Faith's Last Gasp

On the basis of apparently incontrovertible evidence, commentators of various persuasions... are convinced that we are witnessing an upsurge in religious observance and influence...

But I see the same evidence as yielding the opposite conclusion. What we are witnessing is not the resurgence of religion, but its death throes...

When a climate of heightened tension such as this prompts activists in one religious group to become more assertive... other religious groups, not wishing to be left behind, follow suit... The effect is that suddenly it seems as if there are religious devotees everywhere, and the spurious magnification of their importance further promotes their confidence. As a result they make some gains, as the faith schools example shows...

Yet the fact is that only 10 per cent of the British population attend church, mosque, synagogue or temple every week, and this figure is declining in all but immigrant communities... Yes, over half the population claim vaguely to believe in Something... but they are functionally secularist and would be horrified if asked to live according to the letter of (say) Christian morality: giving all one’s possessions to the poor, taking no thought for the morrow and so impracticably forth. Not even Christian clerics follow these injunctions. This picture is repeated everywhere in the west except the US, and there too the religious base is eroding...

As private observance, religion will of course survive among minorities; as a factor in public and international affairs it is having what might be its last - characteristically bloody - fling.

AC Grayling, Faith's Last Gasp, Prospect Magazine, November 2006

Wednesday

I've yet to hear from the Christian Post since I wrote to them yesterday.

Browsing their site, I came across this in an editorial about Ted Haggard:

While Haggard has only partially admitted guilt, the situation in its entirety is a stark reminder of man’s sinfulness and a dark exposure of how deeply the sin of homosexuality has taken root in the American society. If the accusations are indeed true, now would be the time for the Evangelical community look within its own walls and battle against the culture of sin that looms before the Church of Christ.

It'll be interesting to see how this call for a witch-hunt against homosexuals in the church pans out. There are sure to be many potential targets...

And finally, here's a factoid. Did you know that founding member of the Dead Kennedys Carlos Cadona ("6025") left the band after suffering from schizophrenia and later became a born-again Christian?

Letter to the Christian Post

Dear Sir/Madam

I doubt you publish letters from atheists, but I wanted to reply to
your article "Science Gives Christians Upper Hand Over Atheists" (18
November).

This quotes Lee Strobel as saying, "Christians can stand confidently
within biblical truth knowing that it's in line with astrophysics and
cosmology".

He ignores the incontrovertible, inarguable and easily verifiable
fact that most scholars in their relevant fields do not consider
that the Bible is "in line" with these scientific understandings – or
indeed that the Bible contains an inerrant history. This is true
whether they are Christian, Jewish or otherwise.

How many of your readers know that over 10,000 American clergy have
signed "An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science"? This says,
"We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific
truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much
of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth… is to
deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance
to our children... "

It may be that you discount these opinions based on your publication's
Statement of Faith. This reads "the Bible, consisting of Old and New
Testaments only… is the infallible and authoritative Word of God…".

But that would be dogma, not science.

You are free to disagree with the opinions of others. However, it is
surely bearing False Witness to pretend that these opinions simply do
not exist.

Your readers can check the sources for my statements here.

Kind regards

Jesus Camp

Go and see the movie Jesus Camp



Two things stood out for me. One was Pastor Becky Fischer watching a video of children being whipped up into an emotional frenzy over the issue of abortion. "Extreme liberals", she conceded, might be disturbed by that.

The other was 12 year old Levi, describing how dealing with non-Christians makes him feel "yucky". He says "A lot of people in this world are sick". He's told repeatedly that he'll be something important in the future... On one scene, he idolises Ted Haggard, who as we all know now is a "liar and a deceiver". It's hard not to see Levi as some sort of future Travis Bickle in-the-making. Poor kid.

"We can't have phoneys in the army of God", bellows Pastor Fischer at one point in the film.

And all this brought home a vital element of faith missing from the discussions in my previous two posts here on Doublethink and religious belief... That of blind, wilfull ignorance in the face of overwhelming reality to the contrary.

Simply put, these people actually believe that the crap they spout is true - and that they can safely ignore any evidence or opinions to the contrary.

Here's a quote from a religious-type, from a current Talk Origins POTM nominee post....

...my understanding is that about 90% of Americans believe in God and creation of some kind. I hear that about 50% of Americans believe in creation as the Bible describes it. I find it hard to believe that these 50-90% of Americans are the uneducated, while the unbelieving 10% are the educated and enlightened.

The vast majority of creationists and their ilk just do not get that their beliefs are based on ignorance, and that it means something that the more educated people are, the less likely they are to believe in God or "creationism".

Haggard & Santorum RIP

I was just surfing Brent Rasmussen's blog, and he has a quote from the very wonderful Dan Savage (of Savage Love) about Ted Haggard's fall from grace. You remember Ted Haggard. He's the guy who led a homophobic evangelical church and went on and on and on about how terrible gayness was. Surprise, surprise, it turns out he was a "liar and a deceiver". But as Dan points out, there is a special level of hypocrisy in Ted Haggard's behaviour, as he was one of the leading advocates of the idea that sexual "aberrance" could be cured by following the proper path of Jesus. Dan writes:

"If you believe that Jesus Christ can change the sexual orientation of a believer, why on earth did he refuse to cure Haggard? Haggard founded a church that has 14,000 members! Thousands were brought to Christ by Haggard's preaching. Mixed in with Ted's meth-fueled gay-sex romps and hypocritical gay-bashings were, without a doubt, thousands of good works.

Did Jesus help Haggard out? No. Haggard struggled with temptation all his life. He tried to battle off his "dark" desires, but nothing proved effective. There was no cure for Haggard, no miracle. No matter how long he struggled, no matter how much faith he had, Haggard's sexual orientation remained unchanged. Nothing helped. Not prayer, not Jesus H. Christ on his cross.

