Lisa's comments (member since Jan 04, 2008)

Lisa's comments from the Banned Books group.

James and the Giant Peach: Huh. Turns out that escaping child abuse is disobedient? Marvelous.

A Light In The Attic: Breaking dishes? Scandalous. I can see how that ranks right up there on the serious danger scale.

Seriously? I just finished this book as part of my ongoing quest to read all the Newbery books. Although I remember getting a laugh out of that bit, it didn't occur to me until right now that the word 'scrotum' (in a completely non-sexual context, even) would cause that kind of uproar.

Surely it's an interesting cultural distinction, but I feel like the effect is the same. A group, out of fear and ignorance, targets a work of literature that touches upon topics that might be considered controversial. Whether they're a mob with a torch or a school board with the power to limit curricula and library content, the reasoning and the end result are generally similar. "They're corrupting our children and our society! At least, we think they are, though we're too afraid of the effect it might have on us to actually try to read the book."

I'm looking forward to hearing the reading list for your class. It sounds like you might be in a community small enough to challenge some real pieces of interesting literature, and maybe even small enough to push against some everyday reading. It's a situation calling for some serious provocation to enforce. Dear communities: Do you think this book hurts our children? If so, how?

I use both terms, because sometimes "banned books" refers solely to those banned by a government (Anarchist's Cookbook, Mein Kampf, etc.). If you look up "banned books" at Wikipedia, for example, you get a list of the latter. You have to look up "challenged books" to get those that have been removed from local libraries or curricula in the US.

Hmmm...as a psychologist myself, I'm pretty sure books don't cause cutting. That's a pretty freakishly naive position, and I hate it when people in my field give the field a bad name like that. That makes me sad. And also makes me curious to read the book.

There seem to be some historical hot-button issues around which books get banned/challenged. Adolescent sexuality, alternative sexuality, politics, cultural issues, violence, "witchcraft"/non-christian behavior or values, kids being cruel to each other, and age-appropriateness seem to be the biggies.

You could assign them to each read a book off the list and discuss what might have gotten it challenged. Kids that age are beginning to be pretty good at critical thinking, given the chance, and that way you don't have to come up with some kind of all-encompassing explanation, they can figure it out for themselves.

Animal Farm is another interesting politics one, and it might be old-school enough not to get taught in a lot of schools. This might be a really good time in history to get kids talking about government power and how it can be abused...

I'm glad to hear that The Giver is often taught in schools...but given that you've discarded that one, Brave New World, and 1984, what do you have that represents the politics angle?

Beloved is an excellent choice for the cultural side, as is I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and The Bluest Eye (though all written, vocab-wise, for adults).

His Dark Materials and Harry Potter seem to cover the same basic territory...the anti-christian stuff. I'd make the Pullman series extra credit, so that some of your kids would read it, since nearly all of them will come already ready to discuss HP.

Isn't A Separate Peace covered in schools anymore? I just re-read it recently and wasn't as fascinated as I thought I would be. It also seems like, with The Chocolate War and The Outsiders, you've got the "kids can be cruel" aspect down.

I don't know all the books on your list, but except for the fact that I can't identify a politics book or an alternative-sexuality one, it looks like a great list. It's too many books for kids that age to cover, but if you sort it into categories (adolescent sexuality, politics, violence, kids-are-cruel, witchcraft/non-christian, alternative sexuality, cultural boundaries), then you can make sure they each read at least one on each topic.

I think a lot of these books can be life-changing for a variety of reasons, but kids who most need their lives changed by books like these are unlikely to get that permission slip signed, and kids who have permission are likely to have their horizons already broadened in some ways. You may be preaching to the partly-converted, but if so, your job is to get them fired up, get them talking about these topics and how books might get banned/challenged, and get them interested in the WHY.

The "banned" books list at wikipedia only lists books that have been banned by governments or other similar entities. The "challenged" books list might be of more use:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mos...

Middle school's tough to choose for...some kids might not have the reading level for adult material.

