Let’s Hear it for Animism!

Hmm. This was not the ringing endorsement of animism (and polytheism) that I was expecting from your excerpts – unless I'm misreading the article and it was supposed to be more tongue-in-cheek.

It seems to me like (as kauko said above), it largely accepts the argument put forward by New Atheists that the nonmaterial doesn't exist and belief in the nonmaterial is mere superstition – but simply twists this argument to say that sometimes irrational superstition is just fine and should be left alone. This kind of argument doesn't jive for me for a few reasons:

(a) It admits to the possibility of the New Atheists (and Asma himself) having a Western bias, but doesn't take that bias seriously. Though Asma admits that our conclusions about the nature of reality are at least in part products of our cultures and our personal experiences, he makes no indication of actually applying this awareness to call into question the Western scientific assumption of a dead-matter universe governed by predictable laws. He applies it only to non-Western peoples to explain their superstition, and to New Atheists to explain their provincialism. If he applies it to his own worldview, I don't see any evidence of it anywhere in the article.

(b) It takes for granted a dichotomy between rational and irrational that ignores the function of the non-rational as distinct from either of these. So the argument lacks nuance and even, potentially, shrugs off the concern of cognitive dissonance that results from a person willfully engaging in self-consciously irrational behavior. The idea of intentionally using religious ritual to numb emotional or psychological pain, even when you believe such behavior is irrational, seems irresponsible and escapist (and personally, I find it disturbing). At the very least, it encourages a certain amount of dis-integration of the psyche which I can't imagine would actually be healthy for a person.

(c) The idea that something can't be condescending if you also apply it to yourself is just… silly. Hasn't this guy ever heard of self-deception, self-hatred, or heck, just plain old-fashioned low self-esteem?

(d) The idea that we can judge between dangerous and benign religions takes a lot for granted, and I'd have to hear a much more detailed explanation about who and how such judgements would be made before I could be even remotely convinced that it's a good idea to start dealing out verdicts. I'm also a little worried by how unabashedly anthropocentric his criteria are.

I can completely see why both New Atheists and sincerely religious folks would be less than thrilled by his article. All in all, I wish he'd spent more time talking about the New Atheists themselves and exploring a more detailed explanation of their arguments and its flaws.

Well, I agree that there could be a strong argument made that there are more problems with monotheistic religions than in animism. There would be both political and spiritual reasons to consider here. That said, even if such an argument were successful, the atheists won't pay attention because they've already dismissed any spiritual beliefs/explanations/tendencies. It is possible in my department, for instance, to be a closet Christian. So we might have two tasks: argue for animism against the monotheists and argue for animism against the atheists. We'll need two completely different arguments.

Interesting article, in that it doesn't completely crush animism. The question of Asma's that I find most relevant is "how do we discriminate between dangerous and benign religions?" And in this question, I would include atheism and scientific rationalism as religions, as well as fundamentalist and liberal churches, polytheistic and monotheistic belief systems.

Delighted to have stumbled on this intelligent pagan blog. Best wishes, Puny.

To me it seemed like the overall message of the article was that animism is superstitious nonsense, but it makes people feel good so it should be left alone. The author basically seems to accept all of the arguments offered by the 'New Atheists' but stops short of believing that religion needs to be eliminated, which I guess is an improvement, but not by much.

Ursyl, I've had the same experiences that you've had, unfortunately. The Christian monotheism = all of "serious" religious/spiritual thought has been way too pervasive for far too long, so I'm always happy to see articles such as this one.

Being a "hard polytheist" myself, it's very encouraging to see animism given something of it's fair share. Rarely do we come across even a vague defense of that point-of-view and spiritual system. Keeping ourselves and society in right balance with Nature seems the only reasonable approach to life's ills (to me); at least there are more writers willing to explore those venues. Refreshing!

I can't go read the comments today, it will piss me off, and I don't need that right now. But I hope people will go support the positive step out of fundamentalist skepticism. I just can't suffer the fundies (of any stripe) today.