Nothing.

If giving his heart to Jesus couldn't cure Haggard, what hope is there for the likes of me? If Jesus can't be bothered to work a miracle for the most powerful evangelical minister in the country, what "hope" is there for the average dyke?

None.

The ex-gay thing is over. It's dead. It was bullshit from the start, and it's bullshit now."

Very nice. Dan's column also talks about his part in the defeat of Senator Rick Santorum in the recent elections for the US senate. He links to this video clip where the ex-Senator attacks "liberals" for being, supposedly, inherently evil and irresponsible.

Quite staggeringly amusingly, Santorum says repeatedly that liberals believe that they should be allowed to do whatever they want to do - have abortions, have sex, whatever they like - and at each turn you can see him choking down the words "...as long as no-one gets hurt". Because, of course, those words destroy his whole argument.

What a wanker.

Doublethink

For the longest time, I've been trying to come up with a word to describe the "Religionist" behaviour of saying and believing things which are blatantly untrue.

Take for example the recent changes to the law regarding rape in Pakistan. Until now, four male witnesses were needed for a charge to succeed. Otherwise, a woman complaining of rape would face the very serious charge of adultery. This brough an utterly ludicrous reaction from some Fundamentalists:

Islamist lawmakers walked out of parliament, boycotting the vote, after leader Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman told the assembly the change to the law would encourage free sex.

"This is an attempt to create a free sex zone in Pakistan," he said.

The mind boggles.

Now, Mr Fazal-ur-Rehman isn't lying here, because he fervantly believes what he is saying to be true. But what does one call this extreme level of cognitive dissonance?

I recently came across a description of what is known as "Tolstoy Sydrome" which seems to fit the bill. It's named after description by that great Russian author:

"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

The concept of accepting two mutually contradictory opinions (that tightening rape laws will lead to free sex) was beautifully described by George Orwell in his seminal novel 1984, in his description of Doublethink:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary."

So, I guess, I don't need a new word. Doublethink and Tolstoy Syndrome (and good old cognative dissonence and blind ignorance) sum up the "religionist" mindset very well.

There's a great example in a recent opinion piece in the wonderfully named Texarkana Gazette, from a chap called Derrell Murphy:

"The liberal Secularists’ actions [in banning school prayer, the public display of the ten commandments, et al.] have overthrown centuries of established legal precedent, based on the Bible."

Whether you believe that prayer in school is bad or good, or the ten commandments should be displayed in public or not, the idea that the legal precedents involved have been "based on the Bible" is just nonsensical. It's wrong, false and untrue. But people keep believing it, because they are told it repeatedly, and because to accept that this is wrong (which as I may have mentioned it is) would demolish their entire argument.

But hey. Such is the world we live in (and, to be fair, and long lived in).

It's a while...

It's a while since I wrote regularly as PTET. Maybe it's time to start back up.

When I started this Blog, I thought I would be able to reason with Fundamentalist Christians and Creationists. I didn't expect to "deconvert" anyone, but I did hope to have them question their beliefs - and I hoped too that they would help me question mine. I've learned a lot in my writings and explorations... But there is of course a whole lot I don't know - and there always will be.

At first, I tried to reason with these "Religionists". Invariably, they came back with the same arguments and sets of factoids which they said supported their beliefs. It was like arguing with people who were reading from a script. I then tried to show them that their script was wrong. I took great care to check their sources, and to show in detail where and why their sources were incorrect.

I would demonstrate, for example, that evolutionary theory did not "exclude" ideas of God, by showing that most religious scientists had no problem reconciling their faith with the "fact" of evolution. I laid out how archaeology and history and studies of comparative mythology should as sure as anyone could hope for that the Bible was not literally true, or historically accurate, or anything which could even be said to approach being "inerrant".

But still, the same arguments came back, time and time again, as if those arguing with me inhabited an alternative reality.

This became frustrating, and I tried a different tack. I pressed the point that the sources used by these Fundamentalist Christians and Creationists were demonstrably wrong and mis-represented the opinions of scientists and theologans... And that the repeat them was to bear False Witness. In effect, I thought, they were *lying*. However, these accusations only led to anger, and those arguing with me becoming ever more entrentched in their positions.

And, after a while, it all became just too tiresome, and I came to the conclusion that these people were just crazy.

But of course, they are not "crazy". And they are not exactly liars either - because no matter how much their opinions differ vastly with reality, and no matter how much they are demonstrably wrong, the simple sad fact is that Fundamentalist Christians and Creationists believe fervently, sincerely, and wholeheartedly that they are true.

The beliefs of Fundamentalist Christians and Creationists aren't based on reason. Therefore they are not open to reason in arguments against them. Their beleifs come from faith, and this faith that they are right infects every part of their thinking.

Quite terrifying, this "faith based reasoning" has escaped from the confines of religion, and has become a standard part of the political, moral and philosophical discourse of the twenty-first century.

In the past few years we've seen an ill-judged war in Iraq inspired, fought, and mis-managed beyond belief not on the basis of reason and fact - but on the understanding (not always inspired by religion) that the mere *belief* in the existence of weapons of mass destruction, or that a war could be won with minimal resources, or that the Iraqi people would treat the Americans as liberators, would make these things come true.

It's important to stress that this faith has not all been religious... However, without a doubt the increase in the influence of faith-based reasoning has been led, inspired and promoted by religion - and by those who's sincerest wish is to take humanity back, back before the time of the Enlightenment, back to a mythical golden age when religion and faith ruled humanity, and science and unpleasant reality could and should be ignored.

And with that, I think it's time I got back to some occassional blogging :-)