The Bone Wars

December 16, 2014December 31, 2014 / egquillen / 5 Comments

Ever since I first learned of the term, I have not been the most avid fan of ‘non-religion.’ It’s always felt a bit too general, a little too ambiguous, and fairly equivocal in its meaning. Perhaps my greatest critique, though, is its use of ‘religion.’ As a relational term, the ‘non-religious’ individual is defined by their relationship to ‘religion’ which, for quite some time now, has been a term we just can’t seem to define with any certainty. So, for me, using ‘non-religion’ is like saying we’ve somehow figured out what ‘religion’ is, even if that just reflects our acceptance that it is a category ‘defined’ in yet an equally broad or general manner. One of my favorite requests of colleagues who us it, then, is to provide a definition of religion against which they are using ‘non-religion’ relationally. This has provided fun discussions, and at times erudite descriptions and defenses. I’m still not quite convinced.

While this post is about my dislike of ‘non-religion,’ it is also a criticism of the discourse within which the term ascended: the theoretical approach of defining and examining tricky terminology by creating, using, and promoting new terms, which I discussed briefly in last week’s post on Rumsfeldian Atheism. So, while ‘non-religion’ might seem to get the brunt of my discussion here, it is also aimed at terms like ‘ir-religion,’ ‘un-belief,’ or ‘positive and negative’ Atheism. To borrow their own language, then, I am using ‘non-religion’ here in a relational manner, allowing it to stand in as the direct representative for what I determine as ‘terminological abstractions.’

Which brings us to this post, and a look back. My first face-to-face encounter with ‘non-religion’ was at the Non-Religion and Secularity Research Network’s conference in 2012, held at Goldsmith’s University in London. I was very new to the field, and was thus a bit ill-prepared, so my attempt to criticize the term itself was perhaps a bit too mired in tangential humor. However, I still think the argument stands, which is why it is presented herein. First, though, and before delving into my criticism, I believe ‘non-religion’ deserves a fair introduction, which I present here with minimal commentary.

Non-Religion

The term itself, upon which the research organization The NSRN has built its foundation, stems from Lois Lee’s Doctoral Thesis, “Being Secular: Towards Separate Sociologies of Secularity, Nonreligion, and Epistemological Culture,” as well as a number of subsequent publications.[1] However, for the definition of ‘non-religion’ I will be using two sources connected to the NSRN, one from a description of their research agenda, and the other from their glossary of terms.

From the ‘about’ section of their page:

The two concepts of nonreligion and secularity are intended to summarise all positions which are necessarily defined in reference to religion but which are considered to be other than religious (see Lee, 2012). Thus, the NSRN’s research agenda is inclusive of a range of perspectives and experiences, including the atheistic, agnostic, religiously indifferent or areligious, as well as most forms of secularism, humanism and, indeed, aspects of religion itself. It also addresses theoretical and empirical relationships between nonreligion, religion and secularity.[2]

From the glossary:

Something which is defined primarily by the way it differs from religion. E.g.s might then include atheism, ‘indifference’ to religion and agnosticism would all be examples. Humanism would not be an example (although empirical cases of humanism may well be considered profoundly nonreligious in practice). Alternative spirituality would not be included where this spirituality is defined fundamentally by its autonomous principles and practices.[3]

With these two examples we get a better idea about why the term itself was constructed and how it might be made useful. They also provide what I feel is the ‘double-edge’ issue of using this sort of terminology. On one end, it provides a pragmatic, even practical, signifier that can summarize and house any and all sorts of relatable concepts under a general canopy. In this way, when we discuss individuals who share ideologies such as ‘Atheism’ or ‘agnosticism’ or ‘humanism,’ but do not wish to be labeled as such, using a term like ‘non-religion’ alleviates the issue of externally defining an individual rather than simply allowing them to internally define themselves. This, perhaps, works best when conducting sociological or survey-based quantitative research. On the other hand though, using a general term, even in all its practicality, might create larger issues concerning clarity. As well, and like I cited in my introductory critique, this also leads to a somewhat normative notion about what we mean by ‘religion.’ This, perhaps, is more problematic when conducting qualitative research.

So, while I definitely see the merits in using such general terminology, I still believe the bad outweighs the good. Moreover, I have frequently felt that constructing a new term, rather than focusing on a singular term that would then contribute to the discourse being formed by our collective examinations, seemed more like an impractical abstraction. Classifying all of us under a canopy might make practical sense in a sociological manner, but for the sake of clarity—perhaps even ethnographic clarity—this sort of generalization does more harm than good.

This argument took up the root of my presentation at the NSRN conference, which, with all its tangential and anecdotal non-sensory aside, I hope will make better sense of my argument.

Dinosaur Disparity

In 1877 Othniel Charles Marsh, a professor and paleontologist at Yale University, documented and published the discovery of a number of large vertebrae that he associated under the genera ‘sauropod.’ He named this specimen, Apatosaurus, or ‘deceptive lizard.’ Soon after, he documented another find, the largest, partially in-tact fossilized remains of any sauropod ever discovered. He named this one Brontosaurus, or ‘thunder lizard.’ While this might seem like an innocuous series of events, the discovery of these two dinosaurs speaks directly to the issue of terminological disparity, mostly because the latter dinosaur, Brontosaurus, never technically existed. Rather, what Marsh labeled as an entirely new species—Brontosaurus—was really just an adult specimen of the smaller Apatosaurus vertebrae. Thus, the Brontosaurus never really existed. It has always been an Apatosaurus.

While on the surface this presents an issue of taxonomic accuracy, which I will discuss below, the underlying problem concerning accuracy doesn’t become a major issue until a century later in October 1989. In that year, and as a promotional ‘tie-in’ with the video cassette release of Universal Picture’s The Land Before Time, the United States Postal Service released four ‘dinosaur stamps’ with the images of a Pteranadon, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Brontosaurus, and Stegosaurus.

For the Postal Service, these stamps were meant to provide more scientific depictions of the dinosaurs featured in the film. For the scientific community, however, they merely represented a misguided insult. Not only did they dismiss the fact that the Pteranadon was, in fact, not a dinosaur, but their perpetuated use of ‘Brontosaurus’ demonstrated an allegiance to familiarity rather than accuracy. After all, these were teaching aids, and they were teaching the wrong information.