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is one of my favorites, and represents the politics angle. A Judy Blume book might be interesting both for an adolescent sexuality topic and for the history...are they still controversial? For kids that age, who may not be avid readers, it might be interesting to throw in something like Heather Has Two Mommies, which can foster discussion without the reading getting in the way, and also gets them to think about age-appropriateness. You could probably easily discuss Harry Potter without having to ask anyone to read a thing...97% will have already read the series. And it covers the "witchcraft scares the fundamentalists" angle. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) is one that doesn't get much attention anymore and covers the violence angle. Then all you need is a book that treads on cultural toes, though there's got to be something a little more relevant than Huck Finn. Am I missing any of the major reasons books get challenged?

Oh, Trevor, clearly you were not raised Catholic. A "bad" Catholic is one who was ever baptized yet doesn't go to Catholic mass every Sunday, take the oh-so-Catholic sacrament, drink the wine (bizarrely, it was generally Mogen David for many decades), and believe without questioning. Depending on who asks, I sometimes describe myself as a lapsed Catholic. You could have converted to Mormonism, then Buddhism, then Satanism, then ended up a Scientologist, but if you were ever baptized Catholic as a baby, the Catholic church will forever, for political reasons, consider you one of theirs. I was even conformed...uh, I mean, confirmed Catholic, though I was only 15 at the time (that was when they moved the confirmation age from 16 to 8, as if 8-year-olds could decide for themselves that this was the religion they wanted to accept and commit themselves to for the rest of their lives).

Even my mom, who for most of my life told me about how Mary was her personal savior and she prayed to her every day, is now pretty disgusted with the Catholic church and its insistence upon male dominance without the influence of women, which has led to priests who don't have sex with women, but cost the church millions of dollars because they have sex with little boys instead. One can be a "bad" Catholic for many reasons, and it often has little to do with one's faith in god. My mom would call herself a bad Catholic these days, and she won't go to church.

What I do agree with you 100% is that at some point, if not immediately (there's always a cultural influence), an atheist must look at the options and choose a moral code (I call it ethics, because the word 'moral' seems so loaded toward forced rules to me, though it's much more usage than definition) for him- or herself. The religious have the choice to do so or not to (and to accept the one that comes with their religious culture). I really don't believe that amoral atheists come to that conclusion without a great deal of thought...I think that any atheist who's ever discussed, and therefore had to defend, his or her position, is pretty clear about the implications of their moral/ethical responsibility. I've really met very few amoral atheists, though I'd be interested in having a conversation with one (who was beyond adolescence, anyhow...it's easy to be that black and white when you're 17 and you're brain's not done cooking yet).

Nated, I'm a psychologist, so I give great credence to experiential evidence...and also know just how fallible it can be. One's prior experience, culture, and expectations hugely influence how people interpret their experiences, and how they describe these experiences to others. On the other hand, one's own experience of their reality is the only thing that matters when trying to understand what someone may be going through.

The thing is, I don't count on other people's subjective reality to inform my own (except in understanding the social world and what people perceive/how they behave). When I was 13, a woman in a public library told me that she'd seen Jesus Christ in her living room. Something like that sure would help me understand her behavior in other contexts, but doesn't do much for my understanding of whether there's a god.

I certainly wouldn't argue that all religious people follow a morality blindly. There are those who achieve the ability to envision the greater good and act accordingly despite personal consequences (often great religious leaders). That's not blind, in my view, but deeply considered. I would argue that religion allows people who might be stuck there anyway to rely on "good/evil" or "law-and-order" moral systems (I'm basically describing Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%27... ), but it's kind of a chicken-egg argument. Does religion offer answers to people who (probably anyway) have difficulty with thinking through moral questions, or does having a system in place they can adopt prevent the thinking and hard questions that would advance the development of people who find these tasks difficult? Hard to say.

So you're saying that the Chinese believed in dinosaurs before the discovery of fossils because they had discovered fossils?

"For most of human history there was no evidence of the existence of dinosaurs, but that did not mean that they did not exist."

