Just When You Thought You’d Seen Everything…

Nazi websites have had a makeover. They’re still here, but they have recast themselves as positive and creative, rather than negative and destructive. Consider one such site: The Creativity Movement. You have to see this to believe it. Their banner looks A LOT like the Nazi flag. This group claims that it does not openly hate non-white races; instead, they celebrate whiteness. They are still unable, however, to restrict their hatred of Jews, laying the blame for all of society’s evils upon them. They are a church, similar to fundamentalist Christianity but not, as far as I can tell, actually associated with them. Their own website explains the difference between Christianity and the Creativity Movement:

“Christianity teaches love your enemies and hate your own kind, we teach exactly the opposite, namely hate and destroy your enemies and love your own kind…Christianity teaches such destructive advice as ‘love your enemies,’ ‘sell all thou hast and give it to the poor,”…’turn the other cheek.’ Anybody that followed such suicidal advice would soon destroy themselves, their family, their race and their country.” They also make a most interesting observation. They point out that Christianity is hypocritical; it preaches love, but then practices savagery and genocide.

They were founded by Ben Klassen, who was their first (I am not making this up) Pontifex Maximus. (Their current Pontifex Maximus is in prison.) They still sell Klassen’s book, Building a Whiter and Brighter World. I’m not making that one up either.

Their website has a number of images that celebrate white supremacist women. I noted first that all of the images were sketches of young, sexy women with long hair, usually blonde or red. I sort of doubt that any of the women in the movement actually look like that. The backgrounds of the drawings were usually snowy peaks and blue skies. In one case, a woman was standing in front of a marble building with columns that was supposed to be their headquarters. I very much doubt that they have a marble building for their HQ. I’ll bet that their headquarters is an office above a liquor store or something. The drawing that best expresses what white supremacists think about women is one that shows a young blonde in white, sitting by a window, with a view of a white supremacist flag and a mowed lawn. The woman is pregnant. Apparently part of their plan to take over the world is to pop out as many white supremacist babies as possible. See, women do have an important role in the new world order.

This was what I found in my exploration of the weird world of the modern white supremacist movement and its religious underpinnings.

Religion and Vulnerable People

When I was a child, I attended a Presbyterian church in Strathmore, California. The pastor was A. Luke Fritz (for Alfonso), who was one of the most amazing human beings I have ever met. He was a thoughtful preacher. Somehow he managed to keep his congregation at peace during the Vietnam War. He was a Boy Scout leader and led a backpack trip to the top of Mt. Whitney every summer for many years. I went on this trip in 1978. Not only did he lead a Boy Scout troop, but he took time to talk individually with each of us. He would ask us questions and make us think. The question for which he was most famous was, “What is courage?” He knew all of us boys would answer, “Not being afraid.” To which he would respond, “Only a fool is never afraid. A courageous person acts despite fear.” See, I still remember this. He was a giant of empathy.

One day in church, a middle-aged mother and her two young daughters came to church after the service had started. And they were weeping very loudly the whole time—during the songs, during the sermon. I never found out what the problem was. It was easy to guess that it must have been something to do with the husband/father, and it was something bad enough to make all three of them weep uncontrollably.

My point is that the woman and two girls were extremely vulnerable right then. A single word could have lifted them or crushed them, especially from a respected clergyman. They were incredibly lucky to have come to Rev. Fritz’s church.

But suppose they had gone to one of those big fundamentalist churches. Oh, I’m sure one of the army of assistant pastors would have helped them. But the big, money-hungry churches would also have used the opportunity to slip in a word to let the three vulnerable females know that God wanted them to give their money and their devotion to that particular church. Big-time preachers prey upon people during their times of vulnerability in order to build up wealth and power. That’s how they get to be big-time preachers. They do things that would get any licensed counselor out of business. There ought to be some way to shut down preachers who offer sham counseling. Rev. Fritz did not do this to anyone. His help was the real thing. Predictably, his church was not rolling in dough.

I sent him a letter after he retired. I let him know of my success in life, and my appreciation for his help. He wrote back saying that he had had so much surgery and replacement parts that he was no longer Cool Hand Luke but Second Hand Luke. Same sense of humor! Soon thereafter his widow sent me a copy of the funeral brochure.

One additional point: don’t wait to tell someone you appreciate them, or it might be too late. I almost missed my chance to thank Rev. Fritz.

A Random World?

One of the most powerful components of the scientific method is to test hypotheses against a null hypothesis. Nearly everyone is capable of rational thought; but scientific thought is a discipline. Nearly everyone can reason from evidence to reach a conclusion; but in science, what we do is to contrast the evidence that we see for the hypothesis against the things that we would expect to see if the hypothesis is wrong. That is, against what we would expect to see at random.

