~ reasonable morality ~

Everyday around the noon-hour, I take a brisk walk around the downtown area. It's a great way to remove my person from the stresses and irritations of whatever might be happening at work, to get the heart rate up a bit, and to zone out and reflect on whatever I feel like. On this day, I began my walk by thinking about how an acquaintance recently went on a tirade to me about her "weird" cousin, the agnostic. It irritated me, the tirade, for a number of reasons, including this acquaintance's assumption that I am a believer. Somehow, I have a number of acquaintances that I see on a regular basis who are believers, and because of their regular need to discuss with me their belief and how they feel non-believers or people who believe differently than they believe are "weird", I've opted to not share much personal information with them. Somehow, the mere idea that they would have the gall to judge me if I indicated that I am a stone cold atheist irritates me beyond words. When the acquaintance was telling me all about her "weird" cousin, the agnostic, I wanted to articulate something about agnosticism being a pinnacle of reason, but the idea that she would then go and whisper to the other believers about me simply infuriated me. I'm still trying to figure out why it bugs me so much that believers would judge me, after all, I judge them.

I surmise that part of what bugs me is that, when one suggests to a believer that one is not, the believer tends to always want to know "why?" And when one responds, "Science and Reason" the believer challenges that assertion as though they are things that people just pull out of their butts and call "Truth." Truth, schmuth. Why should we not believe? Because in the state of nature, we are born and we die and we have an opportunity to do some stuff in between. Then someone comes along and tries to get us to believe, and it doesn't make any sense. Not that everything has to make sense and not that it's possible for us to know anything, but I'm not about to believe in anything unless there's reason and proof behind it.

Which gets me to a 'reasoned morality'.

Despite my being a stone cold atheist, I don't define myself by my lack of belief. After all, I don't identify myself as a non-this or a non-that in other areas. 'Secular humanist' is a nice term, but I remain ambivalent about it. Anyway, one of my major peeves is the association of belief and morality. Despite the semantics, I place a high regard on 'reasoned morality,' or ethics, or doing the right thing, what have you. I have a feeling that a lot of believers have what they call 'morals' by which they judge other people. That's one of the other things that really bugs me about the thought of a believer judging me: 'morals'.

As a non-believer, I feel very strongly about life. Not as defined in the abortion debate, but as defined as the opportunity to exist between the space of time when one is born and when one dies. That opportunity is where I place morality. In this way, 'immorality' occurs when one reduces someone else's opportunity. Anything else, I have no opinion (qualified, I have plenty of opinions, but they don't revolve around the concept of 'reasoned morality'). During my noon-time walk today, I was thinking about how strongly I feel about the environment, and how I feel environmentalism to be a pillar of 'reasoned morality'. Despite being a 'secular humanist', I seem to care less about humans the more and more that they ruin the environment. No other human atrocity makes me more sick to my stomach than global warming. And by 'sick to my stomach' I refer to the overwhelming feeling of foreboding and impending doom. It's different than the desire to throw up everything I've ever eaten when I think about the violence that humans do to each other.

I don't call myself an environmetalist because 'doing the right thing' is so obvious it should be a given. That very same acquaintance who has the 'weird' agnostic cousin also, for some reason I'll never understand, does not believe in recycling. This is a total dumb generalization, but I frequently wonder if believers reap more havoc on the environment because they care more about some fantasy world than this real world. ...Which, I reiterate, is a dumb generalization, but I find it hard to respect any belief system that relegates the physical world below some sort of quote/unquote "spiritual world." I think that physical pleasures are wonderful, and I don't merely refer to something like the scent of opium at an orgy. 'Earthly delights' have a negative connotation...and I have no idea why this physical world is seen with disdain by some believers. I'm working towards some kind of assertion about my atheism being directly related to my passion for this world.

Back to the environment. Just to get on my soap box for a moment, I've been thinking about how I view many of my lifestyle choices not only in terms of promoting a quality of life for myself, but also as a way to comply with my beliefs about environmental responsibility. Part of the reason that I live so close to where I work is because I never ever want to come close to even considering driving to work. Being able to leisurely walk to work in the mornings is not only promoting a quality of life (by not having to spend time commuting in traffic every day), it's also part of a social and environmental responsibility that I firmly believe in. I know that not everyone is able to find a residence and workplace that are so closely located, nevertheless, I find myself becoming absolutely sick to my stomach when I think about so many people driving on a consistent basis. I've been reading a lot about people turning to bicycle commuting, and the constant theme is how easy it is. All you need is the right gear and a good route. End soap box.

Anyhoo, I could probably continue to blather on with some more logical inconsistencies and irrational generalizations, but I've got work to do. Which is why I shall end this post with a brief ride report. And by 'brief', I mean the opposite of that.

On Monday evening, Josh and I did about a 12 mile mountain bike ride up and down Robie Creek Road. The first part of the ride, I was thinking would be a good route for a beginner to learn a few novice mountain biking skills on. The downhill part of the ride was amazing fun! The top half of the road has a decent grade to it, so riding down, I was able to go pretty darn fast. It was also a good opportunity for me to practice my disc breaks without being afraid of dying. But yes, I was a bit of a speed demon.

Then on Tuesday, we rode out the Greenbelt and went up some dirt road that I don't know the name of. It was okay, good for having consistent riding.

Yesterday after work, I was taking a nap, when Josh called to ask what I wanted to do that evening. I said in a sleepy, confused, groggy way, "I want to go on you with a bike ride." Instead, I went on a bike ride with him. It was a super fun 10 mile ride over the Boise front. We met at the skate park near Reserve, rode up Central Ridge, down some connector trail, through some singletrack through the trees, over to this other connector trail that has a super steep and loose sand section (which I rode over with no problem), took Freeway over to Sidewinder, up and up to the top and back down Sidewinder, back down Freeway, down Red Sands, and then on that other connector-type trail through lower Hulls Gulch. It was a wonderful ride with lots of ups and downs and bits of challenging stuff. I've now had enough good rides to distance myself from that bad ride where I fell a bunch of times, and I've done some good solid work with re-wiring my brain on my braking technique (so as not to throw myself over the handlebars). After the ride, we went to Lucky 13 for some beers. I said I'd buy, so as I was ordering two beers, the bartender said that for only $3 more, I could get a whole pitcher. I thought about this, thinking about how I was just coming from a ride and my metabolism was such that anything I ingested would go directly into my blood stream, and how I did not need to get wasted on a school night. YET, the pitcher was clearly the better buy! There were some dudes behind me who were pressuring me to get the pitcher, saying that they would buy the extra beer from me. Ultimately, I purchased just the two pints of beer. It was a difficult decision.

Posted by jennifer at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)