True. And I'm willing to believe that there are more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. I'm willing to agree that there is more out there than we've seen yet, because there is plenty of historical evidence to support this claim. However, before there was evidence of dinosaurs, groups of people didn't run around talking about their faith that giant lizards once dominated the earth. It's that belief in something *specific* that is as-of-yet unproven that is the basis of faith.

"What about that scientific maxim: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"?"

I've said before that proving a negative is nearly impossible in a scientific sense. Absolutely agreed. However, the choice to believe in a specific god strikes me as entirely arbitrary, except in a cultural context. There's no evidence that the flying spaghetti monster isn't running the show, instead of a god, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start believing in the flying spaghetti monster. I choose only to base my reality on the things I can see and demonstrate, and as new things come into the realm of human understanding that can be demonstrated, I'm happy to adjust my reality to accommodate. In contrast, if it were a belief system, faith and reason are two separate systems, and it would be harder for me to adjust my 'faith' in the nonexistence of something when presented with newly discovered reasons and facts.

"...it is clear that these are the people that need to prove the existence of this proposed force – not those who doubt."

Good point, Trevor. If I say something is true without some sort of demonstrable evidence, it's not up to other people to prove me wrong. If I want to convince others, I would have to be the one to provide the evidence. If I were to describe some sort of heretofore unknown subatomic particle, and told you all about its supposed properties, I would need to be the one to bring the evidence to the table.

"...as the final word will be from the faithful, “I know this to be true – not in my head, but in my heart.”"

Thank you, Trevor. That was very well-put. I have chosen to stick to only things that I can know with my head. And that is no more a faith-based decision than it is for any person, believer in the non-demonstrable or not, to accept that things that can be demonstrated are true. I'm perfectly happy with others choosing to believe with their hearts things the head can't prove, but I don't. I don't take it on faith that there's nothing else out there, but I won't choose some specific things (various conceptions of god, or ghosts, or the flying spaghetti monster) to believe are out there until the evidence is in. That's not faith, that's just waiting for proof before believing in something.

Exactly. Evolutionary and genetic have two very different meanings.

I brought up genes to play devil's advocate, that even very complex things can be directly genetic, but really, what evolves are structures (like the brain) and how they influence the way we behave in certain situations. Genes themselves don't confer any evolutionary advantage--they're just little bits of DNA. Genes offer many possibilities and constrain some others, but it's what genetic possibilities get expressed and in what contexts (ethology) that is the basis for the evolution of everything, including behavior.

Evolution has led to certain things the human brain does exceedingly well compared to other species (planning, metacognition, reasoning, all located in the prefrontal cortex; language, left frontal lobe), and other things it does quite poorly (sense of smell, for example). That doesn't mean that there is a gene for metacognition, or for poor sense of smell. It means they've evolved as part of the way humans are built. I'm just saying there are some compelling arguments for putting religious thought/spiritual belief on the list of things the human brain has evolved to do. And like all human abilities, it varies from person to person, probably largely based on context, but potentially also in some intrinsic way.

"But seriously, i suppose atheism is a position on religion, rather than a properly religious position. But then again, it is a belief in a certain state of the metaphysical (that it does not contain a God)."

I know it's natural for most people to see things, and word things, in terms of beliefs. But I've tried, I really have, to explain that atheism isn't a belief system. People with religious/spiritual beliefs usually (there are some bizarre exceptions out there) accept things that can be shown by evidence, and also choose to believe in things that cannot. That faith in things that cannot be demonstrated is a belief. Accepting things that can be demonstrated by at least a preponderance of the evidence is not a belief. I do not believe I have five fingers on each hand. I DO have five fingers on each hand. Atheists have chosen to accept only those things that can be demonstrated, and not those things that require faith or belief in things that cannot. It is not a faith-based position, but a rejection of the faith-based position that there is something beyond what we can demonstrate.