And it is here that the scientific and the religious ways of thinking can perhaps most clearly be contrasted. For example, Herbert Benson and collaborators tested the hypothesis that God answers prayer. Actually, they tested the hypothesis that supplemental intercessory prayer would decrease the rate of relapsing back into heart disease.

In a scientific view of the world, you expect things to happen more or less randomly unless something is causing them to happen non-randomly. That is, absent some physical process, good and bad things will happen more or less equally. One of the things that this could mean in our everyday lives is that we should expect good and bad things to happen to us more or less randomly. As for the other humans with whom we interact every day, some are better and some are worse; and each person is a mixture of good and bad motivations. Therefore, in Benson’s study, one might expect patients suffering from heart disease to sometimes relapse and sometimes not. This does not necessarily mean that heart disease patients would relapse exactly 50 percent of the time; the actual rate will depend on the availability of good medical treatment as well as many other factors. But a scientific null hypothesis would state, in this case, that heart disease patients would relapse to the same extent whether they were being prayed for or not.

This is extremely different from the fundamentalist religious view. To a fundamentalist, the entire world is pervaded by evil, by the works of Satan, and that bad things will always happen all the time to everyone unless God specifically and miraculously prevents it. The fundamentalist null hypothesis is therefore 100 percent relapse.

Therefore, if you pray for someone to be healed from an injury or illness, and they recover, this constitutes evidence, or even proof, that God has intervened and blessed them miraculously, according to religious people.

Actually, there is no direct way to prove which null hypothesis—the approximately 50 percent relapse that scientists expect, or the 100 percent relapse that religious people expect—is correct. The only way to get around this problem is to have a control group. In Benson’s case, the experimental group of patients received intercessory prayer, and did not know it; and the control group of patients did not receive intercessory prayer, and did not know it. The percent relapse of the control group patients represents a measurement of the null hypothesis. It was in this manner that Benson and collaborators demonstrated that intercessory prayer had no measurable effect: one group had 52 percent relapse, the other had 51 percent, a statistically indistinguishable effect.

Fundamentalists have ignored this result and continue to insist that, unless you join their church and give them money, bad things will probably happen to you. God might allow them, or might prevent them. They insist that there is no such thing as God not doing anything; God either prevents bad things, or else bad things happen.

This is perhaps the most basic difference between a scientific and a fundamentalist view of the world: the scientific view that things happen at random unless they are caused, and the fundamentalist view that only bad things happen unless God prevents them. To a scientist, the world has a random background; to a fundamentalist, the world has a background permeated with evil.

I also posted this on my science blog.

I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew

I vaguely remembered a song from my childhood in the 1960s. I recently looked it up. It is yet another expression of the frustration and sense of injustice that many people felt, and feel, about how the rich are oppressing the poor. The lyrics were written by Bobby Bare and performed by several singers including Johnny Cash and Tom T. Hall.

The first strange town I was ever in

The county was hanging a man
Nobody cared if he lived or died

And I just didn't understand.

So I washed my face in the morning dew, Bathed my soul in the sun,
Washed my face in the morning dew And kept on moving along.

The second strange town that I was in

They were laughin' at a poor crippled man
Begging for nickels and dimes on the street

And I just didn't understand.

So I washed my face in the morning dew, Bathed my soul in the sun,
Washed my face in the morning dew And kept on moving along.

The third strange town that I was in

Was settled peaceful and nice
The rich got richer and the poor got poorer

And to me it didn't seem right

So I washed my face in the morning dew, Bathed my soul in the sun,
Washed my face in the morning dew And kept on moving along.

Someday times are bound to change

It can't be very far
And each injustice I have seen

Will come before the bar.

So I washed my face in the morning dew, Bathed my soul in the sun,
Washed my face in the morning dew And kept on moving along.

These words seem to be a modern embodiment of the cries of the Old Testament prophets, from Amos to Isaiah to Jeremiah. When the Old Testament prophets saw the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, they did not say, “To me it just doesn’t seem right.” Instead they proclaimed that God hated this kind of oppression and that he would punish Israel and Judah for it by allowing military empires to conquer them. The prophets, like the singers, also believed that God would pass His judgment on the oppressors (the injustices would “come before the bar,” or judgment seat). And these “strange towns” are not so strange after all; they are the cities we all live in, and we see these injustices as being normal, not strange.

Are there any popular songs today that call for an end to oppression? I do not follow popular music. Feel free to post a comment about examples you may know about.

A Brief Insight from George Carlin

The late comedian George Carlin had this to say in his book, Napalm and Silly Putty.

[God] has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to remain and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry, forever and ever, till the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you, and he needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, but somehow…he just can’t handle money. Religion takes in billions of dollars, pays no taxes, and somehow always needs a little more.