Religious zeal can lead people to do all kinds of crazy things. I cannot bear right now to write, nor can you bear to read, a summary of the history of religious zeal or a survey of religious zeal in the world today. I just want to give a personal example of how I was blinded by zeal back in my creationist days (and it is not the only example).
When I was an undergraduate, I was a fundamentalist, and creationism was my gospel. I had, a couple of years earlier, been to Japan as an exchange student. I had friends in Japan, with whom I have unfortunately lost contact. One of them was a young woman named Sumiyo. I did not notice her very much when I was in Japan, but in the weeks after my return to America I developed a close relationship with her through letters. We meant a lot to one another, a love constructed of words. I thought she was nearly a perfect human being, except for one thing. She was Buddhist and as such headed to Hell. I wanted to somehow convince her to be a Christian. We actually wrote to one another about it, in her imperfect English, my beautiful English, and an occasional clumsy Japanese sentence that I wrote.
I wanted to send her some evidence that would convince any intelligent person—and she certainly was one—of the truth of creationism. I do not remember if I actually sent her any of my creationist books. But I do remember one that I almost sent her. It was a little cheap paperback by a creationist who was saying that if it were not for God, atoms could not exist. The book, “The Atom Speaks,” had a photo of a nuclear explosion on the cover. I was about ready to send it when I suddenly realized what impression it would have on her. This was about 1976, scarcely thirty years since the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is almost the same amount of time since I have last corresponded with her. Not that long. The atomic bombs were within living memory—not of her, born in 1957, but of her parents. I might have deeply offended her by sending her that book.
My zeal had corrupted my empathy. Only at the last minute did I think to put myself in her position and look back at myself. That is what empathy is. I believe that there are many larger and smaller examples happening all the time in which religious zeal makes us forget our good and loving behavior. Zeal blocked my ability to think about what someone really needed to hear, rather than just what I wanted to say.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
The Evolution of Religion: What Is Next?
Religion is not a single thing. It is a complex set of things. What form it will take in the human future depends on which of its components come to dominate it.
Religion consists of a set of doctrines, as well as spiritual feelings and experiences. Spirituality, based directly on human experiences, will probably continue forever. Our brains have experiences such as the following, which I listed in Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book, Life of Earth: ecstasy; loss of awareness of having a defined body; altruism; need for an authority figure; awareness of death; and belief that phenomena are caused by invisible persons. It is likely that each of these is caused by a particular brain function. They will never go away, except perhaps over a longer period of time than human civilization has yet existed; and we will probably always interpret them as spiritual experiences.
But the doctrines are memes. They are culturally transmitted. However unlikely it seems at the moment, these memes can die away quickly, over a very few generations. I do not expect many of them to die away, but I can at least hope that the more oppressive and destructive of them will become extinct. For example, the idea that God will send most people who have ever lived to a hell in which they will experience conscious eternal torture. This doctrinal belief makes people comfortable with the idea that it is acceptable to torture or harm other people. Another example: the idea that God has given our religious group the unique truth, and has not given it to anyone else. This doctrinal belief makes people comfortable with the idea that they can sweep aside other religious groups by whatever means necessary. The time for belief in God as Supreme Torturer and Dispenser of Unique Truth to Fundamentalists Who Can Enforce It (whether in Christian or Muslim garb) must end as speedily as possible. We should oppose these ideas vigorously and without interruption for as long as it takes to ensure their memetic extinction. One of the best ways to do this is just to educate people—about evolution and about the brain chemistry basis of our thoughts, for example.
And when we do so, should we happen to succeed at some point long after my life is over, what will we have? Perhaps, primarily, we will have spirituality—people who worship God by feeling the inspiration of nature and by living by the Golden Rule. People who think and act the way Jesus did when he was out in the hills. The component of religion that makes people better, not worse. This may be impossible, but it is a future worth working for.
This essay will also appear on my evolution blog.