Of course, the US Postal Service is not alone in its guilt. This is an issue that has carried on worldwide, demonstrating a discursive allegiance to the generally familiar mistake. For example:

This becomes an especially troubling issue when one considers the role commercial marketing plays in the discursive construction of conceptual identities. Consider, for example, the beloved ‘Littlefoot” in The Land Before Time, and the 13 sequels that have perpetuated his likeness as a ‘Brontosaurus.’

Then again, the blame of perpetuating this mistake is not solely the fault of stamps and blockbuster animated films.

In fact, the popular misidentification of Brontosaurus has been happening since 1914’s Gertie the Dinosaur helped spawn a number of Lost World themed comics all depicting a sauropod titled ‘Brontosaurus.’

Equally guilty is the marketing campaign of Sinclair Oil, which has used the image and name of the Brontosaurus since their two-ton animatronic sauropod was unveiled at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, and then re-cycled again in the New York World’s Fair’s Dinoland in 1964.

Walt Disney, of course, also has a hand in furthering this mistake, specifically for his use of the term ‘Brontosaurus’ in 1940’s Fantasia, a film that not only perpetuated the incorrect name, but also featured a battle between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Stegosaurus, an impossible interaction as the latter had been extinct for at least 80 million years before former ruled the Cretaceous period.

Even today, this controversy carries on in books and toys and hideous t-shirts, proving that when marketed properly, an incorrect term can over-power and even supplant an accurate one.

While I might conclude here, using the metaphor of the perpetuation of an incorrect, yet popularized term as a warning about the use of constructed definitions for the sake of generality, it is the genesis of this disparity, not just the disparity itself, that I believe offers an even clearer argument.

The Bone Wars

Between 1872 and 1892 two men, Edward Drinker Cope

and Othniel Charles Marsh,

vied for paleontological superiority, going to outrageous—almost comical—lengths to out-accomplish one another with discoveries and publications. They lied about their findings, stole specimens, sabotaged each other’s digs, and forged their data. They constructed whole skeletons using a ‘splitting’ technique, the combination of fossilized remains from completely unrelated sources, mixing bones of different age, sex, and species to create a more complete—and generalized—specimen. For example, Marsh used the skull of a Camarasaurus to complete the incomplete skeleton of his Brontosaurus, altering the way he and other paleontologists assessed the eating habits and environments of his greatest find.

Brontosaurus body with Camarasaurus head

Brontosaurus body with Apatosaurus head

Moreover, this equally led to a vague description, and drawing, further occluding the facts about the correlation between Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus

Brontosaurus excelsus, gen. et sp. nov.

“One of the largest reptiles yet discovered has been recently brought to light, and a portion of the remains are now in the Yale collection. This monster apparently belongs in the Sauropoda, but differs from any of the known genera in the sacrum, which is composed of five thoroughly co-ossified verte-bras. In some other respects it resembles Morosaurus. The ilium is of that type, and could hardly be distinguished from that of M. robustus, excepting by its larger size. One striking peculiarity of the sacrum in the present genus is- its comparative lightness, owing to the extensive cavities in the vertebrae, the walls of which are very thin.

The lumbar vertebras have their centra constricted, and also contain large cavities. The caudals are nearly or quite solid. The chevrons have their articular heads separate. The sacrum of this animal is, approximately, 50 inches (l-27m) in length. The last sacral vertebra is 292°TM in length, and 330mm in transverse diameter across the articular face. A detailed description of these remains will be given in a subsequent communication. They are from the Atlantosaurus beds of Wyoming. The animal was probably seventy or eighty feet in length.” [4]

As might be expected from this sort of confrontation, their feud bred factions, so that the next generation of palaeontologists, whose job it was to make sense of this chaos, took up sides within either camp.

One of these individuals was Henry Fairfield Osborn, a contemporary of Cope’s, who took it as his personal duty to destroy Marsh’s reputation and undermine all of his findings, particularly his sauropod specimens. To do this, he divided Marsh’s collections into synonymous taxonomies, using terminology that seemed similar, but still different, so as to deconstruct the larger concept into something that appeared otherwise ambiguous or dubious. What this also meant was a shift in terminology, not only removing Marsh’s influence in how these specimens were labeled, but altering them in such a way as to support his own stipulations.

Later, and in order to condense Osborn’s taxonomies into something more cohesive, Elmer Samuel Riggs, conducted his own survey, concluding even more decidedly—and objectively, as well—that many of the discoveries made by both men were equally synonymous. Most pertinent to this discussion here, he proclaimed with finality that Marsh’s notorious Brontosaurus was not in fact a unique species, but was rather a mislabeled adult skeleton of the previously discovered Apatosaurus.

After examining the type specimens of these genera, and making a careful study of the unusually well-preserved specimen described in this paper, the writer is convinced that [Marsh’s] Apatosaur specimen is merely a young animal of the form represented in the adult of the Brontosaur specimen. …In fact, upon the one occasion that Professor Marsh compared these two genera he mentioned the similarity between…their respective types. In view of these facts, the two genera may be regarded as synonymous. As the term “Apatosaurus” has priority, “Brontosaurus” will be regarded as a synonym [5]

With just a few sentences, Riggs made the closing statement on the issue of the Brontosaurus, demoting it from an identified thing, to a synonymous mistake.

Yet, and even though attempts at correcting this inaccuracy are constant reminders of the Apatosaurus’ true identity,

Brontosaurus still lives on. This is perhaps mostly the result of public discourse, of the way a term is consumed and propagated, and thus crystalized by its very usage. It is also, I might add, a warning against using synonymous—generalized—terminology in place of more correct terms.

Conclusion

One might think that this critical little anecdote about the dangers of terminological creativity is my attempt at promoting the term ‘Atheism’ above the term ‘non-religion.’ This would be, as I hope to elucidate, an incorrect perception. Rather, my criticism is not made here to promote my own work, but rather to suggest a bit more caution.

