Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
I disagree. Reason and evidence ARE the only ways to understand the world. There are other ways to THINK about it, DREAM about it, write POETRY about it, but there are no other ways to UNDERSTAND it.
‘Reason and evidence aren’t the only ways to understand the world.’
What are the other ways?
Art, music, poetry, literature … these things are great fun. They can be uplifting. And they can be wonderful ways to communicate. But they are not ways of knowing. Art can help someone communicate general relativity – but it cannot test general relativity experimentally.
Well it all depends on how widely you define “Evidence” and “Reason”. If a person’s facial expressions, voice, posture, or writing style give you an impression about them, is the impression you get evidence about the world, or an example of understanding from subconscious (and so irrational) processes?