Religion consists of a set of doctrines, as well as spiritual feelings and experiences. Spirituality, based directly on human experiences, will probably continue forever. Our brains have experiences such as the following, which I listed in Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book, Life of Earth: ecstasy; loss of awareness of having a defined body; altruism; need for an authority figure; awareness of death; and belief that phenomena are caused by invisible persons. It is likely that each of these is caused by a particular brain function. They will never go away, except perhaps over a longer period of time than human civilization has yet existed; and we will probably always interpret them as spiritual experiences.
But the doctrines are memes. They are culturally transmitted. However unlikely it seems at the moment, these memes can die away quickly, over a very few generations. I do not expect many of them to die away, but I can at least hope that the more oppressive and destructive of them will become extinct. For example, the idea that God will send most people who have ever lived to a hell in which they will experience conscious eternal torture. This doctrinal belief makes people comfortable with the idea that it is acceptable to torture or harm other people. Another example: the idea that God has given our religious group the unique truth, and has not given it to anyone else. This doctrinal belief makes people comfortable with the idea that they can sweep aside other religious groups by whatever means necessary. The time for belief in God as Supreme Torturer and Dispenser of Unique Truth to Fundamentalists Who Can Enforce It (whether in Christian or Muslim garb) must end as speedily as possible. We should oppose these ideas vigorously and without interruption for as long as it takes to ensure their memetic extinction. One of the best ways to do this is just to educate people—about evolution and about the brain chemistry basis of our thoughts, for example.
And when we do so, should we happen to succeed at some point long after my life is over, what will we have? Perhaps, primarily, we will have spirituality—people who worship God by feeling the inspiration of nature and by living by the Golden Rule. People who think and act the way Jesus did when he was out in the hills. The component of religion that makes people better, not worse. This may be impossible, but it is a future worth working for.
This essay will also appear on my evolution blog.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
It's a Miracle!
I walked into a dark restroom and the lights suddenly came on. It must have been a miracle! Anyplace else and I would have assumed it was a motion detector. But I was in no ordinary place. I was at the Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague. This shrine is an example of how convoluted religious reasoning can become. I have to start at the beginning.
In the late middle ages, there was a wooden statue of a baby boy with royal garments, a crown, and holding a sceptre and globe of the world. To my knowledge, Jesus never did this, at least when he was a child. But this statue was reputed to have special powers if you made offerings to it. After various adventures, the statue ended up in Prague (now in the Czech Republic). Meanwhile, there was a Catholic priest from Prague, Oklahoma who somehow ended up with a replica (souvenir copy) of the original statue. He apparently thought that there was some significance in his town in Oklahoma having the same name as the European city, and before you knew it, the replica statue was reputed to have special powers if you made offerings to it.
So here is the line of causation that comes into play if you visit this Oklahoma shrine. 1. Stick some money in a hole at the shrine. 2. The souvenir copy statue projects spiritual energy across the Atlantic to the European statue. 3. The European statue has some influence on the Virgin Mary. 4. The Virgin Mary is obligated to tell her Son to answer your prayer. 5. Jesus is more likely to answer your prayer this way than if you just asked him directly.
Wow. All this was happening less than twenty miles from where I was born, and I knew nothing about it until I was 52.
I considered my options. Nobody was around except the woman in the office behind the gift shop. First, I considered telling her that I had walked all the way from California (on my knees? no; backward? no) just to venerate the statue. But it was obvious that I had not been outdoors that much. Second, I considered using my fake eastern European accent which I learned from Boris and Natasha and saying I was from the shrine of the original statue and wanted to inspect it. But I realized that I did not know the secret catatonic handshake (if I remember correctly, this is the Catholic version of the secret Masonic handshake that my Dad never taught me) and my imposture would be revealed. Third, I considered proposing a statistical study to determine whether offerings to the statue actually increased the chances of having a prayer answered, as in the Benson heart study. But I didn’t do any of these things. I just went home and wrote this.
A version of this essay will appear on my evolution web site.