That is, I would argue that the ‘bone wars’ represents an ideal correlation to the discourse that develops out of an emerging field, such as the study of Atheism, non-religion, humanism, secularity, etc. Likewise, I think it in many ways echoes the difficulty in attempting to find a singular group identity out of the variants that we produce in our research. Like the larger field of Religious Studies, we are each providing a discursive sample of a larger entity, so that a general definition, such as ‘non-religion,’ though pragmatically used to provide a canopy under which we might all co-exist, is just as disparaging as generalizing the term ‘religion.’ Of course, one might then argue that even when we are actually researching something quite unique in the larger field of Religious Studies, we are still doing so under the canopy of a pragmatically ambiguous ‘religion.’ Which I agree. However, I do not see this as the end result of using the term ‘non-religion.’ Mostly, this is because our acceptance of the term ‘religion’—though not everyone has accepted this—comes with the caveat that we have progressed along a distinct tract beginning with sui generis notions about the substantive vs. functionalist quality of ‘religion,’ and arrived at a point with no real conclusive and final ‘definition.’ Which is the point, I think. For this reason, I avoid using the term ‘non-religion’ because I do not beleive adding a further ambiguous term to our discourse provides any sort of assistance in the process. Does this mean the study of Atheism, non-religion, humanism, secularity, etc., falls under the canopy ‘religion?’ I’d say yes. Which is likely where I separate myself from the NSRN.

So, in the end, this discussion is not so much about my issue with using the term ‘non-religion’ as a replacement for terms such as ‘Atheism,’ but is rather an argument that a synonymous umbrella is not really all that necessary. After all, we have at least a vague idea about what a ‘dinosaur’ is, even when that concept is amended and altered and changed within the discourse on what might constitute an Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus. Like ‘religion,’ ‘dinosaur’ is a fluid, plastic term, a discursive entity that does not need to be defined, but that is rather imbued by the discourse on entities like Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus. Which for me works for Atheism and ‘religion.’ That might not work for everyone, which I accept. Yet, I’d much rather contend with the disparity between ‘Atheism’ and ‘religion’ than place myself under a terminological umbrella that seems like an established concept merely given a new name. That’s a bit too much like calling an Apatosaurus something it isn’t.

[1] See also Lois Lee, “From Neutrality to Dialogue: Constructing the Religious Other in British Non-Religious Discourses” in Maren Behrensen, Lois Lee, and Ahmet S. Tekelioglu, eds., Modernities Revisited (Vienna: IWM Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conferences 2011); Lois Lee, “Research Note: Talking about a Revolution: Terminology for the New Field of Non-Religion Studies” (Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 27, No. 1), 129-139; and Stephen Bullivant & Lois Lee, “Interdisciplinary Studies of Non-Religion and Secularity: The State of the Union” (Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 27, No. 1), 19-27.

[2] http://nsrn.net/about/

[3] http://nonreligionandsecularity.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/nsrn-glossary-28-aprl-2011-lois-lee1.pdf

[4] Charles Othniel Marsh, “Notice of New Jurassic Reptiles” (American Journal of Science, 3rd series, v. 18, 1879), 501-505.

[5] Elmer Riggs, “Structure and Relationships of Opisthoceolian Dinosaurs, Part I, Apatosaurus Marsh” (Publs. Field Col. Mus. Geol., Ser. 2, 1903), 165-196.

Rumsfeldian Atheism

December 9, 2014December 11, 2014 / egquillen / 5 Comments

A few years back a friend asked if I wanted to be a part of a panel he was organizing for the Sociology of Religion Study Group (SOCREL) Conference held at the University of Chester. At the time, I had never attended an academic conference, and was keen on developing my CV, so my emphatic and immediate agreement to participate somewhat overshadowed the fact that I was a bit out of my purview. As I would later discover, the topic of the panel was to be on ‘Conspiracy Theories and Religion,’ a topic about which I knew very little beyond the few aspects that might have inadvertently popped up during my master’s research on New Religious Movements. Therefore, and in an effort to quickly cobble together some sort of correlative connection between Atheism and Conspiracy Theories, I threw together the following theoretical approach. In the years since, I’ve mostly forgotten about this theory, until I was reminded by a recent Facebook discussion pertaining to Pascal’s Wager.

As a reminder, and which will become important shortly, this ‘wager’ is one of many that make up the mathematician Blaise Pascal’s pragmatic approach to the existence of God. To summarize, it can be divided into four conclusions that lead to either infinite or finite results:

If an individual believes that God exists, and God does exist, that person achieves an infinite result: Heaven.
If an individual does not believe that God exists, and God does exist, that person achieves an infinite result: Hell
If an individual believes that God exists, and God does not exist, that person achieves a finite result: neither reward nor punishment.
If an individual does not believe that God exists, and God does not exist, that person achieves a finite result: neither reward nor punishment.[1]

In conclusion, Pascal ‘wagered’ that a life lived in the belief that God existed, whether or not He actually did, would lead to both a life lived in happiness on earth—without persecution, etc.—as well as a life lived in heaven. If it turned out that God did not exist, then the individual who didn’t believe so, but still lived as if He did, would experience no real loss. On the other hand, were God to exist, the individual who did not believe so, and lived as such, would be privy to unhappiness on Earth, as well as in Hell. This led to the argument that the former outweighed the latter in terms of a pragmatic and happy life.

The link between this sort of thinking and the ‘Rumsfeldian Atheism’ I will define below can be made via similar logical conclusions. However, how this sort of logic might also assist us in making sense of how we might define Atheism as exhibiting differing types of ‘Atheisms,’ is a bit more difficult.

A little background, then, in two parts.

First: Rumsfeld.

As the United States Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, Rumsfeld had the difficult job of justifying a ground incursion on Iraqi soil. This was a particular issue because the reasons he had stated before—evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—were without evidential proof, and were thus unverified. Therefore, to further justify what would come to be known as the ‘Bush Doctrine,’ Rumsfeld made the argument that the lack of evidence for something did not equate that something as not existing. In other words: an absence of evidence was not the evidence of absence. This argument, as we soon discovered, reasoned the utility of a pre-emptive strike, an incursion made to rout out threats before they could be actualized. His argument, though quite logorrhean, is as follows:

Now what is the message there? The message is that there are known ‘knowns.’ There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that’s basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.

