Tsuyoku Naritai
April 3rd, 2007 by 
drunkentune
Chris Swift of Parabiodox, a Christian who believes in the inspired word of the Bible, has recently linked to us.* I think it would be worthwhile to comment on a recent short post of his.
I think Christians when faced with the constant barrage from Atheists can at least console themselves that they are doing a good job, providing these people with a sense of purpose in life, providing them with something concrete to concentrate on, even if it’s only a brick wall they wish to smash down.
Imagine the barreness [sic] of life for Atheists without religion, and in particular without Christianity to attack. They would be faced with having to examine their own philosophy for meaning, and what would they find ? A big black hole. (Parabiodox)
I wish to make this clear before I continue: my atheism is a direct result of my reliance on philosophical naturalism; this from methodological naturalism; and this from a desire to seek the truth. My atheism, as opposed to an atheist that accepts atheism out of an irrational fear, or illogic, or a popular counterculture stance, comes out of a grand history of philosophers of science. These men may be wrong — many have been in the past — but I find it insulting for Swift to imply that if there were more reason in the world, there’d be nothing but ‘a big black hole’ of philosophy.
Does Swift support such a claim, that (1) atheists attack Christians to get some deeper purpose to life, that (2) without Christianity atheism is bare, that (3) atheism is itself empty?
No, no, and no.
In fact, as I will argue, Swift has it all sideways, looking at a distorted image in the pool.
I.
Are there not two components to religion: (1) Ritual and (2) belief in a supernatural dimension with supernatural causes and effects? Last night I participated in a Passover Seder with my family: my sister, parents, and my longtime girlfriend. The five of us told stories, laughed, ate and drank, and participated in ritual. Ritual is all around us – I would say that ritual is, to a great extent, culture – so ritual is not the sole property of religion. Ritual can be good or bad: Once a year I smoke a common Montecristo No. 2 and drink a shot of Jack Daniels. It’s not the best ritual on my lungs or kidneys, but I still do it out of habit. Jews, I think it’s clear, have a history of irreverence, wit, and a love for debate and discussion – a culture of questioning the very concept of ritual and the content of ritual. There is no sacred cow, no entity from on high that secular Jews kowtow to. Perhaps evil can come from this, just as my benign shot of whiskey and cigar can cause a tumor, but I have thought for a long time, and I can only see this as a positive ideal, a desired ritual.
But there are always honor killings, female circumcisions, rape, rampant misogyny, tyrannical dogma, and other undesired rituals. These are the kind of rituals where if you even question, criticize, or attempt to debate, you’ll end up like Theo van Gogh. Have scientists, enraged by unfavorable criticism, demanded the heads of theologians?
Many people today need a new component to their ritual and culture, a new ritual, that of self-criticism.
II.
It’s clear that if we are to seek the truth, there are temperaments that will reliably take us closer to truth, and those that will not. I think it’s fair to see that skepticism and irreverence in part underlie such a desired disposition. Yet, many people have a clever and agile mind and still believe silly things. They have, I assert, an aggressively anti-philosophical worldview. Imagine a case study of a follower of The Secret: Thought and introspection bores him; feeling and intuition are seen as reliable ways to live his life. He is full of religious sentiment, that not of ritual for the sake of ritual, but out of an emotional attachment, as if ritual itself was a ways to a means and not an experience. He wants a Big Answer along with a Grand Mystery: he wants an easy way out. Just a brief glimpse at Oprah.com’s message board for The Secret gives ample examples of this mindset. This ‘Secret-er’ may have been religious at one point, but unlike theologians or philosophers, hasn’t studied enough science or philosophy to question his own presumptions — that of the existence of nonmaterial powers. He is in all senses of the word ‘spiritual.’
I don’t want a culture founded on this ‘spiritual’ notion, a reliance on ritual as a means to truth, a disinterest in thought or debate. So when Swift says, ‘Imagine the barreness [sic] of life for Atheists without religion, and in particular without Christianity to attack,’ I say, ‘Yes, imagine a world where people’s temperaments are self-critical, where individual thought is valued and truth is desired. Imagine a world where we meditate on concepts, thinking for long periods of time on issues of morality or truth. There is no bareness in more reason; there is no black hole. There can only be good. And if then someone who has followed this path becomes a Christian, I fully support his conversion, for he has the mind of a scientist.’