In the late middle ages, there was a wooden statue of a baby boy with royal garments, a crown, and holding a sceptre and globe of the world. To my knowledge, Jesus never did this, at least when he was a child. But this statue was reputed to have special powers if you made offerings to it. After various adventures, the statue ended up in Prague (now in the Czech Republic). Meanwhile, there was a Catholic priest from Prague, Oklahoma who somehow ended up with a replica (souvenir copy) of the original statue. He apparently thought that there was some significance in his town in Oklahoma having the same name as the European city, and before you knew it, the replica statue was reputed to have special powers if you made offerings to it.
So here is the line of causation that comes into play if you visit this Oklahoma shrine. 1. Stick some money in a hole at the shrine. 2. The souvenir copy statue projects spiritual energy across the Atlantic to the European statue. 3. The European statue has some influence on the Virgin Mary. 4. The Virgin Mary is obligated to tell her Son to answer your prayer. 5. Jesus is more likely to answer your prayer this way than if you just asked him directly.
Wow. All this was happening less than twenty miles from where I was born, and I knew nothing about it until I was 52.
I considered my options. Nobody was around except the woman in the office behind the gift shop. First, I considered telling her that I had walked all the way from California (on my knees? no; backward? no) just to venerate the statue. But it was obvious that I had not been outdoors that much. Second, I considered using my fake eastern European accent which I learned from Boris and Natasha and saying I was from the shrine of the original statue and wanted to inspect it. But I realized that I did not know the secret catatonic handshake (if I remember correctly, this is the Catholic version of the secret Masonic handshake that my Dad never taught me) and my imposture would be revealed. Third, I considered proposing a statistical study to determine whether offerings to the statue actually increased the chances of having a prayer answered, as in the Benson heart study. But I didn’t do any of these things. I just went home and wrote this.
A version of this essay will appear on my evolution web site.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Occam's Razor
“Occam’s razor” is a philosophical position, attributed to medieval theologian William of Occam (Ockham). It is that the simplest explanation that fits all of the facts is the one that should be accepted. He applied it to theology, but it works in all areas of study. It is one of the foundational assumptions of science.
Religious people have, for the past few centuries, abandoned William of Occam’s theological premise. The reason is that science has steadily put physical explanations of nature in place of spiritual ones. At first it was that the Earth goes around the Sun. Then it was the idea that gravity and momentum, not angels, propelled the planets in their orbits. A few simple Newtonian equations explained as much as a multitude of angels.
One of the biggest examples of a simple natural explanation replacing a complex theological story is, of course, evolution. At the time of William Paley, every species was seen as not only a special creation by God but as evidence that God was good. Even mosquitoes. Evolution replaced “natural theology” largely because one, single explanation—natural selection—replaced thousands of separate acts of design and creation. Why does each species exist? In Paley’s time, each species had its own reason. Ever since Darwin, there has been only one reason: evolution.
But evolution is far from being the only example. If I were a fundamentalist, I would be a lot more worried about psychology than about evolution. Scientists have now explained nearly everything that happens in our “minds” and “hearts” as a physical or chemical process that occurs within our brains. This applies even to the most intense religious experiences (see the earlier essay about the Near Death experience.) Now, we know that these processes, involving neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, and genes occur. In order to believe that a person has a spirit that thinks and feels, you have to believe that this spirit exactly mirrors, in every detail, the functions of the brain. You have to create, without evidence, an imaginary shadow of the brain. Occam’s razor says that, if the brain explains everything, there is no need to invent a spirit that is just a duplicate of the brain.
Occam’s razor, a philosophical position invented by a theologian, has now turned against theology.
Religious people have, for the past few centuries, abandoned William of Occam’s theological premise. The reason is that science has steadily put physical explanations of nature in place of spiritual ones. At first it was that the Earth goes around the Sun. Then it was the idea that gravity and momentum, not angels, propelled the planets in their orbits. A few simple Newtonian equations explained as much as a multitude of angels.