There’s another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.[2]

Here’s a short clip of his statement (the full version is difficult to find, and most clips have been edited or amended for humorous effect)

His logic here is pretty straight-forward, which I have amended as such:

Known Knowns: Things that we know exist. (Chemical and Biological Weapons manufacturing)
Known Unknowns: Things we know we don’t know. (The development of Chemical and Biological Weapons for the purpose of selling to American enemies, such as terrorist organizations)
Unknown Unknowns: Thing we don’t know we don’t know. (Are there Weapons Manufacturing we don’t know about just yet—are there threats we may not have perceived yet?)

The first category is justified by evidence.[3] We know these things are true. For instance, we know Iraq used Chemical Weapons (mustard/nerve agents) against the Iranians and Kurds between 1983 and 1988, as well as tested Biological Weapons (anthrax, aflatoxin, botulinum) that were to be destroyed between 1988 and 1991.

Evidence of Weapons Tested

Likewise, Iraq also continuously tried to establish un-sanctioned nuclear weapons facilities, as well as enhanced their soviet scud missiles and launching towers for longer-range attacks.

Map of Nuclear Facilities

The second category is a direct result of the things we know from the first. For instance, knowing that Iraq had used similar weaponry, as well as had built manufacturing plants for nuclear and biological weaponry, these sorts of later images justified the fact that there may be things we don’t know: known unknowns.

Chemical Manufacturing

Biological Manufacturing

Now, given this information, and by accepting there might be things we know we don’t know, we are inevitably led to conclude that perhaps there are things we don’t know we don’t know, which might lead to imminent and deadly threats. It is better, then, and because of this existing evidence, to live one’s life believing that there are things we might not know exist, and shape our perceptions into a pre-emptive preparedness. This, in essence, is not unlike a Pascalian notion. We brings us back to Atheism

Second: Atheism

For those un-familiar with my work on Atheism I am quite the advocate for dispensing with ‘defining’ the term, and the promotion of a more discursive analysis, what I quite precariously refer to as an ‘ethnographic approach.’ By this, I mean I would rather allow the individual Atheist define him or herself, rather than have that individual be defined by an external observer. One of the leading reasons for this defense is because of the way our own discourse on studying Atheism has seemed to lean more toward the latter.

While this discussion might extend beyond the limits of this present forum, how we came to this point can be briefly drawn out via two distinct categories: historical and theoretical. That is, if we take the discourse on defining the term ‘Atheism’ and treat it like a ‘field of discourse,’ we get a better idea about how the scholars who have done this defining over the last century have followed along a particular progression. In fact, the locus of this turn from defining Atheism via the way individuals have either historically been defined by others, or defined themselves, and theoretically stipulating what the term might mean in a ‘general’ capacity, is found in the way scholars have tried to cope with the differentiation between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ Atheisms. This has proven most troubling when the meaning of the former—a political term of censure or imputation given to an individual whose ideas or actions seem threatening to the status quo—and the meaning of the latter—a theological based and ‘parasitic’ conclusion made via re-emergent rational-naturalism that shifts the concept of ‘God’ from omniscient object to subject of inquiry that is then found evidentially false—is combined into a categorically mistaken conglomerate.

Out of this emerges a formulaic theoretical stipulation, what I have determined as the ‘positive vs. negative’ paradigm. For the last few decades just about every scholar who has written about Atheism has adopted this formula, determining an Atheist as someone who either positively asserts themselves as such, or someone who is an Atheist either by their ‘non-theistic’ beliefs—a rather normative and Western-centric idea—or through their ignorance or lack of knowledge about the existence of ‘God. In this way, Atheism has become a term that denotes a philosophical generality, so that it might be used to define any sort of denial, rejection, skepticism, or doubt. This is also why we find people defining ‘Atheism’ as a rejection of any and all sorts of religious or supernatural thinking, or the notoriously troubling notion of ‘Atheist religions’ defined by their innate differentiation from the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As a scholarly ideology, it has been standardized, which is evidenced by its use in Martin’s (2007) Cambridge Companion to Atheism and Bullivant and Ruse’s (2013) Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Even Wikipedia has adopted it.[4]

Though I should also note that my intention here is not to argue that this paradigm is wholly ‘incorrect.’ Rather, I have found that it’s formation, promotion, and advancement provides an intriguing insight into how theoretical thinking alters how difficult to determine concepts like Atheism or religion come to embody the meanings they have. For the former, this is a direct result of a generalization, a pragmatic attempt at making sense of a term that we ourselves have convoluted with our own theorizing. In fact, prior to the advent of this paradigm, Atheism was always defined via historical examples, using individuals as sources. It was not until the 1970s, and Anthony Flew’s Presumption of Atheism, that we began to see the term as encompassing an explicit or implicit nature. Which, really, makes its usage seem all the more precarious as Flew’s initial treatment—as we see repeated by Eller’s (2004) Natural Atheism and Baggini’s (2003) A Very Short Introduction—was made in order to argue that Atheism was mankind’s default position, as all people are born ‘negative Atheists’ because they are simply ‘without’ the belief that God exists.

While this discussion is one I tend to repeat with vigour, and though more of it will undoubtedly continue throughout this blog, this intro will have to suffice for now.

Rumsfeldian Atheism

If we adopt Rumsfeld’s Pascalian logic from above, the positive vs. negative paradigm takes on a whole new meaning. In fact, we might even say it adopts a quasi-conspiratorial logic. If nothing else, it helps us make a bit more sense of how we might find ourselves thinking that there are differing types of Atheism across a polarity between explicit and implicit.

Let us begin with the Known Knowns: Atheism and Theism. This represents a dependent binary, the Theist and the Atheist equally ‘knowing’ what they believe: God exists and God does not exist. This is where we find ‘positive Atheism.’

Then, let us look at the Known Unknowns: Agnosticism. Here, if we define the term as a methodology—like Huxley originally did in 1893—used to answer the question of the existence of the Theist’s God, the ‘agnostic’ would fall under the purview of the known unknown. This individual acknowledges the existence of the Theist’s belief in the existence of God, as well as the Atheist’s rejection of that belief, but is not willing to commit to either side. In other words, and based on the first category, they know something that they acknowledge they don’t know in the way the Theist or Atheist does.

