Category Archives: reject the one true God

School of Morals

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Philip PullmanLast week’s issue of The New Yorker had a fine article on Philip Pullman, whose superb trilogy, His Dark Materials, makes Narnia and Harry Potter look like, well, kids’ books by comparison. The article calls the trilogy “the first fantasy series founded upon the ideals of the Enlightenment rather than upon tribal and mythic yearnings for kings, gods, and supermen”. A thrilling plotline, inventively developed, complex and sympathetic characters, and a prose style that refuses to condescend to its adolescent audience all combine to make Pullman’s books a rich reading experience. And it’s an experience that’s carefully tailored to improve the moral education of its readers.

The New Yorker article covered a speech that Pullman made at the University of East Anglia on the subject of “Religion and Education”. Pullman’s speech contrasted morality as it’s preached by theistic religion—morality based on fear, focussed on sexuality, obsessed by God—with the lessons in behavior that are transmitted through stories with “morals”—lessons about acting decently, thoughtfully, independently, with kindness and courage.

In his speech, Pullman contended that the literary School of Morals is inherently ambiguous, dynamic, and democratic: a “conversation.” Opposed to this ideal is “theocracy,” which he defined as encompassing everything from Khomeini’s Iran to explicitly atheistic states such as Stalin’s Soviet Union. He listed some characteristics of such states—among them, “a scripture whose word is inerrant,” a priesthood whose authority “tends to concentrate in the hands of elderly men,” and ‚”a secret police force with the powers of an Inquisition.” Theocracies, he said, demonstrate “the tendency of human beings to gather power to themselves in the name of something that may not be questioned.”

This impulse toward theocracy, he announced at the end of his speech, “will defeat the School of Morals in the end.” He sounded oddly cheerful making this prediction; in his books, Pullman enjoys striking a tone of melancholy resolve. He continued, “But that doesn’t mean we should give up and surrender. . . . I think we should act as if. I think we should read books, and tell children stories, and take them to the theatre, and learn poems, and play music, as if it would make a difference. . . . We should act as if the universe were listening to us and responding. We should act as if life were going to win. . . . That’s what I think they do, in the School of Morals.”

Consider the marks of a theocracy as Pullman identifies them. And then consider the behavior of the anointed leader of our country and the elderly men who surround and advise him. His Dark Materials ends with a difficult journey through a cold dark land, and an achingly sorrowful sacrifice. Are we prepared to make such a sacrifice to save our enlightenment values from the theocracy that threatens to destroy them?

The worst idea in history

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Peter WatsonIn Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (free registration required), Deborah Solomon had some questions for Peter Watson, author of the new book, “Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud”. I was taken by his response to this question:

Solomon: On the other hand, not all big ideas are good ideas. In fact, most big ideas are probably terrible ideas. What do you think is the single worst idea in history?

Watson: Without question, ethical monotheism. The idea of one true god. The idea that our life and ethical conduct on earth determines how we will go in the next world. This has been responsible for most of the wars and bigotry in history.

Amazon offers the book as a $7.95 PDF download; I think I’ll sample it that way.

Hallelujah!

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AdamOK, here’s what you need to do:

  • First, do not click on this link to Sam Harris’s astoundingly wonderful manifesto, “Imagine There’s no Heaven“.
  • Second, take a few deep breaths, compose your mind and consider how you typically deal with a long interesting article on the web.
    • If you print it out, with the intention of reading it later, DON’T DO THAT!
    • If you bookmark it, with the intention of reading it later, DON’T DO THAT!
    • If you skim the first page to pick up the high points and don’t click through to read pages 2,3, & 4, DON’T DO THAT!
  • Instead, do this:
    • Clear 15 minutes of time, during which you will let nothing distract you from the task at hand.
    • Close, hide, or minimize all of your running applications except for your web browser; maximize that to fill your screen.
    • Resolve that you will read this one through to the end. If you must, pray to God for the strength to do that.
  • Now, click on this link. Don’t come back here (or go anywhere else) until you’ve read Sam’s article through to the end.
God touching Adam

Wasn’t that worth it?

Our Higher Power blows it again

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The City on the HillP.Z. Myers, at Pharyngula, points us to a very well-done study by Gregory S. Paul, in Creighton University’s Journal of Religion & Society, that examines the correlation between popular religiosity in a culture, belief in evolution, and a wide range of social dysfunctions, including homicide, teenage abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and juvenile-adult mortality.