One of the biggest examples of a simple natural explanation replacing a complex theological story is, of course, evolution. At the time of William Paley, every species was seen as not only a special creation by God but as evidence that God was good. Even mosquitoes. Evolution replaced “natural theology” largely because one, single explanation—natural selection—replaced thousands of separate acts of design and creation. Why does each species exist? In Paley’s time, each species had its own reason. Ever since Darwin, there has been only one reason: evolution.
But evolution is far from being the only example. If I were a fundamentalist, I would be a lot more worried about psychology than about evolution. Scientists have now explained nearly everything that happens in our “minds” and “hearts” as a physical or chemical process that occurs within our brains. This applies even to the most intense religious experiences (see the earlier essay about the Near Death experience.) Now, we know that these processes, involving neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, and genes occur. In order to believe that a person has a spirit that thinks and feels, you have to believe that this spirit exactly mirrors, in every detail, the functions of the brain. You have to create, without evidence, an imaginary shadow of the brain. Occam’s razor says that, if the brain explains everything, there is no need to invent a spirit that is just a duplicate of the brain.
Occam’s razor, a philosophical position invented by a theologian, has now turned against theology.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Treasure in Heaven
Jesus talked about laying up treasure in Heaven rather than on Earth. The treasure to which he referred, we may deduce from context (the Sermon on the Mount), was that of creating a better world for others around us.
It has been my experience that the most zealously conservative Christians have been the worst at laying up treasure in Heaven. It is liberal thinkers, people like me, who lay up the most treasure in a heaven that we are not even sure exists. We forego opportunities to pile up riches in our own bank accounts or to push other people away; instead, we encourage others and build them up, even at some expense to ourselves. We do it because we believe passionately in altruism and, quite simply, we enjoy being good.
I have a lifelong list of experiences with conservative Christians who devote themselves to creating hostility and destruction. I will briefly summarize my decades of experiences.
Very soon after I was baptized into a fundamentalist church in 1973, while I was in high school, I was recruited into being a lay preacher. This was a good way of building my confidence. I thought it would be a good way to cultivate religious wisdom and careful thinking, but in this I was wrong. In fundamentalist churches such as the one I was in, each speaker’s responsibility was to simply repeat what the church leaders say, and claim that it was straight from the Bible, even when it was not. So I gave a Sunday night sermon about the New Testament passages predicting “a new Heaven and a new Earth” after Jesus’ Second Coming. I looked forward to a Heavenly City but also to an Earth renewed from the ecological disasters we have inflicted upon it. About a week later, the official preacher in our congregation delivered an entire Sunday morning sermon about how evil my little sermon had been. He was pretty fierce. Remember, I was in high school. And his line of reasoning was pretty absurd. He said that what the passage about the New Heaven and New Earth literally meant was that the New Heaven was a new Heaven but the New Earth was the New Testament. He had to carefully explain his contorted reasoning to reach this interpretation. This was a really bruising experience for me.
When I was in graduate school in 1982, I was a member of a different fundamentalist church. I was invited to teach a class about evolution and Christianity. Some of the people in the church assumed that only the most literal form of creationism would be allowed. They were wrong. But they did not accept this. They insisted on putting me on trial before the church council, at which I was not allowed to defend myself from the lies they told about me, the same lies that they had spread throughout the church. The church council wanted me to continue teaching the class, but the life had been kicked out of it. These bitter people had decided that their belief in creationism gave them permission to make false accusations against me. Intimidation.
My first faculty position, in 1987, was at a fundamentalist Christian college. The faculty, all deeply conservative, were tearing each other apart in a civil war that eventually brought about the downfall of the college (the students got tired of it and stopped coming). I was largely unaffected; as a newcomer, I managed to stay neutral in the big war over an issue I do not even clearly remember.
I was kicked out of my second faculty position, at another fundamentalist Christian college, in 1992 by the decision of a secret committee to which I was not allowed to provide any information and whose information I was not allowed to question. More intimidation.
