Every life is a journey of individuality

I’m a listener of NPR, primarily because its commentators most rarely mouth the silliest things among those who inhabit MSM-land.   Nonetheless, facepalm moments do occur, and since this is a blog that promotes skepticism, I’m going to pick on a commentary made today by Scott Simon in his “Haiti and the Hand of God.”

By now you’ve probably heard Christian televangelist Pat Robertson’s claim that the Haitian earthquake is a consequence of that country’s “pact with the devil” some two hundred years ago.  This is standard fare for Robertson, so you’d think that most people by now would simply dismiss his blatherings as more incoherent rants of a loon rather than the outrage with which they were typically greeted.  To his credit, Simon is with the former camp, but attempts to cut Robertson deeper with the view that “[I]t’s hard to detect the hand of God, much less His loving touch, in [Robertson's] remarks.”

Now it’s symbolic of theism’s incoherency that the irony of this statement is completely lost on believers like Simon, for where is the “loving touch” of the “hand of God” detectable anywhere in all this? If Simon–or any other believer sees it–by all means please produce it.  Because, right now, all the rest of us see is a lot of suffering.  Needless. Gratuitous. Devastating.  On a people already ground down by poverty, corruption, and horrible government.

If Simon were to delve a little deeper into his own theology, he’d realize he really has no basis to object to Robertson’s comments, because the latter could very well be right.  As Isaiah 45:7 (NIV) reads: “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things” (emphasis mine).   Makes you kinda wonder whether the loving touch of God’s hand is what produced the Haitian calamity.

I’ve heard many theists say that it takes a god to make sense out of existence.  To me, however, a god renders existence unintelligible, unpredictable, and chaotic.  Although my reasons I think trump those of the theist’s, they do not in and of themselves serve as basis for rejecting god-belief.  After all, a life of confusion may have been the intention of a god all along, as a test of our faith or a sign that our belief is justified (a possibility which I explored in a previous post).

The recent fifth-year anniversary of the tsunami that destroyed over 200,000 lives in Asia (a disproportionate number of whom were children), besides raising anew the problem of evil for theists, served as the catalyst for my thoughts.  In its wake, as is typical with any natural disaster, we heard from various believers of all stripes that their god had caused it as a form of punishment for…well, take your pick among a smorgasbord of reasons: failure to pray the required 5 times a day, abortion, immoral sexual practices of tourists, Swedish “hate crime laws” against the Gospel, etc.  Any one of those reasons could be true, or none of them, or all of them.  The point is, under theism, we would never know, because we’re dealing with a personality whose designs, goals, and plans are almost completely, if not wholly, hidden from us.  And it’s not just tsunamis or other natural disasters this pertains to, but to any event or occurrence.  Was it the will of the god that my mother got cancer?  That the plane crashed, but only two survived?  That I lost my job?  That the Lakers won?  “God is in control” is what the theists tell us.  Ok then, but to what extent?  Down to every last motion of every single atom?  The occasional miracle or smiting?  And what of the role other supernatural entities, like demons or djinns, play?  Theists cannot answer these questions with any sort of confidence.  Anything and everything could have a hidden hand behind it, for reasons we can only grasp at, like straws.  Such is the existential blindness theism inevitably leads.  No wonder believers are admonished to simply “Trust in the Lord.”  They have no choice.  Theism reduces us to puppets whose strings are invisible to us, in a show whose script we can only dimly perceive, if at all.

It wasn’t so long ago that the world was governed by the belief in divine fatalism; things were they way they were because that’s the way they were ordained.  Needless to say, the reasonable position to take in light of such a belief—nah, the duty– was obliging acceptance.  After all, who were you, puny mortal, to oppose your god’s will?  (More cunning individuals justified their actions as carrying out their god’s will).  Little wonder, then, that human progress advanced at a snail’s pace.  But when a few brave individuals began to propose completely natural explanations for life’s routines—essentially curtailing the hand of a god—did humanity make huge strides in its welfare and understanding.  This new paradigm has proved enormously beneficial for our species, but it has been largely resisted by theists, who correctly identify it as a threat to god-belief.  If our lives are what we make it, if we can control, direct, remedy, explain, or predict aspects of our existence through our own means, then our need for and dependence on a deity is rendered practically moot.

My lack of belief in god(s) doesn’t originate from the view they make life incomprehensible to me, or that believing in them hinders us as a species; that would be fallacious (argument from personal incredulity and argument from outrage, respectively).  Rather, I’m explaining why to some people, a god-belief does not help understand existence, but detracts from that understanding.