Finally, we arrive at the Unknown Unknowns: Negative Atheism. Defined as either an implicit absence of belief—due to a complete ignorance—or an implicit or explicit ‘lack’ of belief—leaning predominately on the etymological alpha privative ‘A’ in Atheism—this individual does not know what they do not know. In other words, they do not know that they do not know what the Theist or the Atheist believes, and are thus not only without the knowledge of the belief that God exists, but are without the knowledge of that knowledge as well.

Conclusion

If this sounds somewhat inane and confusing, that’s the point. While Rumsfeld’s argument about the threats we might not know about seems somewhat justified given the context in which it was made, my use of his categories was, and is, a critical one. It was adopted to point out the convolution we inflict upon ourselves in our attempts at theorizing around an issue, such as how to define a term that seems more and more confusing the more and more we try to define it. Scholars of religion know this all too well, as defining that term has generated the essential basis upon which we have built our ‘theories of religion.’

Yet, my use of it has meant more than just that. It’s also meant to point out that when we are examining or analyzing something that seems uncertain or confusing, the worst thing we can do is try to over-theorize about it. Rumsfeld, as well as the Bush administration, both learned this the hard way—some might say—and I think the academic study of Atheism is heading directly down that path. Rather than take a step back and try to understand the concept with which we are dealing, we seem overly destined to mark ourselves as presenting something unique or different. That is, rather than looking back at how this term has been defined by those who came before, and thus discover the manner with which we have progressively ended up with these sorts of abstractions, we seem happily set on making the discourse all that more excessive and incoherent—logorrhean—by adding to it with precarious and inane concepts like ‘ir-religon’ or ‘non-religion.’

In the end, I think we can learn a lot from Rumsfeld and his logic. If we just took the time to acknowledge that the discourse in which we are both analyzing and contributing to is merely a construct built upon a particular foundation, the less we might find ourselves sounding like someone trying to justify a judgment that we’ve already made.

[1] See Blaise Pascal, Pensées (New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC., 1958), available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm

[2] http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2002/s020606g.htmfbg

[3] This evidence can be found at: https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports 1/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm#07

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Definitions_and_distinctions

What do you call it when a gentile writes a post about Jewishness?

December 2, 2014December 9, 2014 / egquillen / 2 Comments

Last Spring I attended the 6th Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Religion and Spirituality at Tel Aviv University, and presented my usual paper on the definition of Atheism and the use of fiction as ethnography. While the conference itself proved a better experience than I had expected, it was not without anxiety. After all, what might an individual who studies Atheism expect when visiting one of the cradles of Western monotheism? Would I be welcomed? Shunned? Ostracized? Might I be perceived as a threat? An enemy? An infidel? In fact, when I reflect on the short time I spent there, both in Tel Aviv, and wandering the streets of the Old City in Jerusalem, I have repeatedly found myself remembering aspects of that trip in ways I’m sure aren’t completely accurate, as if these questions have somehow transformed into a construction I might use in order to justify certain stereotypes about that part of the world.

These thoughts came to mind recently as we wrapped up our course on the Ethical and Religious Debates in Contemporary Fiction, particularly with our final text, Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question. Despite winning the Booker Prize in 2010, this has proven a difficult novel to teach with, partly because Jacobson’s use of humour and stereotyping have often fallen flat with many of our students. To summarise, the text provides an outsider’s perspective of a world he will never truly be a member of, offering us an insight into how he perceives that world, while at the same time providing a means with which to interpret that world itself.

Focusing on three lead characters—Julian Treslove, Sam Finkler, and Libor Sevcik—Jacobson’s fiction alters our perception of this insider/outsider paradigm on a number of occasions. Yet, this is not what I wish to isolate herein. Rather, as I read this text for the second time, I found myself considering how humour itself not only seems ingrained in making sense of and/or interpreting ‘Jewishness,’ but also how simplistically it seems this humour might turn from stereotyping to offensive when it changes from insider to outsider. For example, Treslove (the gentile to Finkler and Sevcik’s Judaism) openly refers to Jews as ‘Finklers,’ based on his idea that his life-long friend is the paragon of Jewishness. So, throughout the text, his references carry a humorous and personal separation from the more malignant sounding sorts of phrases that might be deemed verbally violent. For example, when he finds himself having an argument with Hephzibah, his ‘Jewess’ girlfriend about his incessant assumption that some horrible experience is just waiting for him to discover it, he describes her, and her humour, as thus:

That was what it was to be a Jewess. Never mind the moist dark womanly mysteriousness. A Jewess was a woman who made even punctuation funny. He couldn’t work out how she had done it. Was it hyperbole or was it understatement? Was it self-mocekry or mockery of him? He decided it was tone. Finklers did tone.[1]

Yet, when he tries to emulate her, he fails. He is unable to recreate her ease of tone, her ability to make his own punctuation funny: “it could have been that Finklers only permitted other Finklers to tell Finkler jokes.” Which brings me to the locus of this particular discussion. Is there a subtle line between humour and offence, and is that line more easily blurred for certain individuals?

For our tutorial I prepared three examples with which to approach this question. The first comes from the comedic genius Mel Brooks. In it he sings his way through the horrors of the inquisition, while at the same time making humorous light of both the plight of the Jews massacred during the auto-da-fé, as well as the Catholics who were responsible for these atrocities.

Next, we watched the following clip from the Seinfeld episode entitled ‘The Yada Yada,’ which originally aired on 24 April 1997. In this episode, Jerry is offended by his dentist’s conversion to Judaism, not as a Jewish person, he assures, but as a comedian. His dentist, he is certain, merely converted for the jokes. As ever erudite with its philosophical undertones, the episode is an ideal example of the sort of line-blurring between insiders and outsiders presenting humorous and stereotyping interpretations of themselves and others.