"My understanding of evolution is that for a trait to be selected it needs to confer an advantage on the holder that either increases the holder’s likelihood of mating or increases the holder’s offspring’s changes of survival. I would be surprised if a gene or brain structure was discovered that both did this and made one feel religious. Because there is a brain structure that ‘lights up’ when people report having religious experiences or seems to be affected in some way in the very religious, does not necessarily mean that is the evolutionary point of that brain structure. I’m not sure there really is such a simple causal relationship between brain structures and complex social behaviours."

Both the believer's likelihood of mating and the believer's own and offspring's chance of survival are increased by several community-related aspects of religion. It reinforces social norms not only when other people are watching, but when people are on their own--because god is watching. A common belief system is a powerful social bonding tool, as well as a force of competition with other groups (cuts down on the competition for resources). It also reinforces other evolutionary forces such as family bonds. It doesn't cause any of these behaviors, but it strengthens and solidifies them--think of it as evolutionary-social glue.

Keep in mind that human evolution didn't happen in our own social era, but in the 'environment of evolutionary adaptedness' very early in human history.

And you'd be surprised how localized some things are, even some fairly complex behaviors, in the brain. It's just that what humans have going on that (arguably) no other creatures do is the additional ability to then reflect on, plan, and organize these behaviors and feelings by using our extremely complex prefrontal cortex, the seat of all metacognition, planning, impulse control, and ability to allocate attention to different tasks.

"I feel cultural and social structures, like religions, really need to be explained on a scale somewhat different from the genetic one."

Individual genes aren't responsible for behavior, but the structure of human behavior is, indeed, evolutionary. That's slightly different than saying it's genetic. A tendency toward certain behaviors is certainly carried in the genes, but unlike eye color, which is controlled by a single gene, behaviors are influenced by a whole host of different genes working together, and is much more flexible. Saying that a tendency toward depression is moderately hereditary is somewhat different than saying there's a gene for depression.

A side note on looking at the evolutionary basis of behavior--it's exceedingly complex. As an example, some researchers were wondering what could possibly be the evolutionary argument for homosexuality. Interestingly, the female siblings of gay men tend to have a slight advantage in fertility. It could be that a gene or (more likely) particular combination of genes remains in the gene pool because of the evolutionary advantage it conveys on females, despite its reproductive detriment to males. A more intriguing explanation is that this gene remains in the gene pool not only because it provides a reproductive advantage to females, but because women who have more children benefit from a) having a family member without children as an additional provider or caretaker, and/or b) the diminished competition for resources for her children. And if this gay male does act as provider/caretaker for his sister's children, he is also indirectly promoting his own genetic survival through the genes he shares with the sister and her offspring.

Why is a certain female waist-to-hip ratio (a moderate hourglass shape) fairly universally attractive to men across cultures? Most likely because at one time it indicated health--well-enough fed and without intestinal parasites. It's also associated with greater fertility than being skinnier or being obese.

Even non-behavioral hereditary things have explanations that aren't obvious. Sickle-cell anemia is a single-gene hereditary disorder. If you have it on both chromosomes, you have sickle-cell anemia. If you only have one copy, though, then you have an advantage in retaining water--you're drought-resistant. It shows up more often in dark-skinned people because most areas in which drought posed the most danger were hot deserts near the equator, where people developed dark skin to protect from the sun.

My argument is simply that the evolution of behaviors is very complex and can seem strange from a current perspective. But an evolutionary argument for religion doesn't mean that religious belief is inevitable--just like any behavior, there are wide variations in the behaviors available in the gene pool. We atheists aren't an endangered species by any means. Like homosexuality, it may be protected in the gene pool due to some unexplained, hidden ancillary benefit.