During a conversation with a Christian, I was reminded of a most excellent verse from the Bible:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18).

In other words, the Christian gospel is purposely designed by its god to appear delusional to non-believers.  When Christians wonder why everyone else scoffs at their beliefs, they need only recall this verse.  The confusion is intentional.

I got to admit, this is a brilliant rejoinder to those who dismiss your message as crazy.  “You don’t understand what we’re saying?  That’s the way it should be!” For a long time, the looniness was touted as a point in the faith’s favor.  As early Christian apologist Tertullian put it, “I believe because it’s absurd.  It’s certain because it’s impossible.”

But then came the Age of Reason, and suddenly, being absurd wasn’t so great.  Ever since, Christianity has been forced to justify itself on rational and empiricist grounds.  Tract after apologetic tract has strived to demonstrate that the Christian faith is grounded in reason, science, and actual history.  As one of the more notable latest products of that endless stream, William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith, states “…it will be apologetics which, by making the gospel a credible option for seeking people, gives them, as it were, the intellectual permission to believe.”

Unfortunately, “intellectual permission to believe” is precisely not what the Christian gospel is supposed to offer.  According to the apostle Paul, the message is unintellectual, unreasonable, irrational, i.e., foolishness.  That is its virtue, a sign to the growing believer that the “power of God” is at play.

But Christians can’t have it both ways.  Either their message is absurd, or it’s reasonable (unsurprisingly, Craig never mentions 1 Cor. 1:18 in his book).  If it’s reasonable, then Paul is wrong.  If Paul is wrong on this, what else is Paul wrong about?  Christians can’t argue their gospel is reasonable without fatally wounding their theology.  But if they argue it’s absurd, then welcome to the club of bizarre beliefs, of which this world is littered.  Christianity becomes no better than Scientology.  Such is Christianity’s conundrum, but it’s a bed of it’s own making.

Skeptics are well-aware of the deleterious impact religion can sometimes have on the lives and well-being of humans, particularly on the vulnerable and innocent.  And sadly, justice for faith-based crimes has been the exception rather than the rule, which only compounds the problem.  An article in yesterday’s Washington Post that will surely boil your blood reminds us anew that we still have a long way to go to turn that around.  More broadly, it demonstrates why religion can have no place in law and governance.

The article follows-up on the court cases of Christian parents whose children died as a result of the withholding of medical treatment in favor of administering magical incantations (aka, “prayer”), specifically, what punishment these parents received for their gross neglect.  Its author, Professor Jonathan Turley, found that judges were exceptionally lenient in these cases.  A “faith defense” was factored in to sentencing decisions, resulting in jail times less than those received for misdemeanors.  Even more galling, the murderous parents were allowed to retain custody of the remaining children.  Professor Turley contrasted the treatment these parents received against sentences levied on parents in which belief played no part and found the latter were far more harsh.

It is of course outrageous that innocent children should die due to the criminal negligence of their parents.  Even more outrageous is that countless others will die until the justice system stops sentencing these parents with a relative slap on the wrist and punishes them commiserate with what their act truly is: murder.

Unfortunately, this may prove far more difficult than many appreciate.  For in a worldview steeped in god-belief, what rational grounds exist to reject the practices of these Christian parents?  Most religions, including the various Christianities, tell us the will and plan of their god is inscrutable, mysterious, unknowable.  Moreover, their holy books and deities promise supernatural healing miracles by uttering a few fervent words.  Consequently, how can a theist gainsay the defense put forward by these parents?

“I do not regret trusting truly in the Lord for my daughter’s health.”

“I am guilty of trusting my Lord’s wisdom completely. . . . Guilty of asking for heavenly intervention. Guilty of following Jesus Christ when the whole world does not understand. Guilty of obeying my God.”

One of the judges, a theist, “reminded” one of the parents during sentencing, “God probably works through other people, some of them doctors.”  But how could this judge possibly know what the Christian god “probably” does?  The more reasonable assumption, based on a biblical worldview, is that Yahweh probably wanted the children dead, otherwise it would have supernaturally cured the children of their illnesses as a result of their parents’ supplications.  And if that’s what probably Yahweh wanted, who is any human to judge or condemn the parents?  Could that be what’s really underlying the travesty of these laughable sentences?

