance to be struck here, and it is not the same balance for everyone. Some people really do need to march to the beat of their own drummer, chase their dreams, etc. I suspect that's been the case with most of our great artists, musicians, writers, our innovators, our movers and shakers. And it's not just them, of course: all of us need that at times, and some more than others. The important thing, I think, is that we have to spend some time thinking about these matters to find what works for us, the balance between freedom and commitment, between self and others, and whatever other poles we could define these issues around. If we don't give it serious thought, we are likely to follow too slavishly a path not of our own choosing or to be pulled from the path on which we could find happiness by the voices whispering to us of some other way of living that we dimly believe even if we shouldn't.