The third comes from an episode of the sitcom Frasier. In this clip, Frasier comes to learn that his girlfriend ‘Faye’ was under the assumption that he was Jewish. This is problematic for Faye’s mother, who we learn would prefer her daughter dating a Jewish man. As per the humour of the show, Fraser, his brother Niles, and father Martin each take up stereotypical ways of sounding or acting ‘Jewish’ in order to keep Mrs. Moskowitz happy.

Now, in each of these clips humour and stereotyping are used to describe a type of ‘Jewishness.’ Yet, with the latter, we find an interesting situation that is separate from the others. Perhaps more akin to Treslove’s attempts in The Finkler Question, in the Frasier clip the humour is coming from gentiles pretending to be Jewish for humorous effect. Is this offensive? Anti-Semitic?

As data, these clips, as well as Jacobson’s novel, are peculiar sources. Yet, I equally like to think that they serve as reminders that we all construct stereotypes and assumptions that contribute to our larger perceptions about what particular identities look like. I know I was guilty of this in my time in Israel, but I also know that it is in stereotyping and interpretation where we begin to create our ethnographic perceptions. Thus, I further wonder if our outsider perceptions are offensive in the sense that we are trying to tell Finkler jokes without the benefit of an inherent Finkler tone?

[1] Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (London: Bloomsbury, 2010).

Harry Potter and the Precarious Use of Fiction

November 25, 2014November 25, 2014 / egquillen / 2 Comments

This semester marks the second year that I have tutored on a course that focuses on the ‘Ethical and Religious Debates in Contemporary Fiction.’ The course itself is divided into three sections: Christianity (Greene’s The Power and the Glory and Robertson’s The Testament of Gideon Mack), Secularism and Science (Huxley’s Brave New World, Pullman’s Northern Lights, and Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), and Judaism (Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev and Jacobson’s The Finkler Question). While I have my criticisms—what does Harry Potter have to do with either science or secularism?!—and though this year saw the tragic, yet pragmatic, removal of McEwan’s Enduring Love, we have had some success in both bringing in a good number of students and keeping them engaged with the topics. As well, while I also find myself asking a number of questions pertaining to the implicit notion that reading fiction offers us some sort of outlet different or better than merely examining how individuals shape their religious identities in the ‘real-world’ (and how that differs from a ‘fictional world’), this is not the present forum for such discussion.

Rather, one particular moment stands out that I feel needs a bit more nuancing. During the tutorial on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the student whose responsibility it was to present and lead the discussion spent a good amount of time discussing the ‘reaction’ of certain people to the themes found within Rowling’s seven novels. Built on the lecture given earlier in the week that also presented a few of these responses, this student very excitedly passed out copies of a ‘fan-fiction’ recently published online by the title “Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles,” by a Grace Ann Parsons under the name ‘aproudhousewife.’ (https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10644439/1/Hogwarts-School-of-Prayer-and-Miracles)

Since throughout this course we have discussed the uses of fiction in making sense of or examining identity constructions that are attached to particular cultural concepts (like Christianity, Atheism, and Judaism), this student was quite excited to use this particular re-telling as a cultural source for a certain type of fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity. That is, just as we can read Harry Potter to try and make sense of Rowling’s intentions (is Harry a cultural Christian, for example) this student felt we could equally use this re-telling to make sense of or examine how an individual’s re-interpretation might equally provide us with an insight on the cultural significance inherent in such a re-write.

A little background might help.

‘Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles’ is a fourteen Chapter fiction that adopts and re-imagines the storyline of the Harry Potter novels in order to make the ever-popular series accessible to a readership that might find the ‘witchcraft’ within the original offensive or dangerous. Or, as the author states at the beginning:

Hello, friends! My name is Grace Ann. I’m new to this whole fanfiction thing; but recently, I’ve encountered a problem that I believe this is the solution to. My little ones have been asking to read the Harry Potter books; and of course I’m happy for them to be reading; but I don’t want them turning into witches! So I thought….. why not make some slight changes so these books are family friendly? And then I thought, why not share this with all the other mommies who are facing the same problem? So-Ta da! Here it is! I am SO excited to share this with all of you!

Insights like this appear at the start of each Chapter, so that as we read along we’re provided with snippets of authorial intent. In many ways mimetic of Geertz’s (1989) notion of ‘signature,’ these authorial insertions not only remind us that the fiction itself is manufactured with a purpose, but also that it exists as a representation of that purpose in textual form. Likewise, we also find a number of inter-textual influences, provided by Biblical citations. These act as discursive anchors, linking the author’s intention to her textual construction by means of referential correlations. For example:

“God is dead! Dawkins proved that. Would you like us to educate you on the Dawkins?” (Chapter 1)
“Five years down the road, Harry might have been a fornicating, drug-addicted evolutionist!” (Chapter 2)
“His voice had a distinctive southern twang to it that made Harry feel so safe and welcome. He knew in that moment that the Reverend was a man of God.” (Chapter 3)
“It is the mark of a true, old-fashioned gentleman to respect the fact that every young woman is another man’s future wife. And we all know that it would be a dreadful, terrible sin to bring another man’s wife into intimacy.” (Chapter 4)
“Harry followed Ronald with the obedience of one who does not have many friends in a new situation. Oh, what a difficult circumstance that can be—and how many believers have been led astray by those situations!” (Chapter 5)
“‘Women shouldn’t not have careers because women are stupid!’ Harry shouted indignantly. ‘Women are not stupid at all! Women should not have careers because women are nurturing and loving and their gifts serve them best in the home!’” (Chapter 6)
“Harry hmmed to himself. He knew that the Reverend meant well; but was it really doing members of the other hats much good to tell them that everything was the same when it wasn’t? Wouldn’t they all be happier if they knew to read the Bible and take it seriously?” (Chapter 7)
“‘But what about the Constitution?’ Dean Thomas questioned articulately. ‘Doesn’t he care about the First Amendment?’” (Chapter 8)
“After the prayer session; the little ones all went to their classes—there were regular math and English classes, of course—although they were of a higher caliber than one would find in a Public School—and then there were Bible Studies and Christian History.” (Chapter 9)
“Dean Thomas nodded sagely and muttered to himself in disgust, ‘First they try to change the Pledge of Allegiance. Now they don’t want us to be Christians. Next they’ll be killing us all. It’s a bad time to be a true Christian in America.’” (Chapter 10)
“Harry gritted his teeth. He had had enough of this! So-called feminists these days call everything sexist. A man respecting his woman and providing for her and giving her the children and home that she truly desires is called woman-hating! Such silliness can make us forget what real sexism looks like. The truth is—women are just as smart as men; and God made us as their equals; but equal does not mean the same; and when we treat men and women as being the same and tell women to go to work all day and forget about her true calling as a wife and mother; then that is the real woman-hating!” (Chapter 11)
“ In that moment, the hat on Draco’s head changed into a red and yellow one with a lion on it; and the tears rolling down his face were not sad tears. They were happy tears. The crowd of onlookers burst into applause; but Harry did not notice all the cheering students and teachers. He was bathing in the love of the Lord.” (Chapter 12)
“But before they could think too much about that, a car pulled into the parking lot. It did not look like the car a busy mommy or daddy would have. No, this was a small so-called eco-friendly car. Harry, Dean Thomas, and Hermione looked at it suspiciously. They did not know who would come of it, but they got the feeling it would not be someone good.” (Chapter 13)