And ask yourself this.  What’s to prevent neglectful parents from utilizing the theist defense any time a child is injured or dies?  “But Your Honor, I had prepared the proper offering to Hestia to care and feed my 2 year old while I was gone on vacation.  If I’m guilty of his death, I’m guilty of asking for heavenly intervention.  Guilty of following the gods atop Mt. Olympus when the whole world does not understand.  Guilty of obeying Zeus.”  Where does it end?

Religious belief is an acid on the rule of law.  If judges and legislators cannot separate such belief from their official duties, they’re simply unqualified.

P.S. I realize it’s been a few months since my last blog entry. I’ve been reading (slowly imbibing is probably more accurate) David Eller’s powerful book, Atheism Advanced.  More than any other recent book, this one has strikingly changed my perspective and understanding of religion.  I believe it’s a must-read for every atheist.  More to come on this wonderful book.

There’s no better guarantee of a good laugh than the steady stream of batshit crazy quotes from such Christian sites as Rapture Ready and Rapture Forums, which are a mainstay at Fundies Say the Darndest Things.  Here’s one choice example, preserved in all its ungrammatical glory:

When I got saved in 1973 I went to a lot of prophecy meetings listening to Jack van Impe and really thot the rapture was near then,A lot of it was emotions,but now w/what,s going on in the world,IT IS FACT!!!! (24thchance)

I remember as a teenager my fundamentalist Christian step-mother handing me a copy of Hal Lindsey’s extremely popular The Late, Great Planet Earth, one of but a series of books going back centuries predicting the end-times, and her telling me that Mikhail Gorbachev was the anti-Christ. I was pretty convinced by the book’s arguments, and watched developments in the Soviet Union with “rapt” attention.  Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as thought for poor Gorby, nor for “Magog” (as the Soviet Union was known in end-times parlance), as both faded into the dustbin of history.  The same couldn’t be said for Lindsey, who went on to write more end-times novels and make further boat-loads of money, despite a perfect track record of failed prediction.  But even Lindsey’s success can’t compare with the latest and greatest incarnation of end-times hopes, the Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which spawned a host of movies, and even video games.

Today, I’m still fascinated by the end-times.  No, not when they’ll occur, but by the seemingly unquenchable thirst for them among a persistent minority of religious believers.  Every failed end-times prediction seems only to serve as fodder for the next.  There’s no better example of the triumph of hope over experience than end-times belief.  Why?

 To understand the history and theology behind Christian eschatology (the fancy name for end-times belief), I picked up Bible scholar Robert Price’s recent work The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind.  Price, too, is interested why end-times belief is the cat of infinite lives, and he arrives at a satisfying – at least for me – answer:

So, as Russell says, we do in fact see a consistent, long-enduring pattern throughout Old and New Testament concerning prophecy, only it is not what he thinks it is.  Instead of Jesus following in the footsteps of the prophets with their use of spectacular symbolism to describe historical developments, what we have is the New Testament writers continuing to do as their Old Testament predecessors did: banking on soon-coming events as heralding the end of the universe in fire and meteor storms.  They were wrong and they kept being wrong.  And that is why today’s fundamentalists, following the same trajectory, keep striking out, too.  Perhaps if they allowed themselves to understand that the biblical writers had so grossly and repeatedly erred, they would learn their lesson.  But that they will not do, for fear of forfeiting scriptural authority.  And this traumatic truth about the Bible they repress, but it is a burden their consciences bear with difficulty, so it manifests itself in neurotic, repeating symptoms, notably the incorrigible desire to calculate the end of a world they are not mature enough to deal with apart from magical fantasies.

I’ll be the first to say, Price is venturing into a field here for which he possesses no particular training; he’s not a psychologist, so take his opinion with a grain of salt.  But his explanation, which he elsewhere attributes to cognitive dissonance, has the ring of truth.  Have you ever noticed that believers most fanatical in their idolotry of  a religious work or of some “prophet” seem the most susceptible to neverending end-times mania?  I also think Price is on to something when he  connects end-times thirst to a lack of personal maturity, though what causes the other is unclear.   Could this immaturity drive another tendency common among end-times enthusiasts: antipathy, even hatred, of the world?  When we’ve made a serious mess of things and just can’t seem to summon the will to correct them, one inclination, most often witnessed among children, is to smash the whole project and start afresh.  I suspect something’s similar at work with these last-days believers.  It also conveniently relieves them of taking any responsibility for partaking in common human endeavors to alleviate the world’s troubles.  The earth sucks and it’s going to be blown away soon by a divine nuke, so why bother?