Then this year there was the hate mail I described earlier.
I am sure Jesus is very proud of all of these Christian warriors.
Not. If you survey the political scene, the conservative Christians either revile and lie about those who disagree with them (like Ann Coulter) or are openly hypocritical (like the thrice-married twice-philandering Newt Gingerich). On the religious scene, the most vociferous conservative Christians are those who attack others and who frequently use false information, both to sway voters and to get money. In my life I have seen an almost perfect pattern of bitter, lying conservative Christians and gentle, honest liberal Christians and agnostics. An outside observer (which I am not) would say, if there is a God in charge of things up there in heaven, why do the people who believe in him most do such terrible things? Conservative Christians are one of the best evidences against the existence of a God of Love who is actually in charge of the world.
It has been my experience that the most zealously conservative Christians have been the worst at laying up treasure in Heaven. It is liberal thinkers, people like me, who lay up the most treasure in a heaven that we are not even sure exists. We forego opportunities to pile up riches in our own bank accounts or to push other people away; instead, we encourage others and build them up, even at some expense to ourselves. We do it because we believe passionately in altruism and, quite simply, we enjoy being good.
I have a lifelong list of experiences with conservative Christians who devote themselves to creating hostility and destruction. I will briefly summarize my decades of experiences.
Very soon after I was baptized into a fundamentalist church in 1973, while I was in high school, I was recruited into being a lay preacher. This was a good way of building my confidence. I thought it would be a good way to cultivate religious wisdom and careful thinking, but in this I was wrong. In fundamentalist churches such as the one I was in, each speaker’s responsibility was to simply repeat what the church leaders say, and claim that it was straight from the Bible, even when it was not. So I gave a Sunday night sermon about the New Testament passages predicting “a new Heaven and a new Earth” after Jesus’ Second Coming. I looked forward to a Heavenly City but also to an Earth renewed from the ecological disasters we have inflicted upon it. About a week later, the official preacher in our congregation delivered an entire Sunday morning sermon about how evil my little sermon had been. He was pretty fierce. Remember, I was in high school. And his line of reasoning was pretty absurd. He said that what the passage about the New Heaven and New Earth literally meant was that the New Heaven was a new Heaven but the New Earth was the New Testament. He had to carefully explain his contorted reasoning to reach this interpretation. This was a really bruising experience for me.
When I was in graduate school in 1982, I was a member of a different fundamentalist church. I was invited to teach a class about evolution and Christianity. Some of the people in the church assumed that only the most literal form of creationism would be allowed. They were wrong. But they did not accept this. They insisted on putting me on trial before the church council, at which I was not allowed to defend myself from the lies they told about me, the same lies that they had spread throughout the church. The church council wanted me to continue teaching the class, but the life had been kicked out of it. These bitter people had decided that their belief in creationism gave them permission to make false accusations against me. Intimidation.
My first faculty position, in 1987, was at a fundamentalist Christian college. The faculty, all deeply conservative, were tearing each other apart in a civil war that eventually brought about the downfall of the college (the students got tired of it and stopped coming). I was largely unaffected; as a newcomer, I managed to stay neutral in the big war over an issue I do not even clearly remember.
I was kicked out of my second faculty position, at another fundamentalist Christian college, in 1992 by the decision of a secret committee to which I was not allowed to provide any information and whose information I was not allowed to question. More intimidation.
Then this year there was the hate mail I described earlier.
I am sure Jesus is very proud of all of these Christian warriors.
Not. If you survey the political scene, the conservative Christians either revile and lie about those who disagree with them (like Ann Coulter) or are openly hypocritical (like the thrice-married twice-philandering Newt Gingerich). On the religious scene, the most vociferous conservative Christians are those who attack others and who frequently use false information, both to sway voters and to get money. In my life I have seen an almost perfect pattern of bitter, lying conservative Christians and gentle, honest liberal Christians and agnostics. An outside observer (which I am not) would say, if there is a God in charge of things up there in heaven, why do the people who believe in him most do such terrible things? Conservative Christians are one of the best evidences against the existence of a God of Love who is actually in charge of the world.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Why Do Christians Praise Democracy?