By deciphering the meaning within these passages in relation to the authorial intent and Biblical citations provided (Ephesians 5: 22-24; Acts 5:29; Exodus 20:4-6; Matthew 7:1; Matthew 2:16-17; John 15:19; Proverbs 16:18), we can make use of this text as a source with which to interpret a particular type of identity. This process works in the same way as reading an ethnographic account about a particular individual, such as Crapanzano’s Tuhami or Dwyer’s Moroccan Dialogues, or like reading an auto-ethnographic account, such as Jackson’s Barawa or Ellis’ The Ethnographic I, wherein our perception of the cultural representation is made through a filter by means of the ethnographer’s position as an insider.

This process equally dismisses the ‘falseness’ we might infer in the fact that this is a ‘fiction’ by translating the text itself into a discursive source, so that when the author has her characters argue the merits of gender subordination within a ‘proper Christian society’ by citing the Biblical passage, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord,” and Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet, the text itself becomes something more ethnographically useful. This is, in fact, not all that different from reading something like Harry Potter in order to make sense of Rowling’s intentions, and how the text itself has been used by readers in and out of her own culture.

This is also, in essence, how the student in our tutorial made use of ‘Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles.’ Having been transmuted from mere fan-fiction to cultural representation, we began reading it as a discursive example of the way in which a particular individual might construct and validate her identity, as well as how that construction might alter her perception of the world and thus dictate the manner with which she might externally construct the identities of her children. This is also, interestingly, our purpose of the course in general, only writ small.

Likewise, it is an equally wonderful example of the precarious and dangerous method of using ‘fiction’ as a source for cultural insight. Mostly because ‘Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles’ isn’t real. By this, I don’t mean that it’s merely ‘made-up.’ All fictions, both true and false, are ‘made-up.’ This fiction is made-up in that it is a fiction of a fiction of a fiction. To sound less confusing, it is an example of Poe’s Law, which is defined as such:

Similar to Murphy’s Law, Poe’s Law concerns internet debates, particularly regarding religion or politics.

‘Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.’

In other words, No matter how bizarre, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.

This text is an example of an individual creating an invented individual who has created a text in a manner pursuant to the way the first individual believes the second individual might think. In other words: it is a satire. Evidence of this can be found in the meta-fictional exchange between ‘Dumbledore’ and ‘Voldemort’ in the conclusion:

“Aren’t there better ways to spend your time than preaching to a bored idiot who makes fun of people in the internet?” Voldemort questioned hedonistically. “Your Lord seemed to be pretty concerned about helping the people around him. Is that not his work anymore?”

“How can we focus on helping people; when there are people like you trying to destroy us?” Dumbledore countered astutely.

“I told you before, that Reddit account is a joke,” Voldemort whined pathetically; but the Reverend shook his head.

“I thought that might be so at first,” the Reverend commented fairly. “But it was just too realistic.”

“How is it realistic?” Voldemort inquired uniformedly. “It wasn’t even subtle! I waxed poetic about the sexiness of neckbeards and said that Christopher Hitchens has superpowers. It was supposed to be funny! How could you take it seriously?”

Dumbledore scoffed; and he replied faithfully, “Like it or not—your little ‘joke’ is what most atheists today are like.”

“So my Reddit account solidified your conception of atheists as a bunch of anti-Christian bigots who are just angry at God?” Voldemort solicited stupidly; and then he sighed. “Okay, you know what, this has gone too far. I’m sure that most people can tell that I’m not being serious, but if I’m contributing to misinformation and stereotypes, I don’t feel comfortable continuing this.”

Voldemort pulled an iPhone out of his pocket; and he began to type on it. After a few minutes, he showed the screen to Dumbledore. “See this? I just made a post: ‘I am a troll.’ It is the last post I will make on that account. Are you happy?”

Yet, even when we realise the ‘false’ origins of this re-write, I still find myself unable to outright dismiss it. Which is how I made use of it for the tutorial. After analysing the text and concluding that it provided for us in equal measure an insightful glimpse of a particular cultural perception, I revealed to the students its more satirical origin with the caveat that it is still useful. Perhaps not necessarily as we might have originally intended, if nothing else ‘Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles’ provides for us an example of the precariousness in blurring the lines between texts that are ‘fictions’ and those that are not (such as auto-ethnography). It reveals to us the difficulty, even danger, in inherently trusting textual accounts, whether ‘fictional’ or ‘ethnographic.’ Because, every text/account is infected with intention, and deciphering how that intention might alter the information provided within is a difficult task, especially with fiction. After all, we might interpret aspects of Harry Potter different from how Rowling had intended, but that does not mean our interpretation is incorrect. Nor, at the same time, does it mean her intention is incorrect either.

Which, as a conclusive statement, I believe adds a bit more nuance to my notion of ‘everything is fiction.’ Textual analysis is quite complex, and fraught with possible misinterpretations. Examining and interpreting texts such as ‘Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles’ reminds us of this, particularly because without knowing the actual origins, all we have left is interpretation. Perhaps more than anything, then, I think this example reminds us of this sort of precariousness which, in regard to the larger notion of examining culture through words on the page, is never a bad thing to remember.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (London: Bloomsbury, 2007).