Fundamentalism is the blind following of a revealed dogma, while science is the exploration of the world based on certain premises deduced through reason. Materialism is one of the guiding principles of this investigation, something teased out by logic rather than given to us by some communicative spirit. That science has shown us no way in which spirits interact with nature, and has shown us no clear evidence of any deity, does not mean that the atheism that results from such findings (or lack thereof) in any way equates with fundamentalism. And to say so is a tacit admission that the supernatural world-view has failed to such a degree that the implementation of straw men and argument ad hominem is the only defense supernaturalism has left.

That hardly follows, since materialism is… Materialist. While it's good at studying *material,* it simply can't 'prove negatives about things which it specifically excludes from study as …Nonmaterialistic.

While it's certainly possible for science to refute claims about the physical world, it cannot say 'There are no spirits,' …in fact it tends to discard as anomalies or just statistical outliers a lot of observed phenomena that are *not* something that's mechanistically-repeated.

A lot of 'skepticism' is in the habit of going after the rather more grandiose claims of monotheist religions and, well, a certain number of charlatans. …in fact, therefore, usually setting about 'debunking' nothing more than skepticism's own characterizations of what's 'supposed' to be happening in what it terms 'the supernatural.'

Essentially, this often means science is defining things out of its own methodology and then demanding Spirit behave in a scientific, yet demonstratively not-scientific manner.

Science is a *method.* It requires a certain rigidity and structure in order to function consistently. At charting repeatable physical manifestations of the world, it's *excellent.* Where it doesn't function so well is in explaining things that, scientifically-speaking, "shouldn't" happen, or even, which are inherent, perhaps, to consciousness itself: which is one of the very same instruments by which we as humans try to observe with.

Where there is atheist fundamentalism, so to speak, is where scientific materialist rationalism goes beyond telling how things work, and insisting that itself must indeed define the limits of what's to be considered valid or indeed, the shape of the universe. More alarmingly, where it believes this is a reason for humans to scorn emotion, dreams, feelings, and, yes, spirituality entirely merely because it's not rational materialist atheism.

Science is a good tool, when used properly. It's just not the only one out there.

I'm not sure if this idea of "supernatural intervention" is found in all religions. I'm sure there are plenty of people who believe in spirits in deities that don't make a habit of breaking the laws of nature. They're not really super-natural in the sense of being above or beyond nature, they ARE nature.

My favorite part of the original article was that it reminded us that animism is not in a zero-sum game with science. That's why I have a much easier time with it than I do with a religion that relies on a God of the Gaps.

As far as I can tell the author of that article is neither Pagan, polytheist or animist. He's journalist, trying to make a point that will be read and pondered by the people he thinks need to ponder it.

I would put it thus: That science is a very good method for determining the mechanisms of material reality, that is, it is usually a good option for answering questions about how things work.

What science *cannot* answer is questions concerning what things mean. *Meaning* is the bailiwick of ideology, whether philosophy, religion, or otherwise.

Science does not provide meaning, because it, as a system, is unable to; it is not *meant* to find the meanings in things, or the meaning in everything. Rationalist materialism is an ideology that claims that, since science is incapable of finding meaning, meaning must not exist. This does not follow, if simply because science, while a useful tool, is not the only way of knowing.

Yes, because if science (still) hasn't got an answer, then anything goes: unicorns and fairies become legitimate evidence, and wishful thinking becomes a sound mode of reasoning.

People and societies are material phenomena, inhabiting the real world. The methods and principles of science apply here as anywhere else, only it is so much more difficult to apply them because of the supreme complexity of the subject. Questions of meaning are also "about how things work", namely, how we, as purposeful and interacting human beings, work.

It would be healthy to note that, historically, *every* subject that has ever fallen under the dominion of science, had previously been thought outside its reach by the defenders of tradition and faith (the physical sublunar world, the celestial spheres, the living, and now gradually: the social and mental domains). The trend is unmistakable, and nothing has ever been proved to be in principle non amenable to be approached by the scientific method. Especially, as Tim Minchin says, every mystery that was ever solved has turned out NOT to be magical.

Frankly, I dispute that that's *any* kind of 'standard,' …'Fundamentalism' may often *lead* to acts of violence (precisely because it refuses to see any other point of view as valid, which eventually takes communication off the table,) …for someone to *be* fundamentalist doesn't mean they have to do these things you say *first.*

That's another example of 'atheism' simply redefining the issue to say 'Atheism good, all else bad, but we're not being fundamentalist cause we say only the 'enemy' 'superstitionists' have fundamentalists.'