Here are some thoughts as July 4 draws close.
Conservative Christian politicians like to praise democracy, and they treat the Constitution almost as if it were a sacred document. But why? Democracy is not in the Bible. Most of the Founding Fathers (lo, we capitalize their title) had no specific theology, so they did not bother trying to make a Biblical justification for starting the first true democracy in the world. Even the conventional Christian Founding Fathers did not attempt to do this.
Our very image of God is based on an ancient unquestioning acceptance of the kingdom system of government. Religious people claim that God is a King, not a President or Prime Minister.
In Bible days, nobody could conceive of democracy. Or so we think. Actually the first century Christians came pretty close to it. The second chapter of Acts says that they lived together in communities that resembled communes, in which they held all property in common. They were communists. (BTW, Stalin and his Soviet goons were not communists. They just used communist terminology to justify their oppression of the Russian people and plundering their wealth.) This did not last very long. By the fourth century, there was no longer a church but a Church with a hierarchy that made all the decisions and foisted them on people, a Church that the ruthless Roman Emperor Constantine used for political advantage. Christian theology was back to a God as Absolute King way of thinking.
Furthermore, it is no surprise that many conservative religious people claim that we should torture detainees to get them to confess to things they may or may not have done. Conservative religious people believe in a Hell in which God will torture, consciously and forever, anyone who does not give full assent to all details of Christian doctrine. If you believe in a God like that, it is a small matter to believe that a government dominated by your political party has the right to torture people. In doing so, you are simply reflecting the image of God.
It is time that we get rid of the image of God as King, and as Supreme Torturer. Neither do we need President God or Prime Minister God. What we need is (and this is far from an original thought) an idea of God as our fellow worker for good in the world. If we believe this, if we believe in Comrade God, then we will try to create a system of government whose purpose is to allow people to help one another, to coordinate altruism. We will have a nurturing democracy, rather than the de facto rulership of rich Republicans.
Conservative Christian politicians like to praise democracy, and they treat the Constitution almost as if it were a sacred document. But why? Democracy is not in the Bible. Most of the Founding Fathers (lo, we capitalize their title) had no specific theology, so they did not bother trying to make a Biblical justification for starting the first true democracy in the world. Even the conventional Christian Founding Fathers did not attempt to do this.
Our very image of God is based on an ancient unquestioning acceptance of the kingdom system of government. Religious people claim that God is a King, not a President or Prime Minister.
In Bible days, nobody could conceive of democracy. Or so we think. Actually the first century Christians came pretty close to it. The second chapter of Acts says that they lived together in communities that resembled communes, in which they held all property in common. They were communists. (BTW, Stalin and his Soviet goons were not communists. They just used communist terminology to justify their oppression of the Russian people and plundering their wealth.) This did not last very long. By the fourth century, there was no longer a church but a Church with a hierarchy that made all the decisions and foisted them on people, a Church that the ruthless Roman Emperor Constantine used for political advantage. Christian theology was back to a God as Absolute King way of thinking.
Furthermore, it is no surprise that many conservative religious people claim that we should torture detainees to get them to confess to things they may or may not have done. Conservative religious people believe in a Hell in which God will torture, consciously and forever, anyone who does not give full assent to all details of Christian doctrine. If you believe in a God like that, it is a small matter to believe that a government dominated by your political party has the right to torture people. In doing so, you are simply reflecting the image of God.
It is time that we get rid of the image of God as King, and as Supreme Torturer. Neither do we need President God or Prime Minister God. What we need is (and this is far from an original thought) an idea of God as our fellow worker for good in the world. If we believe this, if we believe in Comrade God, then we will try to create a system of government whose purpose is to allow people to help one another, to coordinate altruism. We will have a nurturing democracy, rather than the de facto rulership of rich Republicans.
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