The World's Worst Catholic™ Explains The Practice of Religion

To me church was always like a pep rally for Jesus and I've always hated pep rallies. Every week or so they'd drag the entire junior high down to the gym to pep on the Red Raiders of Radnor who were god awful at any sport, anywhere. The idea being that forcible pep is better than no pep at all. You couldn't just say no so I'd sit there, morose, unhappy and refuse to pep. I hated being told to be peppy and Mr. Keene, the Pepmaster, would roam the boards urging the crowd into ever louder cries of pepism. He was a master but I remained immune to his charms and just sulked on that hard, cold bleacher. And I'm guessing my little act of rebellion passed unnoticed. But some kids were into it, really into it. And by and large most of the girls were into it and now that I think about it, the peppiest guys seemed to have the most active social lives. In retrospect, I may have miscalculated by not participating, since a bespectacled, 4'10", pimply guy needs any kind of edge he can find. As I said, some kids were totally into it, dancing around and cheering, some kids were kind of into it, clapping their hands, some kids would let out a half -hearted "woo hoo" once in a while and some kids, like me, would just sit there and glare. What the fuck does this have to do with spirituality, you may ask? Bear with me. I'm crafting something here... an analogy or a metaphor or something.

Which brings me to PZ Myer's latest spittle flecked attack (it's almost like he's wearing a hair shirt all the time) on fellow travelers who don't toe the hard line. This week it's poor Massimo Pigliucci, who wrote something to piss him off. And since I like Massimo because he sounds like Father Guido Sarducci, I will come to his defense and explain why Professor Myers is completely off base.

Belief in God and, more specifically, the practice of religion is more like a giant junior high pep rally than the actual game itself, where you have clearly defined sides. The continuum is not between believers and non-believers, the continuum lies between those who are irrevocably sure of their position, whether atheist or believer and those who don't really give a shit. It's not whether you believe or not but the importance you assign to belief or non belief. If you're going to get all bent out of shape about it you're on the same side of the continuum as any devout Seventh Day Adventist or glaring kid at the pep rally. I would think that in church, as in my pep rallies, there are a goodly number of non-believers or sometime believers in the pews, letting out a half hearted "amen" on occasion and just there for any number of social reasons. And religion's handy when people die. I can attest to this. Centuries of finely honed funeral rites are handy in channeling grief, not to mention for doing something with the body. I just can't see an Atheist Grief Ceremony as being much use. So, really PZ, I'm not a believer either, but what's the harm in a little churchin'? An atheist can never be truly free until he's comfortable enough to sing in the choir.

Atheist Faithiest

Faithiest. Accommodationist. One har har perjorative and one mildly insulting. I guess put me squarely in the accommodationist camp. As if we unbelievers have a choice. I'm talking about the controversy raging  in the science blogs between those who consider religion the enemy of science and maintain that a person cannot justify holding religious and scientific methodologies in the same cranium ( the True Unbelievers) amd the Accommodationists (yay) who believe it is possible to be religious and a good scientist and, more importantly, that is necessary to reach out to people of faith and explain that it is possible to maintain their faith and accept the results of scientific inquiry, particularly regarding evolution. Of course, this ain't possible with a Young Earth Creationist. But they're setting up their own separate but unequal systems of "education" and "science". On the True Unbeliever side we have bloggers like Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Abbie Smith and Larry Moran on the Accommodationist side we have Josh Rosenau and John Wilkins. In the middle we have openly religious scientists like Ken Miller and Francis Collins, taking hostile fire from the Creationists and friendly fire from some of the science bloggers. Now Miller and Collins are big boys and I'm sure they were aware that they were going to take some shit for coming out with their weird fusion of science and religion. But that's their philosophy, not their science. As far as I can tell, no one in either camp has faulted them on their scientific work. I became aware of the controversy when ERV wrote a post slamming the appointment of Collins to head the NIH. The objections seem to stem from his professed evangelical faith and fear of what he might do rather than looking at what he has actually done. This smacks of ferreting out any sign of belief, even if it doesn't appear to influence the work. We have the spectacle of the True Unbelievers sniffing out any sign of belief, even in other unbelievers. Remind you of any other particular group? As Wilkins says (and, ahem, I have said) it is silly to argue whether a person can be religious and a scientist at the same time. We have thousands of examples that this can happen. The only points worth arguing are which questions can be tested and belong to science.