III.
I don’t think it’s possible to live without religion. It’s such an integral part of our past and culture — it may even be genetic. But we can live with religion while leaving behind the worst pieces: the Bronze Age, anti-intellectual, uncurious notion that an ancient text is the end-all. There is a Japanese saying, Tsuyoku Naritai (’strong,’ ‘want to become’), meaning I want to become stronger. The boxer may spend months training for a match, but he can always wake up earlier to exercise, to push further than he did yesterday; the carpenter may build inspiring works of art, strong to last through the ages, but he can always transcend.
We are all biased, irrational, ignorant, flawed, foolish, emotional, overconfident. But to desire Tsuyoku Naritai, the will of transcendence, is to put effort into a purposeful distance, a push towards detachment from bias, irrationality, ignorance, foolishness — I see this as a good thing.
If more people left this naïveté, this layman’s ’spiritualism’ behind, we’d be better off. It’s clear to me that far from attacking Christianity, these popular atheists such as Dennett, Dawkins and Harris see this blind ’spiritualism’ as a hinderance to progress. They disregard the special treatment ’spiritual’ religion holds. They say, ‘We have our flaws, but we can do better, we can attempt to correct bias and ignorance, we can transcend.’
We can transcend.
*What have I done!?
Swift responded quickly to my comments here. I didn’t realize that my first few words would offend him. In fact, as I re-checked his About page, I saw I had my facts utterly wrong! I’ve edited the beginning sentence of this post to reflect this. I hope he understands that we all make mistakes. All other content of this post not pertaining to the integrity of Swift (whom I do respect) but the content of his words does remain the same.
Swift’s first response can be read here; his second here; his third here.
Posted in atheism, philosophical issues | 
April 4th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Hi, again,
So, how do I raise my daughter with Down Syndrome to understand her family’s Christian faith using the will of transcendence? She loves ritual; she sees everything in concrete, definite terms. Do I try to discourage her from the “spiritualism” that intellectual types disparage? And if an exception be made for the mentally retarded, what about for the recovering alcoholic, the poorly educated African villager, and the child who faced 20 different foster home placements growing up? Is is practical for us to expect everyone to be able to reason like Drunkentune, Dawkins, and Harris, who have been blessed with such a wonderful mental endowment nurtured to perfection by university educations? Perhaps through the common human experience that has not been practical, and the best people can get to is a simplistic, naive, ritualistic, spiritual religion.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Ed,
I get just a bit of your biting sarcasm and — dare I say? — faux anti-intellectualism (me on the same level as Professor Dawkins? Hah!), but I find much value in ritual; I hope that is clear. In fact, I hold a love for ritual as well, just as you and your daughter love ritual. I love my family, just as you love your family. But a ritual that perpetuates reservation from critique? I fail to see how this is good. A ritual that is self-aware that it is a ritual, and can change, I think, is far better than dogmatism of any form. You don’t need schooling to see that.
This Tsuyoku Naritai I speak of, is about recognizing our faults, our biases, but attempting to overcome them. Are we to avoid this desire for improvement?
This ’spiritualism’ I speak of, that ‘thought and introspection bores him; feeling and intuition are seen as reliable ways to live his life,’ strikes me as a tragedy. Are we to avoid introspection? Perhaps you see otherwise, but closed doors are an alien thought to me.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
This is slightly off topic, but what the hey..
I am also very interested in the concept of ritual. By this I mean the rituals that all of us have according to our cultures and our psychological dispositions. Ritualized behaviour is probably part of being human.
What has always interested me is ritual as a form of compulsive obsessive disorder.
By this I don’t mean to infer that all human ritual is a disorder, but when does human ritual become deleterious, debilitating, or irrational?
I can offer an anecdotal example. I do not expect that this example will demonstrate that ritual will automatically be synonymous with OCD.
Prayer when I was religious, was an important part of my routine. My prayer was always done privately as I was never an extovert when it came to my religious beliefs.
On numerous occasions I would feel that if I didn’t pray regularly, or if I didn’t recite the prayers in a way that I thought would be of the most benefit, then this would lead to a feeling of anxiety.
There was the possibility that I would become dependent on a ritual for the sake of alleviating axiety which the performance of the ritual itself seemed to increase.
