Where is the candidate brave enough to address this problem?

Now look what you’ve done, O American Religion. Even thoughtful people like Shelley are getting fed up with you.

Regardless of how this vote goes this week, we can no longer ignore the elephant sitting in the corner that is religious influence on politics and government. People are not always going to be able to complacently have their ‘faith’ and their ‘science’, because in too many cases belief in one denies the existence of the other. Members of a church may have to consider challenging the precepts of the church, and individual churches challenge their association with a larger body. Basic human rights can no longer be pushed aside in the interest of ‘culture’ and ‘belief’, and the religious faithful cannot be allowed to determine how the rest of us live or die; how and when we have children; who we can love; how we dress; destroy our world in the interests of ‘being fruitful, and multiplying’; reduce our science to superstition, and bind our ethics to obscure passages in ill-interpreted religious texts.

I’d like to dream that today’s election will be the beginning of a change, but even if the Democratic party wins big, I don’t see them ever trying to chastise that elephant.

Time bobbles the God and science debate

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The cover of Time magazine highlights the current struggle: it’s God vs. Science, or as I’d prefer to put it, fantasy vs. reality. I have mixed feelings about the story; on the one hand, it presents the theological sound in such a godawful stupid way that it gives me some hope, but on the other, stupid seems to win the day far too often. It sure seems to have won over the editors of Time.

The lead article covers a debate between the forces of reason and dogma. They picked two debaters and pitted them against each other, and on our side, we have Richard Dawkins. Dawkins talked to us a bit about this on our visit, since he’d just recently gotten back from a quick flight to NY to do this. Time says they’d had to consider a number of possibilities for this argument: Marc Hauser, Lewis Wolpert, Victor Stenger, and Ann Druyan (speaking for Carl Sagan, who has a posthumous book on religion coming out), so they had a competent collection on one side, and they just needed to find a good representative for the other. Unfortunately, here’s how Time characterized the search.

[Read more…]

Small town churches, small town prisons

Here’s a point I’ve often seen made before, this time by Mike the Mad Biologist and Shakespeare’s Sister: religion provides an important social outlet in small town America. It is the social network, the source of community activities, and an essential part of the people’s identities. It’s more than just an institution, it’s the glue that holds the fabric of these little towns together. It’s their scrap of culture.

I hope no is too surprised when I say that I agree 100%. Church is a big deal; some of these towns have big signs as you drive in, listing the churches available. Typically, one of the first major community buildings that were assembled in the history of these places was the church, which would have a central location, and even today may be preserved as an architectural landmark.

I don’t know where Mike and Shakes live, but I’m smack in the middle of it. Here’s a map of our little town, pop. 5000, with most of the churches marked; there are a couple missing (like the Jehovah’s Witnesses hall on the NE side of town, and there’s at least one other in the SE corner of the map, and oddly enough, the big Catholic church, which is down near F, isn’t shown).

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Believe me, I know about small town churches. My house is near D, when I walk to the coffee shop down near J I often go by F and G. I know you can’t get elected to much of anything without having some association with a church. People know you by your church affiliation; if you’re a member of the Federated Church (C), you’re probably one of those liberal types and might be a university person; if you go to the Evangelical Free Church…well, let’s just say I might cross to the other side of the road to avoid you.

What Mike seems to fail to consider (Shakes does address it) is this: is this a good thing?

I’ve heard the “they’re a cultural resource” argument quite a few times, usually from people defending their church, or from people who don’t go to church but make this semi-patronizing suggestion that it’s where the little people go for their little slice of Western Civilization. It doesn’t wash.

I look at that map and see waste and lost opportunities.

First of all, these are sectarian separations—religion divides people. Very few people will go to E one week and F the next; the fact that these social networking centers represent largely mutually exclusive networks is blithely ignored in these suggestions that the church provides identity. Even scarier, though—imagine these towns dominated by a single sect.

Secondly, it would be wonderful to imagine these places as sites where people gather to appreciate great art, music and poetry, and experience the best of religious history. Think again. A typical church service is a few hymns, a harangue from the preacher, a few recitations from a book, a prayer or two, and some organ music. What is celebrated is not art, but dogma. Sometimes you do get good material: the church I attended in my youth had an excellent choir, for instance, and one thing I think the absence of church attendance deprives us godless people of is the opportunity to sing, and get instruction in singing. But those kinds of performance skills always play second fiddle to the primary function of the church service, the liturgy.