The data are mainly from a cross-national collaborative study conducted in 1998 that interviewed more than 20,000 people in 17 of the world’s developed and developing democracies. Paul also includes data from Portugal, as an example of a second world European democracy. A society’s level of religiosity was measured by its citizens’ belief in a higher power, their acceptance of a literal interpretation of the Bible, frequency of prayer, and church attendance. Acceptance of evolution was also measured and shows a strong negative correlation, as might be expected, with levels of religiosity.

Not surprisingly, the US scores high on the popular religiosity scale. “Japan, Scandinavia, and France are the most secular nations…[;] the United States is the only prosperous first world nation to retain rates of religiosity otherwise limited to the second and third worlds”.

Also not surprisingly, at least to some of us, the US also scores high on every measure of dysfunction, spectacularly high on some of them, such as murder, teenage abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and violence by schoolchildren. (Abortion rates, by the way, were only taken into account from those countries in which abortion is at least as legal and accessible as it is in the US.)

That high positive correlation is not an anomaly; it carries across the board.

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies…. The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner [Benjamin] Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hillâ€? to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. … No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction….

If the data showed that the U.S. enjoyed higher rates of societal health than the more secular, pro-evolution democracies, then the opinion that popular belief in a creator is strongly beneficial to national cultures would be supported. Although they are by no means utopias, the populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of lifeâ€? that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted. Contradicting these conclusions requires demonstrating a positive link between theism and societal conditions in the first world with a similarly large body of data – a doubtful possibility in view of the observable trends.

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There is [also] evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms

The conclusion is inescapable: religious democracies are more dysfunctional; secular democracies are healthier.

Paul’s paper deals only with correlations, not causes. It’s possible that a highly dysfunctional society drives people to religion. But Paul points out that his analysis of the data demonstrates the need for more research, not only to test his findings, but to start looking into the causal factors underlying the correlation between societal dysfunction and high levels of religious belief.

For the Love of God

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Detail from Hieronymus BoschAgape, pronounced ah-gah-pay´, is from the Greek; it means, according to dictionary.com, “Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless and a model for humanity.” Pronounced
a-gayp´, it means, according to the same source, “In a state of wonder or amazement, as with the mouth wide open.”

It is in that latter sense that one is forced to read the latest from Agape Press, labeling itself “Reliable News from a Christian Source”. The post, titled “New Orleans Residents: God’s Mercy Evident in Katrina’s Wake”, quotes two ministers from New Orleans. The first, Chuck Kelley, President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, considers it evidence of God’s mercy that He did not hit New Orleans head on with Katrina. “Had the levee given way during the hurricane, he says, ‘untold thousands of people’ would have been killed.”

OK. But the prize goes to the Reverend Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, who sees the evidence of God’s mercy in the fact that He has, via the convenient mechanism of Katrina, wiped out much of the “rampant sin common to the city”. He warned us and warned us, complains the Rev. Shanks, but did we listen? Noooo. And now this.

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

Agape. From the Greek

(Or is that hubris?)

Believing in, believing that, believing

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God separating darkness from lightMy friend Paul points out that the term “believing in God� represents an unusual idiom. In most other situations in which it is used, the phrase “believe in� means something slightly but importantly different from what it means when someone says that she “believes in� God.

If Emily’s husband is accused of philandering, Emily might say that she believes in her husband, and everyone would understand her meaning. Just so, when Colin Powell says that he believes in his President, or when a businessman states his belief in the free market, or a comrade at the barricades says that he believes in Communism, or even when a fan believes in the Yankees or the Mets. In each of those cases, “believing inâ€? is an assertion that the believed-in entity is trustworthy. In no case is it an assertion that the entity actually exists, as it is when someone asserts a “belief in” God. There is never any doubt that Emily’s husband exists, as does the POTUS, Communism, free market capitalism, and the Yankees.

I have no doubt that God exists, in exactly the same way that Communism exists, and the Yankees, and the Office of the President of the United States. God’s existence is validated by the same process that validates the existence of those other entities: people “believe in” Him, in the same way that people believe in Communism and the Yankees. That is, they believe that those entities are what their promotional literature and their apologists claim them to be; they have those particular powers and virtues; they’ve won those victories, defeated those enemies, rewarded, in just those ways, their particular friends and supporters. Indeed, it is more than simple validation at work here. The belief is what makes the existence real. Without believers, similar entities—the Easter Bunny, Almighty Jove, the Gold Standard, the Divine Right of Kings, the Mudville Nine—enter the realm of fairy tale and legend.