As I wrote before, this is one of the most worrisome aspects of end-times belief, though such apathy does not compare to the dangerous lunacy to actually effect eschatological doctrines through open conflict.  While such a vile strain is mostly isolated, it’s come too close to having one of it’s own in real power for me to breathe easily any time soon.  History, sadly, is littered with the victims of apocalyptic preaching.  Could it just be a matter of time before the rest of us are victims too?

Edit: Reflecting more on believers’ loathing for the world, I think a better, simpler explanation for it derives from the belief that God will one day blast it to smithereens.  What a terrible place this must be for him to do that!

I’ve been working on an article about end-times believers, but this is too juicy (pardon the pun) to pass up.  From an article in the The Daily Telegraph comes this gem of a photo featuring Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, trying to find out whether tomatoes experience pain:

The article discusses declassified information on Scientology gathered by Britain’s intelligence services during the 1970s, primarily revealing how Hubbard and some of his Scientology associates “earned” their PhDs.

Unfortunately, there’s no word whether the tomatoes reached OT VIII as a result of Hubbard’s therapy.

Don’t believe me?  Check out this ad taken from a Christian blog for a Christian dating service.  Yeah, I’m guessing “chaste” is not one of the hopes held for this girl by Christian guys wanting to date her…

Cheap point aside, there’s actually a more fundamental point I’d like to make here.  After all, dear visitor, you don’t come here merely to be entertained, but to be informed, right?

It’s well-known that for many Christians, evolution is a dirty word, with around half rejecting the theory in favor of creationism.  Ever notice, however, that they in fact act in accordance with its principals, as our ad explicitly suggests?  Traits like good looks, wealth, youth, or an ideal body are absent from lists of what makes a Godly mate, yet what do we see?  Christians desiring and selecting mates with precisely those traits, for reasons explained only by evolution.  But, Christians retort, the Bible doesn’t rule those qualities out either.  True, yet according to the theology, they should play no role; it’s the inner qualities that matter – God-fearing, virtuous, trustworthy and trusting, faithful, humble, etc. – not the outwardly or “worldly” ones.  Thus, we should see the attractive paired with the ugly, rich with poor, fit with fat, young with old, able with infirm – all in combinations wholly at odds with evolutionary psychology – because external appearances do not necessarily reflect the most esteemed personality traits.  If creationism, not evolution, is true, such qualities should hardly be a factor in choosing a mate.  Yet, they are.  Christian creationists are virtually indistinguishable from outsiders in the qualities they actually choose in a spouse.

As far as I’m aware, no Christian creationist website has an explanation for why this is.  Perhaps they’d say it’s all covered under “the Fall,” which has made everyone, including themselves, incline to behave according to evolutionary instincts—which instincts of course originated with Satan, along with the rest of evilu…er, evolution. My guess is that creationists don’t want to tangle with the conundrum of why God would make certain people more desirably endowed physically when he says all the important traits are the invisible ones.  The cognitive dissonance for Muslim creationists must be especially acute.  Here Allah creates the female physical form and then orders his followers to cover it all up.

Christian creationists, as in so much else, let’s see you practice what you preach!

“The wrath of the lamb”

Somehow, that just doesn’t do it for me.  When I think of lambs, I think of white, puffy creatures who’re afraid of their own shadows and who star in kiddie shows.  “Wrath” and “lamb” seem about as related as “vengeance” and “Teletubby”.  The phrase pretty much obliterates the entire point you’re trying to make because I’m too busy laughing to hear it!

By now, you’re probably wondering, where the hell I got this from.  It was taken from the following video, about 1:05 in.  Admittedly, the preacher mostly says “the wrath of God.”  At least, heavy editing makes it appear that’s what he mostly says.  And if the editing wasn’t enough, a dark, foreboding track – Lord Sauron’s theme from The Lord of the Rings perhaps? – further emphasizes the punishment to come.  Really, you can’t make this stuff up (not even you, Dave Barry!).

Anyway, it’s good to see the old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstone sermon hasn’t gone completely out of style, if only to punctuate how bizarre and, well, medieval, is this aspect of religion.  But it got me thinking to what extent beliefs in some terrifying, eternal suffering in the afterlife have played in a religion’s relative success. After all, two of the world’s largest religions – Christianity and Islam – both share among the most merciless and boundless conceptions of divine punishment.  With those two religions, as the rewards in heaven for belief are supremely enticing (mansions, in the case of Christianity; female virgins, in the case of Islam), are the tortures in hell for disbelief stupefyingly horrific.  While some form of reward and punishment in the afterlife didn’t originate with Christianity and Islam, they are pretty unique in positing such an extreme variance in the two possible spiritual existences.  Yes, I realize that – at least for Christianity – most teaching on the subject of hell has moderated somewhat, the video above notwithstanding, it’s also true that this is a historically recent development.