As a fellow portlander, I agree that Powell's is the church of all things book! Evil as part of the human genetic fabric, though? I have a hard time with that. First, behavior can be based in evolution, but very few behaviors are purely genetic. But beyond that, it depends on how you define evil. Most atrocities are committed by people who really believe they are acting to change things for the better. Misguided, sure, but is that evil? Malicious choice to hurt others for pleasure or revenge? Usually much rarer (serial killers) or much smaller-scale (drug deal gone bad). The former might be legitimately called evil, but it's hard to argue that behavior like that is part of "our genetic fabric." The latter, while perhaps ruthless, might be better characterized as animal survival behavior gone awry--competition, self-defense, prey. Would we call any animal behavior evil? I find it hard to call much in human behavior 'evil', That seems so unchangeable--and uncomplicated. But I'm a psychologist, so if I believed in pure, simple, static evil in human behavior, I'd be out of a job.

There's plenty of other research, too, that locates spiritual beliefs in the brain, not (necessarily) the ether. I think this particular argument can go either way--I mean, if I were a god, wouldn't I have set aside a part of the brain devoted to believing in me? There's a part of the brain, near or part of the amygdala and/or the hippocampus (they're close together between the frontal/temporal lobes and the brain stem--much older, evolutionarily, than the frontal lobe) that, when affected by a rare but severe form of epilepsy (which is just a strong, uncontrollable stimulation of some part of the brain), results in extreme religious visions of the saint/shaman sort.

An interesting bit of (as always, very inconclusive) evolutionary psych research demonstrates that people are nearly incapable of describing most phenomena in any but anthropomorphic terms. The most interesting example was taking a sample of college students who had no philosophical/religious beef with evolution, and asking them to describe it. Something crazy like 70% couldn't describe it without saying something like "wants to attain" or "strives for perfection" or some other volitional statement. It could be cultural, but given the pretty much universal nature of anthropomorphizing things we don't understand, or even things we don't understand all that well (calling it god/gods/ghosts/spirits/ancestors/magic/whatever), it really seems plausible that the human brain is hardwired to understand the world in those terms. It's really very helpful if you're dealing with potentially violent humans and animals and need to predict their behavior, and may even be psychologically beneficial when dealing with things like death or natural disasters (the number of times people have told me, in tragic situations, "things always happen for the best/for a reason"...though it always pisses me off...I have a hard time imagining that people who feel bereft by the loss of a partner/a home/a child/a parent/a whatever feel better when they hear that, and I want to tell them instead that it must hurt like a bastard, and I'll show up tomorrow and bring cake/bring dinner/take out the trash/help them sort through the stuff/whatever).

I just wish it weren't so offensive to the religious that we've found this stuff in the brain or as such an inherent part of human behavior. If it's "natural" to believe in a higher power, then it ought to show up in the brain, which is where all "natural" human behavior originates. It ought to have traces in evolutionary psych, which is the backstory for all human behavior. I find it interesting, and allows for the possibility that belief evolved as a survival strategy for humans (my view). But even as a staunch atheist, I'd never take this stuff as proof of that, because it's so chicken-and-egg. As a behavioral scientist (I'm a psychologist), I don't consider the neurological or behavioral evidence to be conclusive at all. It just leaves the door open.

No, Wes, I haven't read it--yet. I'm the choir he's preaching to, so it seems kind of unnecessary for me to read it except to be able to discuss it with people for whom it might be more thought-provoking and raise more questions.

I do find it rare, though, for a book of this sort to contain much debate. Instead, most books that make an argument for a position, such as this one, are simply one voice in a much larger debate. As in any debate, one presents one's position and the evidence for it, and lets the other debater(s) present theirs. One debater rarely presents both positions (for example, a candidate for president rarely uses his limited time to describe in detail the merits of his opponent's positions in the course of making the argument that his own positions are better).

I think of this sort of thing as a conversation among books. All the participants (books, or if you prefer, authors) bring their own views, and the reader who would like to hear the range of options listens to each of them make their arguments.

And Trevor--what is "unquestioning faith in science"? Isn't the basis of science to question--and then to explore the evidence for an answer? (Sorry, I know you were actually speaking positively of science, but that kind of 'science is a religion, religion is a science' stuff freaks me out and leads to textbooks in which intelligent design is described as equally valid as evolution...)