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Who’s the enemy?

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George W. GodCenk Uygur, in his article in The Huffington Post, is uncommonly clear-eyed and persuasive in making his point that we are not engaged in a War Against Terror, but, rather, in a War Against Fundamentalism. He points out that we cannot win a war if we don’t know who the enemy is, and the fact that we don’t know the enemy in the “War Against Terror” is becoming more and more clear each day. Uygur argues that it’s pointless to fight George Bush for starting this misguided war, and that the administration’s concept of a War Against Terror is meaningless; and he asks, “What are we really fighting against?”

I have a simple answer – fundamentalism. Muslim fundamentalists believe it is their moral duty to fight a jihad against the West. They are guided by their strict, literal reading of the Koran (helped along by hateful imams who select the worst parts of the Koran).

But we are not just aligned against Muslim fundamentalists. The problem is broader than that. It is Jewish fundamentalists like the Gaza settlers and Christian fundamentalists like Tom DeLay who want to drive us further into this conflict. They also rely on their absurd interpretations of their religious texts.

The point that we have fundamentalists in this country, and that they are in power, is the important point that Uygur makes.

[Christian fundamentalists] believe that Israel should rebuild the Temple on the Mount, thereby destroying holy Muslim sites and assuredly starting a gigantic war. Finally, they think that when this happens, Armageddon will ensue, most of the people on this Earth will die and Santa Claus, I mean Jesus Christ, will come back to save them (and only them). There’s another word for these people – crazy.
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Our former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, is a fundamentalist. He anointed himself in holy oils before he took the oath of office. You know who does that? Crazy people.
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Our President thinks God talks to him. You know who thinks that? Crazy people.

We need to understand that the fundamentalist in the White House is no different, in his basic craziness, than the fundamentalist in the pulpit or the fundamentalist in the synagogue or the fundamentalist in the mosque. They are all crazy, and they are collaborating (although they don’t see it that way and would deny it) in bringing about the apocolypse they all crave.

Uygur thinks that our failure to engage them is rooted in our politeness: you don’t criticize another man’s beliefs. But we have to engage them; our civilization depends on it.

Right now, it’s completely one-sided. The fundamentalists in this country attack with impunity and the secular Americans sit back for fear of offending the crazies. It’s time to hit them back (proverbially, violence is usually the refuge of weak-minded fundamentalists, not thinking, rational people).

It is not acceptable to be against teaching valid science to our children because you think your Book tells you to. It is not acceptable to hate gay people because you think your Book tells you to. It is not acceptable to deny other citizens their privacy because you think your Book tells you to. It is not acceptable to be one-sided in dealing with the Middle East and drive us all into war because you think your Book tells you to. It is not acceptable to root for Armageddon and try to take steps towards getting there because you think your Book tells you to.

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Thinking you talk to God doesn’t qualify you to lead the nation – it qualifies you for a mental institution. The time for accommodation has come to an end.

Well said, Cent Uygur. Your war is one in which I will enlist, gladly.

God: A Career Retrospective

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Over at Don’t Drink the Koolaid (It’s all about memes), there is an wonderful cartoon biography of God. The post is titled “This Might Explain A Few Things.” Indeed it might.
God has a temper tantrum
 

Unfortunately, God was also prone to violent mood swings; and would often wipe out an entire epoch’s worth of work in a temper tantrum over some minor frustration.

A multi-religious Jesus?

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Continuing with Faith Commons…. Bill asks the question, “Can the Message of Jesus be Multi-Religious?”

The more I study Jesus’ message the more I’m convinced that it is non-religious.

In fact, until the modern mission movement that began in the late eighteenth century, Christianity mostly moved into culture rather than converting it. That is, Christian missions more often converted the heart but left much of the culture intact. For the past 200 years, we have been converting whole cultures to the Euro-American style of Christianity. But this is not the issue I want to discuss.

What I’m beginning to understand is that the “Good Newsâ€? requires little change in culture—which often includes a religion. The gospel message is relational and spiritual, not religious.

I’d like to tackle Bill’s question from a perspective that’s almost certainly different from that shared by most members of the Commons. From that perspective—rationalist, scientific, historical, anti-monotheist, heavily influenced by the Buddha’s teaching and by Taoism—I see several problems with presenting Bill’s “Good News” to other cultures as a message that they can accept without significant alteration in their cultural world view.
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