It became a little like people of superstitious beliefs who would cross the road rather than to let a black cat cross their path.
The ritual itself became reason for the ritual. Trying to alleviate the anxiety through the ritual, only enforced the anxiety and the need to repeat the ritual.
So, I wonder how much ritual is just a less potent form of OCD and that if rituals, religious or otherwise, by their very existnce simply reinforce the ritual.
If this is the case, how productive are any of these rituals? They may even be deleterious to the individual. Extrapolate that to the society and it is possible that cultural rituals may take on the same form. This would mean that they also could be deleterious not only to the individual, but also to the society.
April 4th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I suppose the point is - When do cultural and or religious rituals which are assumed to be the necessary and beneficial components of society, become the antithesis of that.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Drunkentune
I’m confused about your summary statement “we can transcend”. Isn’t that a religious statement? In a material-only world, nothing is transcendant because there is no system of propulsion (i.e. God) to make it objectively transcendant. Reason might serve you well but it can’t propel you to greater heights. Granted there is no barrenness in more reason, but is there any future in reason alone? I think that’s what Chris was describing via the black hole analogy.
There are Christians and certainly other religious people that fit your presumption of intellectual weakness, and as Ed pointed out, rituals help many less fortunate people understand God’s love for them, but many of us Christians tsuyoku naritai as much as you reasonable atheists.
April 6th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Jim,
I use some words in odd ways, but the transcendence I speak of, I think, is best exemplified by this: I am ignorant of things; I have my irrational biases, but instead of basking in my ignorance and biases, I can gain knowledge about the world around me by rejecting this pessimism (’well, I’ll never know everything, so why should I know anything?’); I can look to distance myself from my biases. If that isn’t transcendence from pessimism, cynicism and irrational bias to optimism, a love of science and an attempt to grasp truth, I don’t know what could be considered transcendence.
I’m confused: if reason doesn’t lead to transcendence, then does un-reason provide this?
‘There is no bareness in more reason; there is no black hole. There can only be good. And if then someone who has followed this path [of reason] becomes a Christian, I fully support his conversion, for he has the mind of a scientist.’
Plenty of Christians hold tsuyoku naritai as a value; plenty of atheists don’t — but I want to see more people that avoid thought and introspection practice this self-analysis.
April 6th, 2007 at 1:53 am
Plenty of Christians hold tsuyoku naritai as a value; plenty of atheists don’t — but I want to see more people that avoid thought and introspection practice this self-analysis.
Amen to that.
We have two commands that everything hangs on; love God above all (take the focus off ourselves), and love our neighbor (serve others to help keep the focus off ourselves). I find that these two commands help me better focus on the facts before me. They pull me away from being emotionally attached to things like rituals, and in that way, they help me to think. I believe true Christian thought compels us to face our own demons and sharpens our cognitive abilities. Sayonara for now.
April 6th, 2007 at 4:03 am
I am never sure what true christian thought means. It seems to ne a synonym for whatever I think true christian thought is.
April 6th, 2007 at 4:03 am
ne = be
April 6th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
drunkentune:
tsuyoku naritai, now that’s something we could definitely agree on. If there is a personal objective to our dialogues, it is that I am searching myself in our conversations, sparing no shadow from light, in the hope that I will be stronger in the end.
beepbeep:
I think you’re using a general “I”, right? As if to say “Christian thought” is whatever any Christian happens to think. If this were true, Christian thought would be difficult if not meaningless. In my opinion, it fits in the difficult category.
Theologians have spent eons debating the finer points of the faith and not a few wars were justified as retribution for some heresy. It seems all religions struggle with this, as far as my studies have gone. But religion is not unique. Political ideologies do as well and sciences too, but in a usually civil course. All I can conclude is that the human quest for truth is, in its entirety, difficult. Perhaps, like the very particles within us, there is no “local realism”, and only the ability to talk in probabilities and generalizations.
April 7th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I should make note that while I routinely make things implicit, this time I was positively brutal in the implications of my message: I am not concerned with atheism vs. religion in this post, but that by accepting a scientist’s outlook — that of questioning, reasoning, tentativeness; a Popperian outlook to gaining knowledge — one is far more likely to be a nonbeliever. I am far more interested in atheists that come from ‘a grand history of philosophers of science’ than the jingoism of people like Madalyn Murray O’Hair. The correlation between nonbelief and science is strong enough to mean something important. I reject any argument made that nonbelievers have a higher IQ (see R. Clark’s Religiousness, Spirituality, and IQ: Are They Linked?), but instead that those that are most familiar with science are nonbelievers.