Grace Ann Parsons, “Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles,” Original Fan-Fiction: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10644439/1/Hogwarts-School-of-Prayer-and-Miracles (accessed 25 November 2014).

Debi Pearl, Created to be His Help meet: Discover How God Can Make your Marriage Glorious (Pleasantville, TN: NGJ Ministries, 2004).

“Poe’s Law,’ Urban Dictionary Reference: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Poe’s%20Law (accessed 25 November 2014).

Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).

Vincent Crampanzano, Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980).

Kevin Dwyer, Moroccan Dialogues: Anthropology in Question (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).

Michael Jackson, Barawa and the Ways the Birds Fly in the Sky (Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986).

Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography (Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 2004).

Everything is Fiction

November 18, 2014May 19, 2015 / egquillen / 1 Comment

To begin, ‘Everything is Fiction’ is not my idea. Rather, it’s an idea that I have adopted for pragmatic reasons. For the purposes of an introduction, the manner with which I have made—and will make—use of it in this capacity can be traced to an origin with Vaihinger’s (1935) Die Philosophie Des Als Ob, wherein ‘consciously false’ fictional explanations are seen as accepted within the absence of evidential phenomena:

I wanted to give a complete enumeration of all the methods in which we operate intentionally with consciously false ideas, or rather judgments. I wanted to reveal the secret life of these extraordinary methods. I wanted to give a complete theory, an anatomy and physiology so to speak, or rather a biology of ‘As if.’ For the method of fiction which is found in a greater or lesser degree in all the sciences can best be expressed by this complex conjunction ‘As if’.[1]

Though differentiated from an ‘hypothesis,’ which can be verified as either true or false, Vaihinger’s use of ‘as-if’ depicts a special kind of fiction, something unverifiable, but that appears to be ‘as-if’ it is. As Fine (1993) deduces: “if we knowingly retain a false but useful hypothesis, we have a fiction.”^{^[2]}

This is close to my usage, but not exact. In fact, I might borrow even further from Kliever (1979) and Miller (1997). The former defines this sort of fiction as such:

Given the linguisticality and historicity of human existence, all reality claims are fabrications or constructions. ‘Facts’ are symbolic constructions which have been established as reliable representations of a world that exists independently of all human imagination and intervention. Fictions are not simply symbolic constructs which have yet to be verified. They are not hypotheses whose truth remains in doubt for the present. They are symbolic constructs which cannot be verified and hence cannot be true.[3]

The latter, who actually uses the term ‘everything is fiction,’ divides the notion into four parts:

‘Everything is fiction’ may mean at least four distinct things: (1) simply that all human knowledge includes constructs; (2) that all actual, or even all possible, such forms of knowledge are nothing but constructs or fictions, and that data, if any are admitted at all, are always just projections out from that fiction; (3) that our most fundamental categories of possible experience are such constructs, so that reality itself can be nothing but fiction; and (4) that scientific fictions are ultimately no different from literary fictions. Arguments for (4) tend to merge with those for (2) or (3).”[4]

Likewise, we can look at other individuals, such as Anderson (1983) or Cusack (2010), who use ‘fiction’ in the sense of ‘imagined communities'[5] or ‘invented religions.’[6]

For my intentions I will be stealing from each of these. From this point forward, and in this context, ‘EVERYTHING IS FICTION’ means two things:

Meaning, such as ‘reality claims,’ all derive from stories. Stories are how we communicate. They function on dialogue and interaction, and it is through interactions with others that we begin to understand ourselves. Stories are how we shape our lives, make sense of disorientation, and re-orientate ourselves in the face of disappointment or triumph. Religion, history, culture, science, and philosophy: all of these are products of stories. However, because stories function on dialogue and communication, stories are also discourse. Therefore, stories are neither true, nor false, neither fiction, nor fact. They are just discourse, and can only be perceived and examined as such.
As discourse, stories are constructions, so that the meaning or ‘truth’ sourced from within them is dependent upon discursive contextualization. In this way, much like how Kliever or Miller depict all claims of reality or all human knowledge as ‘fabrications’ or ‘constructions,’ translated herein, ‘fictional construction’ does not mean something ‘made-up’ or ‘false.’ Rather, it means something ‘made-from’ or manufactured as well, what Geertz refers to as ‘faction,’ a precarious portmanteau that depicts even the most objective of ethnographic texts as “imaginative writing about real people in real places at real times.”^{^[7]}

As the title of my Doctoral Thesis, ‘Everything is Fiction’ is meant as a critique, in both meanings of the term. It represents a direct and nuanced analysis of ‘fiction,’ treating texts clearly ‘made-up’ as if they offer cultural insight in equal measure to ethnographic ones. By doing this, the phrase also denotes a criticism of the manner with which we willingly trust or authenticate these sorts of ‘objective’ and ‘true’ accounts, regardless of the fact that they too have been constructed by an author who, like his or her equal the novelist, has designed the text out of his or her imagination. Textualized culture is still filtered, no matter how objective we are, and it is this notion that underscores my belief that ‘everything is fiction.’

Everything is based on a story, stories are based on discourse, and discourse is always constructed.

Just as I determine in the Thesis, and just as I’ve drawn-out here, the following Posts will be stories. They will be both fiction and non-fiction, true and false, made-from and made-up. They will be constructions based on perception and created via interpretation. Just like the Thesis, they will be an attempt at perceiving discourse through a particular lens, through the precarious notion that equally considers: ‘if everything is fiction, than nothing is.’

[1] Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of ‘As If:’ A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind, C.K. Ogden, trans. Second Edition (London: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER &: CO., LTD., 1935), xli.

[2] Arthur Fine, “Fictionalism” (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 18, 1993), 8.

[3] Lonnie D. Kliever, “Polysymbolism and Modern Religiosity” (The Journal of Religion, Vol. 59, No. 2, 1979), 189.

[4] Eric Miller, “Literary Fictions and As-If Fictions” (Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 30, No. 4, 1997), 429.

[5] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

[6] Carol M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction, and Faith (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010).

[7] Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 141.