It may be a mistake to assume that religious threats constitute a way to reel in new members.  From an outsider’s perspective, I’m possibly going to offend someone’s god regardless of which religion I choose. It’s like a game of roulette, except the wheel contains not 38 slots (or “pockets”) but thousands.  Good luck with that bet!  More likely, as is the case with apologetics, the aim is to keep the sheep from leaving the fold.  Our good preacher suggests just as much when he warns that even some members of his audience will not be immune from the main mutton’s mania.  As for myself, I’m going to try to get ahead of the game by pouring out my wrath on a plate of lamb kabob.

I finally watched Bill Maher’s film Religulous the other night, which came out in early October of last year.  What took me so long?  I was uncomfortable with Maher’s admitted deception in obtaining the interviews for his film, which was akin to Ben Stein’s practice in producing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.  But while Stein presented his film as a sober documentary investigation, Maher’s work took itself far less seriously, a sort of mockumentary, along the lines of Sasha Cohen’s Borat, though underlying Religulous is a fundamental point about religion.  Nonetheless, the film should be imbibed with a grain of salt.  I got the sense that clever film editing created the many “stupefied reactions” so common among the film’s pious believers.

Maher’s aim is to expose the ridiculous beliefs underlying today’s religions (thus the film title).  He doesn’t focus on any single religion, a tactic that won’t necessarily broaden the film’s appeal, but it does strengthen his case tenfold.  Sure, everyone knows that the notion of a man flying up to heaven on a winged stallion is laughable on its face, but a man born of the union between a virgin woman and a deity really happened? Ok, right… You gotta hand it to Maher for studiously maintaining an easy joviality with his interviewees, upon whom it probably eventually dawns that Maher is not exactly friendly to their cause.  I myself would stand flabbergasted at some of the stuff coming out these theists’ mouths, but Maher rolls with it in a completely disarming way, by supposing, it seemed, at least a little incredulity within his companion.

Two observations about the faithful from the film are readily apparent.  The first is the shallowness of their beliefs.  Many know the basic theological tenets, but it’s obvious they haven’t reasoned them out very well, a fact Maher exploits to their detriment (and the audience’s amusement).  The second is how far believers go in rationalizing obvious contradictions between their faith and reality.  The Muslims, for example, all unfailingly ascribe Islamic violence to “politics,” somewhat akin to how many Christians blame Christian hatred and violence on “deviations” from Jesus’s teachings (as if Christ never said “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,” for example).

While for most of the film I bounced between laughing and crying, there were a couple moments that offered hope.  One involved a retired Catholic priest who cheerfully dismissed fundamental Christian doctrines, such as the existence of hell.  This reminded me of one of my biggest complaints about theists, the fact that few of them entertain virtually no doubt about their beliefs.  This is the scourge of dogma, which is certainly not peculiar to religion, but which undoubtedly provided its main historical impetus.

 At both the film’s start and end, Maher describes his animating concern, one shared by Sam Harris in The End of Faith.  That is, in an age when humanity’s capabilities for destroying the planet grow practically by the day, faith-based, dogmatic belief is rapidly becoming a dangerous liability.  Fatalism underlies too much of today’s religion, sapping our collective need to act, and increasing our proclivity for conflict.  Watch Religulous for good entertainment, but keep in mind that the subject is ultimately no laughing matter.

Update: Valerie Tarico at Debunking Christianity just posted an illuminating article on knowing and certainty that segueways nicely with my objection to dogmatic religious belief.  The money quote: “As scientists learn more about how our brains work, certitude is coming to be seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Certainty is a confession of ignorance about our ability to be passionately mistaken.”

Kudos to B.T. Murtagh at the quarkscrew blog for this excellent framing of George Tiller’s murder within theistic absolute morality.  The money quote:

If your notion of absolute moral values is that you absolutely follow someone else’s decisions as to what is moral, or worse yet someone else’s unsupported claim as to what a third party has decided is moral, then your only absolute moral decision is an abdication of moral responsibility.

His deconstruction of the moral implications of God’s order to Abraham to kill Isaac is simply top-notch.  Well worth a read.

My question to theists: what if it emerges that Tiller’s murderer, Scott Roeder, claims that God commanded him to kill Tiller?  By your own belief, Roeder should be exalted and praised, should he not?