As someone who does not believe, I would not sit through over an hour of up-and-down, recite this, drone that, listen to this homily, etc., for 10 or 20 minutes of good music. Someone from one sect will not stomach the rituals of another to see the same, either. Any culture is excessively diluted by the noise.

Thirdly, I’m sorry, but we do not live in the seventeenth or eighteenth century any more. Religion is not the rich and generous wellspring of funding for art any more, nor does it seem to inspire much creativity. We don’t have Bachs generating great art out of their faith—what we have is music and poetry and plays put on by the churches that are simply poisoned by strident preachiness. The adjective “Christian” prepended to music, rock, theater is a synonym with “dreck” nowadays.

The central flaw with the cultural resource argument is that these are not just social clubs. They are social clubs with an ideological and metaphysical agenda that often dominates their discourse and makes them incompatible with each other and with the goal of supporting a shared social environment. What us godless fiends are arguing is not that the church organizations are necessarily bad and must be shut down, but that they bear this ugly baggage that cripples them in fulfilling that role that the apologists think is a redeeming virtue. Imagine a small town without that useless superstition muddling up the picture.

Imagine a Morris in which everyone’s belief in God has evaporated. They would still appreciate each other, though, and still like getting together every week to talk and sing and share ideas—those aren’t religious ideals, but purely human ones. Choir practice would continue; they’d still work on the Christmas pageant; coffee hour in the church basement would be a regular event; pastors would still be counseling couples, or getting kids together for activities. The only difference is that they wouldn’t be doing these things in the name of a non-existent being, in service to weird doctrines that claim unbelievers, including the members of the social club across town, are damned to hell and deserve it.

We could have performances of plays by the enthusiastic thespians at that nice building F, and there could be chorale performances every week at G, and maybe there’d be a book club at E…and every play wouldn’t be an exercise in heavy-handed morality that praises Jesus, and the songs wouldn’t all have to be hymns, and they could every once in a while crack some book other than the Bible.

Alas, that’s nothing but a fantasy. It’s not going to happen in my lifetime, I don’t think.

But please, don’t try to pull this feeble excuse that religion plays an important social role in small town communities. Sure it does: it stunts them. It restricts them. It turns them into the boring drone of dogma. It gives them dribs and drabs of culture while denying the diversity of it. If we really wanted a Renaissance, first thing we should do is evict the priests from their temples and turn those nice, big, airy buildings into celebrations of humanist ideals.

Those of you in the comments who have somehow interpreted this to imply that I think rural America is full of idiots are completely wrong. I’m arguing exactly the opposite.

There are people in small town America who are avidly participating in Bible study groups every week. Think about it: they are voluntarily getting together to think and talk about text, to engage in literature analysis. They do it over breakfast. They turn off the TV after a long day at work and get together to dissect a book. This is wonderful. Some of them might kick me for this, but they are being public intellectuals. My complaint is that this intellectual activity is put in a religious straightjacket—they are only talking about one book, and a very uneven one at that, and they are using study guides that discourage questioning anything fundamental about it.

Another example: these people have a better view of the performing arts than we urban smarty-pants often do. How many of us think a night of culture is a matter of buying a ticket and parking our ass in a seat and watching a performance? Here in the rural heartland, you are going to find more people doing the art: plays are huge out here, even if they are done by enthusiastic amateurs. I remember from my church-going days having a couple of hours of choir practice every week and doing a performance every Sunday. Again, that’s art, don’t sneer at it because it isn’t the Metropolitan Opera, and it’s limitations are these annoying religiously imposed constraints on the subject matter.

Minds are humming out here in the rural backwaters some people are demeaning. These are smart people, brilliant people, talented people, just as good as the ones in the Big City, and my point here is solely that religion is a force that holds them back.

Haggard goes down in flames, and I’m not happy

Ted Haggard is one of those people I genuinely despise. He’s a major leader of a conservative evangelical organization, and as you can see in the clip below, he’s a genuinely creepy, hypocritical, arrogant little man.