Which is no different from some monotheists pointing in other directions when called on their own behavior.

To be very honest, when the death threats and the rest start flying, it's too freakin' *late.*

That's by definition, of course, and only takes into account where you may believe or claim 'science' and 'Defenders of tradition and faith' were *at odds* on a scientific or science-like basis.

How 'science' and monotheism may *claim* the narrative goes is one thing: in some ways, this narrative goes back to the article's content: there's that self-serving notion between those rationalist (but often wrong) monotheist authorities and the monotheist-centric *atheists* that each claim a unitary, linear, literalist, essentially materialist 'authority' (even an abstract one) is the 'highest order' of the universe, which then gets to define what's 'real' or 'advanced' or 'primitive,' and proscribe all other thought or experience.

Each of those sides have more in common with each other in some important ways, than do experience-based spiritualities have with either. 'Atheist fundamentalism' refuses to see the functional differences between belief systems, and in fact often oversteps the boundaries of what's truly scientific.

While of course insisting that both ancient and modern Pagans have less of a clue about science than we actually do. 'Scientific skepticism' hardly has a perfect record, nor can it lay claim to all knowledge in the name of atheism. Science, as I mentioned, has a great deal of difficulty trying to study *rare* events, or rarely-observed ones. Things it's insistently placed in the realm of superstition and folklore do occasionally turn out to be quite 'real' even by science's own standards: giant squid and rogue waves and even the coelocanth come to mind.

Often 'atheistic fundamentalism' indeed blinds itself: off 'hunting dread Superstition,' it's often interested in the hobgoblins *it* makes of many things, generally puffing them up into straw-men and insisting that, for instance, 'To prove magic or anything we consider 'magical' you have to break the bank at a casino, over and over, even if no one's claiming that's how it works to begin with.'

More than that, as the popularized snark of the New Atheists becomes some way for people to …well, snark without thinking, it's not elevating the debates or honoring the spirit and practice of science, just taking out frustration with certain *anti-intellectualisms* on anyone with a spiritual or even mythic viewpoint, often to the point of embracing and spreading *false information about what people believe to begin with.*

Certainly, from a Pagan standpoint, our view of 'magic,' broadly speaking really doesn't mean that science can't know anything about the world, or that an animistic or any sort of religious view must contradict the truly verifiable. (We're back to the authoritarian monotheisms that think the slightest gap in scientific knowledge must mean the whole thing's 'false prophecy' and can be made to say whatever the dogma wants: that view's about *convincing* people, not learning anything)

For many of us, the world is alive, conscious, and interactive in some way, and I certainly believe it is, yes, even in terms of reason. (Hey, some people get more than our share of, 'Well, that shouldn't have been possible…' While it's often food for thought, you're also less concerned with 'proving' things than dealing with them. )

Where science often fails to cope is with our own subjectivity about the world, experiences that are not …chartable. When in the forest, you don't chart and map the acoustic signature of any leaf, discard any 'outliers' and then insist 'It's just the wind: there are no animals making some of those sounds,' …you do what we're pretty well evolved to do, actually: you turn off the analysis and take it in: the 'sound that doesn't fit' is what gets further attention.

But really, just cause science*has* solved many mysteries doesn't mean they *aren't* magical, except by its own definitions.

A lot of 'debunking' efforts about 'the supernatural' have pretty much constituted what I call 'Plugging a Speak and Spell into the WWW and asking 'Is the Internet *right?*'

"Yes, because if science (still) hasn't got an answer, then anything goes: unicorns and fairies become legitimate evidence, and wishful thinking becomes a sound mode of reasoning."

Not only is this a pitiful straw-man argument, it doesn't even address my point. This leads me to believe that you didn't understand my point to begin with, so let me give some examples.