——
% believe in God
general public 90+%
scientists in general 40-%
mathematicians 40+%
biologists 30-%
physicists 20+%
(Skeptic, vol.6 #2 1998)
——
‘Whereas 90% of the general population has a distinct belief in a personal god and a life after death, only 40% of scientists on the B.S. level favor this belief in religion and merely 10 % of those who are considered “eminent” scientists believe in a personal god or in an afterlife.’
(Scientific American, Sept. 1999)
——
Survey answers among “greater” scientists
Belief in personal God
Personal belief 7.0 %
Personal disbelief 72.2
Doubt or agnosticism 20.8
Belief in human immortality
Personal belief 7.9 %
Personal disbelief 76.7
Doubt or agnosticism 23.3
(Nature, 394(6691):313, 23 July 1998)
——
The implications of this is clear: if more people accepted a scientist’s outlook, then there would be fewer believers and more nonbelievers.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Just stoppnig in to see how things are going.
“What has always interested me is ritual as a form of compulsive obsessive disorder.”
Ah, I see fruitful dialogue proceeds apace.
Happy Pascha, all.
April 10th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Ben,
Pesach was wonderful. It’s always good to be with family. I hope Easter was good for everyone: I took the day off and ran for a bit in Robert E. Lee Park, then ate plenty of chocolate.
In religious ritual, there’s plenty of ritualized hand-washing and counting systems (think counting beads on the Rosary, Muslim Tasbeeh, the Jewish practice of Tevilah, baptism, confession, and Jewish davining). They do look obsessive and compulsive; that doesn’t mean they are. It’s interesting, just like how scientists are far more likely to be nonbelievers than the general public.
April 11th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
ben
RE: “What has always interested me is ritual as a form of compulsive obsessive disorder.â€
Ah, I see fruitful dialogue proceeds apace.
I don’t see anything potentially deflamatory about this remark. That you do, may indicate that ritual plays a bigger part in your life than you would like to admit.
April 11th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I am not in any way suggesting that my life is devoid of ritual.
I am merely wondering as to the benefits of ritual and if and when there is a point where the ritual itself, instead of being part of the solution, becomes a part of the problem.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
soulster:
The question remains for me. Who determines what christian thought is and how do they determine it?
Persuant to this is, if someone or some organization manages to determine specifically what christian thought is, how does one enforce this definition or discription?
Is there then an adjudicating body who decides when and if someone’s thoughts are not christian?
April 12th, 2007 at 8:28 am
To qualify this:
“I am merely wondering as to the benefits of ritual and if and when there is a point where the ritual itself, instead of being part of the solution, becomes a part of the problem.”
Whenever I think of an example of ritual which might have became part of the problem instead of the solution, I think of ancient aztecs when faced with a diminishing cultural and economic power - ramping up the sacrifice of virgins. They probably believed completely in the benefits of the ritual as it was a ritual which was performed during their ascendancy and at the height of their cultural power.
In order for the rituals to have a positive effect, they probably thought they just had to perform more of them more often.
Perhaps their inability to acknowledge that the ritual had very little if nothing to do with the success of their culture, meant that they were unable and unwilling to cease something which was in essence detrimental to it.
Cultures so totally immersed in ritual/tradition to the extent that the ability to change becomes impaired, inevitably go belly-up.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:49 am
beepbeep:
The attempts to enforce conformity in Christian thought are manifold. One the one hand, denominational structures are famous for developing creeds and canons of law to define what is Christian dogma/doctrine and what is heresy (root-word relates to ‘unique’). Most of the time, those who fall outside of these bounds are simply excluded from power or participation, but are occasionally persecuted in most insideous ways (see Catholic inquisition and excommunication and “disfellowship” in American fundamentalism). There have always been cultural forces with little power of enforcement that try to standardize Christian thought through ranting (see conservative Christian newpapers and mounds of position-based books). Likewise, organizations that attempt to use influence and events to promote certain streams of Christian thought like conferences, lectureships, workshops, seminars, etc. There is currently a great movement in Western Christianity towards nominalism and post-denominationalism that is powering and polarizing those who support and reject efforts towards conformity.