He’s changed now, though. Here’s another clip of Haggard, being evasive and humble and making excuses for himself…and now we learn that he has stepped down from his ministry over accusations that he had a gay affair. I suspect, from his demeanor and responses, that he did have that affair, and that he’s now political deadweight, destined to be discarded for at least a good long while. (Latest news: Haggard has admitted to some of the indiscretions)

One smarmy preacher down. I ought to be pleased. I’m not.

He’s going down for the wrong reasons.

The bottom line in this business is that Haggard did nothing illegal. He may have cheated on his wife, which is deplorable, but it’s an entirely personal issue, not one that we should be concerned about, and not one that should cause him to lose his job. Having sex with someone isn’t a crime, and shouldn’t be the cause of all of this outrage. Being a moralistic hypocrite is also not an actionable business.

I’m also not too thrilled with Democrats pointing fingers and using this and the Mark Foley case to accuse the Republican party of being a hotbed of corruption and iniquity. These are people (creepy, unpleasant people, perhaps) who had consensual sex with other adults. Stop acting as if this is a sin or an evil—that kind of narrow moral certitude is the other party’s schtick! By playing that game, you’ve been coopted to serve the right-wing’s social agenda, reinforcing that homosexuality is a damnable offense.

Why don’t we instead see Haggard’s sanctimonious lies, his authoritarian appropriation of the church for the Republican party, or his ignorance, which he foists off on his congregation as wisdom, as the real crimes here? I really don’t care what he does with his penis in his private life, but that seems to be the major concern of everyone right now.

Bible science

If you’re a fan of mangled philosophy and patent falsehoods, you really must read the Biblical view of science. It’s crazily disconnected from anything close to describing how science actually works.

What then is the Biblical view of science? Science enables us to fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1:28: “Then God blessed them [Adam and Eve], and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the Earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the Earth.’ ” Science gives us directions for doing things, or “operating,” in this world. It does not explain how the laws of nature work, nor does it accurately define or describe things. Science does not discover truth; it is a method for dominating and utilizing nature; it is merely a practical discipline that helps us live in God’s universe and subdue it.

What follows are a set of explanations that contain a kernel of truth, based on scientists’ own recognition of difficulties in science, but they’re all turned up to 11. The problem of induction becomes the fallacy of induction, for instance, and he asserts that science can never give true statements. The unreliability of observation becomes a suggestion that one should never trust observations. There’s a blanket statement that all scientific laws are based on fallacious arguments. Reasonable reservations taken from poorly understood philosophy of science articles become absolutist declarations, all with the intent of showing science to be completely bogus.

Basically, the author has taken valid concerns about the degree of certainty we can have about the world around us and amplified them into absolute rejections of scientific knowledge. It’s a caricature gone so far overboard that it has become a completely dishonest representation of that which it seeks to describe—there is no vestige of science visible in this concatenation of foolishness.

Well, you might wonder, if science is all wrong, if it’s just a tool for increasing crop yields and building tanks, if we’re not even supposed to believe the evidence of the world around us, how are we supposed to obtain knowledge?

Did you even have to ask?

Science has its place in a Christian philosophy, an important place. But science is never to be seen as a means of learning truth. Truth is found in the Scriptures alone; the Bible has a monopoly on truth. It is God’s Word that must be believed, not the experiments of men. As Robbins has said: “Science is false, and must always be false. Scripture is true and must always be true. The issue is as clear, and as simple, as that.”

Ah, yes. We must replace the uncertainties and difficulties of science with the Absolute Truth of an old and confusing book jobbed together by committees of priests…and questioning it is not allowed! It’s always true! Always, always, always!

Be afraid. There are millions of Americans who believe that, who would like to see that open, skeptical, continually tested model of scientific endeavor replaced with the complete certainty of their interpretation of the Bible. There are millions more who think we shouldn’t argue with these lies, because it annoys moderate Christians.

Democrats may lose in the next election

The Republicans have a secret weapon, one that is going to be unstoppable, and probably means they are going to dominate both houses of Congress. Phil has discovered (via Randi, who also has another useful item) the most potent electoral tool in the Republican arsenal—better than fear and hate, even more powerful than Diebold—I’m telling you, this thing exceeds the awe-inspiring awesome awesomeness of magnetic “support the troops” ribbons for your car. It’s the Presidential Prayer Team. Sign up, and you will get specific instructions on exactly what to tell God. After all, if we can get a million Americans to tell Him that He needs to protect the sacred institution of marriage from the NJ Supreme Court, He’ll know to ignore the uncoordinated pleas for mercy from those backward primitives in Darfur (where, obviously, God has been doing a bang-up job.)