I go into an art museum and see a sculpture, or a painting, that *moves* me in some deeply emotional fashion. The sciences can tell me about the dimensions of what I'm looking at, the chemical composition, the mass, how the molecular surface structure reflects or refracts light in order for me to see color and texture, how my eyes focus light and send signals to my brain so that I am capable of seeing and interpreting the work of art in question, how neurons fire to cause an emotional reaction, etc.; there might even, someday, be a science that can explain how my particular history and emotional state at the moment interacts with the visual signals to trigger that emotional reaction.

Thus far, all that science is capable of, all it will *ever* be capable of, is quantifying the quantifiable and explaining mechanisms. It *cannot,* however, capture the experience and the emotion, the "meaning", to me, of what is occurring. A poem or a song or a ritual would capture the experience with much greater facility.

Or, for example, biochemistry can explain the chemical reactions that occur in the body when someone falls in love, and evolutionary psychology can tell us what kind of people we might be attracted to, and how this is evolutionarily advantageous and somewhat hard-wired into our neurons. What is does *not* do, thereby, is explain love, what it feels like to be in love, what love *means* to the people who are in it.

The Dawkinses of the world, of which you seem to be one, would say that this is because there is no such thing as *meaning* in these events: it's all just a firing of neurons, whether random or evolutionarily hard-wired, nothing to see here, move along. This, I suspect, is because religious traditions like Christianity have long tended to overstep their own bounds with regards to science (forbidding, for a while, the knowledge of the very Pagan scientists of Classical Greece, for instance), that folks like Dawkins feel they have to push back, go on the offensive, destroying anything smacking of religion or similar non-rationality before it tries to destroy science again.

This zero-sum religion vs. science idea is unnecessary. I have outlined above a few situations in which it is possible to have both a scientific and an emotional appreciation of the same event; I purposely chose two instances where science might be able to explain what's going on, but still manages to *miss the point entirely*. The same could be said about science and religion. You could attempt to explain it out of existence, but you would still be missing the point.

Besides, going out to evangelize to the superstitious heathen about the wonderful light of pure rationality is a cultural meme you pick up from the very religions to which you are most properly opposed. If I had more time, I'd love to write a side-by-side comparison of how materialist rationalism is the same kind of monotheist intolerance as we've seen before, only in a different guise this time.

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing it with us, Jason!

Excellent response.

Hey, you know, that's part of why, as a Pagan, I *can* fix your mechanical stuff *and* dress like an Elf if I so see fit.

"Magic? Oh, you want *extraordinary* magic. What makes you think your intellectual thingie is the most-pressing concern in the world for *that?"

I gotta say, the stuff I've seen and even could be said to have 'done,' that actually would seem to blatantly-defy the laws of physics (Stubbornly, I might add, I didn't start *out* all mystical, you know,) have had a tendency to either be saving either my arse or someone else's and in various ways darn near yank my armo out of its socket, so just maybe whatever *that* is doesn't crap on demand cause someone has a fit of intellectual pique.

I can live with that. Call it 'anomaly,' just don't let anyone rewrite yer mechanism over it.

I've always wondered why anyone would bother to disbelieve in just one god. *smile*

"I gotta say, the stuff I've seen and even could be said to have 'done,' that actually would seem to blatantly-defy the laws of physics."

Okay. The list? What have you seen? What have you done? Why do you trust your demonstrably fallible human senses? Are there more feasible explanations? Why assume a whole new otherworldly category of explanations, given that mystical interpretations of phenomena have only ever failed in the past? You must have, to be entertained seriously, some rather startling examples of miracles. Or are you only peddling *ordinary miracles* in contrast to *extraordinary miracles*?

Subjective experiences are wonderful, but when have they ever been particularly reliable? Isn't the whole point the Gnu Atheists make that we can't just arrogantly rely on subjective claims about the nature of reality? That this path has only ever taken us down dead ends? Materialism isn't some a priori philosophical commitment, it's the only reliable method the human race has found for dealing with the world.

Most importantly of all… …why believe yourself? Why believe your experiences when they fly in the face of discernible reality? Doesn't it seem infinitely more likely that you're just wrong, or wish-thinking, than that you alone are some arrogantly blessed portal or witness to a spiritual realm? The egotism is quite astounding.

Animism? Paganism? How are these respectable philosophical positions? What *reliable reason* can anyone grasp to subscribe to them?