I guess I have two things to say to this: 1) Since a great deal of religion has to deal with the common human condition, there should be attempts to keep the conversation of Christian thought broad, along with all thought in any religion and between them all. Any such approach must recognize both commonality and difference to be effective. 2) In as much as Christianity promotes God as a economic community in its theology and claims the heart of the faith is relationship to Jesus, differences must be maintained in relationship and in reference to the central character. So much of Christian division is based on information-centered, culture-centred and values-centered worldviews. Consistent with our theology, only a person-centered view will maintain freedom for diversity of thought and yet productive unity in the face of such diversity. But all this is only one idea in a sea of Christian thought.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
soulster
I have been having a similar discussion with a calvinist pastor, who, by all accounts, is slightly more fundamental about what it is to be a christian. He is a christian reconstructionist - I think of him as a dominionist, but what the hey - “you say potarto and I say potato.”
The discussion is not identical, but it has similarities. Hence this is my reply to him.
The discussion was basically about how would you ascertain who is worthy to call themselves a christian.
>>> The fact that there are hundreds of different churches all which claim to represent the “true version” of christianity suggests strongly that those who call themselves christians can’t really agree on even the basics.
This is where the catholic church has the upperhand, (Yes, I know there are even christians out there who consider that catholics aren’t christians - amazingly, many catholics don’t consider you to be christians either .)
Catholicism is not a religion of personal revelation, therefore the hierarchy and decision making powers rest where they have always rested - with supposedly god’s representative on earth, da pope.
Because of this well-defined hierarchy, the decision as to who is a catholic and who is not, is able to be made quite simply. (I might consider the process to be a crock of old dingoes kidneys, but they have the procedure and the establishment of hierarchy to do this easily.)
Similarly with the Church of England where the Archbishop of Canterbury has the authority over anglicans. (This is because the Church of England modelled its hierarchy on catholicism.)
The other christians, but ESPECIALLY those who belong to a christian religion which is based on personal revelation, do NOT have an explicit hierarchy or procedure for dealing with those who they consider may not be acting as christians.
Once personal revelation becomes the modus operandi for christianity, those who ascribe to this concept see their OWN interpretation of the scriptures as being as relevant and as “christian” as anyone elses.
In other words, once you democratize a religion, there is very little hierarchy to decide the rules.
Everyone’s personal opinion of what scripture says becomes as valuable or as worthless as the next persons.
The quote from George Bernard Shaw expresses this process quite well.
“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.” - George Bernard Shaw
April 13th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
beepbeepitsme:
While you are clearly spelling out a problem in the world of Christendom, I think such a problem is over-dependent on an authoritarian view of truth as Hellenistic influences won out over Hebraic and feudalism captured the mind of the church (historically, similar things happened in Judaism and Islam when social conditions where very similar). But, only if Christianity is about keeping rules and conforming to a certain way of thinking are these concerns central.
My background is among a fundamentalist branch that could be called “reconstructionist.” I grew up in what historians call the “American Restoration Movement” which claims to restore the New Testament pattern for church. I am very familiar with its concerns for dogmatic conformity and authority which it establishes in radically autonomous congregations and certain personalities. I am also aquainted with Catholicism which represents the other side of my family. The former relied on a strict and simplistic “hermenuetic” and a particular cultural tradition of interpretation enforced through social control. The later on papal and counciliar law and political control based on access to sacraments.
My last few years have been spent working on a third option. It looks at truth as held primarily by the integrity of connections and not primarily by philosophical data. It is as concerned with orthopraxy as orthodoxy, but holds both as subsets of relationship, not as ends in themselves or solutions (since, aesthetically they can be atheistic enterprises). It works with a centered set, rather than a bounded set conception of truth and community. In a way, it is a reconstruction of it’s own, but not of the world presented in the text, but of the life of discipleship represented in the New Testament narrative and lived in the matrix of human-human and human-God interactions. I have found that this leads to a high level of unity even across denominational lines while maintaining diversity that was once difficult for many of the people involved. In way, much of my personal work is helping Christians drop Christian-hating for missional approaches of cooperation.