The Presidential Prayer Team harnesses the power of the Internet and popularity of e-mail to communicate with our members. You will receive up-to-the-minute prayer requests and information. PPT is widely recognized as one of the most innovative and effective users of electronic communication in Christian ministry today. The prayers of PPT members have had an untold impact on America for good and for God.

Oh, yes…untold impact. I quite agree with that. I’m also impressed that sending email to Christians is considered innovative and effective—do keep it up, keep those prayer wheels turning. This is a great way to actually accomplish something.

I have to confess, though, that as an atheist I didn’t really understand why this service was necessary. Don’t Christians pray all the time? Well, was I ever surprised to learn this:

Many have wanted to pray for our President and our country, but haven’t known how to pray or what to pray. The Presidential Prayer Team provides you the most accurate and up-to-date information so that you can pray with intelligence, conviction and power.

Oh. So this web page is for the many millions of Christians who know that they are devout and religious, but don’t know how or what to pray for—they are harnessing the power of the imbeciles of America.

Now I’m really afraid.

Extreme Evangelism?

Did anyone else get this spam from “Extreme Evangelism”, or am I just special?

What if I told you that you could hold an event for your community and that 90% of the people who attended would be unsaved. What if I then told you that in most communities at least 1000 people would show up. And what if during that event on average 100 people would give their heart to Jesus??? How long does it take your church to get 100 people saved? Think of the church growth possibilities! Its an outdoor event so even churches without large facilities can participate! Now what if I were to tell you that our ministry will come in and partner with you, bringing in the stage, the rides, all the equipment, and the presentation that will bring all those souls into the kingdom! Just this summer we did an outreach where over 6000 people attended and over 600 gave their heart to Jesus! There were so many salvations that the hosting church had to scramble to find ways to counsel all those who made a decisions for Christ!! What a problem to have! If you want to host this event and see more salvations than you can handle please join our group to find out more.

Now I’m really curious. What kind of lies do they tell to get all those “unsaved” to show up? Should I really believe that they could come into my town, that most of the people who would come to see them would be us heathens, and they’d get a 10% conversion rate?

It does seem a little fishy that they’d say 90% of the attendees are unsaved, and then proudly announce that 10% of the attendees “give their heart to Jesus”…maybe their conversion rate is actually 0%.

There is no separation of church and state

The NY Times has a long article that is basically a litany of the exemptions and privileges granted to religious organizations. A church-based daycare, for instance, has none of the licensing requirements of a private daycare, and doesn’t have to meet any of the standards of a non-religious establishment, nor does it have to worry about civil rights requirements…and it’s protected from lawsuits.

The practice of granting churches ever more special rights is accelerating, too, since legislators are always willing to hand over more to the pious frauds. Wouldn’t want to be thought disrespectful of religion, you know—so what if they’re greedily sucking up more and more money. That’s what Christianity is all about!

I say we should revoke the tax-exempt status of all religious organizations. They can ask for exemption for their charitable efforts (and only that part of their work; I don’t consider evanglism or missionary work to be charity) just like any secular organization, but simply having “Christ” in their name and mission statement and having a few guys running around with clerical collars is not sufficient justification. It’s time to end the sacred scam.

Mixed feelings

A revised curriculum at Harvard may include a required course in religion, as Jim Downey has brought to my attention. There isn’t enough information in the article to decide how to regard this decision, though; I don’t object automatically to requiring college kids to learn to think critically about religion, and I would hope that a course at Harvard wouldn’t be anything like a tutorial in Jebus-praising at Pensacola Christian College, but who knows? The summary is impossibly vague.

“I think 30 years ago,” when the school’s curriculum was last overhauled, “people would have said that religion is not something that everyone needs to know,” said Louis Menand, a Harvard professor and co-chairman of the committee that drafted the report. “But today, few would disagree that religion is supremely important to modern life.”

In the same way that knowledge of cholera and dysentery would be supremely important to a 19th century city dweller? It sounds like any of a number of courses would fit the requirement of discussing “the interplay between reason and faith“, so it doesn’t sound like much of a change to me…except, of course, that it would be treated as a PR coup by the religious.