Nearly all of the most conservative preachers today are staunch and vocal supporters of free enterprise, by which they mean that big corporations have a right to crush ordinary people. In doing so, they are directly contradicting Jesus and the prophets. What, for example, would the prophet Amos have said about this? You can read it for yourself.
Evolutionary scientists, however, are not supporters of this doctrine, which is called Social Darwinism. It is the application of an incorrect and disproven version of evolution to the social and political world. It is Herbert Spencer’s, not Charles Darwin’s, version of evolution. Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary writings are, according to Ernst Mayr, of no consequence to modern evolutionary science.
Modern “free enterprise” preachers are not the first to have espoused this oppressive doctrine. In 1877, Henry Ward Beecher, fresh out of a scandal about the open secret of his extramarital affair, gave sermons that said essentially the same thing as modern conservative preachers. Workers’ riots were erupting all over the eastern United States, with deadly conflicts between workers and the National Guard in several cities. Workers earned only enough money (a dollar a day), it was said, for bread and water. Beecher, while overseeing the construction of his Hudson River waterfront mansion in Peekskill, New York, announced that workers should be satisfied with this. “The man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live.” The poor, said Beecher, will “reap the misfortunes of inferiority.” He added, melding God and evolution together, “God had intended the great to be great and the little to be little.” He ignored Amos, who said that God had not intended the great to crush the little.
In so claiming, Beecher apparently did not notice his inconsistency. His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which has been considered the most famous denunciation of American slavery. He did not recognize that big corporations can economically enslave the working poor. This was particularly true in 1877, and still almost as true today.
The difference is that Beecher openly admitted his doctrine was a spiritual adaptation of Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary ideas. Modern preachers, in contrast, denounce evolution and claim to get their ideas straight from Jesus. In so doing, these preachers are not only just as wrong as Beecher was, but are insulting Jesus on top of it. Beecher at least claimed to take a figurative interpretation of scripture.
I obtain my historical information from Berry Werth’s excellent book, Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America (Random House, 2009).
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Fixation on the Afterlife
At the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa there is an exhibit of ancient Egyptian sarcophagi and artifacts. I remember that it was in Tulsa, long before I lived here, that I saw my first ancient Egyptian items. I had grown up in a California town where even the historical museums had nothing from before 1800 (CE, that is) and was amazed to see something that was actually from the time of the Old Testament stories. I was in awe. But this time, as I looked at item after item, some of them over 5000 years old, I felt burdened. Here is why.
The Egyptian fixation upon death and the afterlife was total and stifling. Egypt is famous as an archaeological treasure trove, because of its long civilization and the dry conditions that allowed exquisite preservation even of things that had not been mummified. It should be a tremendous source of information about the everyday lives of ancient people. But in reality, besides the records of kingly conquests, most of the hieroglyphics are incantations that will guide the departed person through the afterlife. So, for instance, you have a sarcophagus covered with hundreds of hieroglyphics. They tell you that it is so-and-so-and-so son of so-and-so-and-so, that he was a scribe or the keeper of the granaries, and the rest of it is please-Osiris-don’t-hurt-me-please-Ra-don’t-feed-me-to-the-alligators-please-Horus-I-wrote-down-the-right-words-so-I-deserve-to-live-in-the-underworld-forever-along-with-my-mummified-cat-no-longer-Fluffy. No biography, just religious hocus-pocus.
The extravagances expended upon preparation for the afterlife of Egyptian kings and nobles are infamous. But so imbued was Egyptian culture with this fixation that middle-class people were expected to make these preparations also. I saw the sarcophagi and other items of artisans. Preparation for death could cost the artisan a year’s wages. They had various cost-cutting measures. The middle-class sarcophagi had red and yellow paint to imitate the gold sheet they could not afford, and painted patterns to make limestone look like granite. Even the lowest professionals had to have something, so they made mummy-covers out of terra cotta (pretty amateur work, resulting in faces that looked almost Neanderthal). If they found a tomb that had been abandoned, they recycled the contents by erasing the names of the previous owner-inhabitant. Some of these items could have been a chance to preserve a record of, for example, how the pyramids were built—did the artisans (who were not slaves, but contractors) push the blocks up inclined planes? Or did outer space creatures use anti-gravity devices, as Erich Von Däniken claimed? Just how were the contractors chosen and how much were they paid? There is a little information, but not much. The Egyptians wrote a lot, but mostly incantations for the afterlife.
So powerful was the cult of the afterlife that conquerors got sucked into it. One of the sarcophagi was of a Greek ruler just before the Common Era. Everything looked just like it was Egyptian, even with hieroglyphics (which were used only for religion; commerce used a primitive alphabet)—but the face plate was a Pompeii-style painting.
The Egyptians were not the only ones to focus all their attention on religion and leave little record of their ordinary lives. In another part of the museum there are medieval paintings. They are all of religious themes. Occasionally a little bit of ordinary life and landscape would slip in as background. Only later did ordinary life and lives make it into paintings. At the end of one hallway is a permanent exhibit at the Philbrook: Bouguereau’s painting of the little sherpherdess, more lifelike than life, and whose eyes, everyone agrees, seem to follow you wherever you are.
Some of my own writings have suffered from religious limitations in the past. I have kept a daily journal (today’s entry was number 7548) for 21 years. The recent entries contain many things that I have learned from my experiences, observations, and from the news. Whoever reads them someday, should they happen to survive, will learn much about our times and how at least one thoughtful person reacted to them. But when I started the journal, it was a devotional book, in which I wrote only about the Bible, and wrote prayers of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (the ACTS system). A little bit about me, hardly anything about the world. My journal, at its inception, was very much like an Egyptian sarcophagus, covered with writing that would tell a person of the future very, very little, and which did not even help me very much. I felt an obligation to be pious rather than wrestling with difficult spiritual issues honestly. I am thankful that enough life remains to me that I can finally begin examining it.
The Egyptian fixation upon death and the afterlife was total and stifling. Egypt is famous as an archaeological treasure trove, because of its long civilization and the dry conditions that allowed exquisite preservation even of things that had not been mummified. It should be a tremendous source of information about the everyday lives of ancient people. But in reality, besides the records of kingly conquests, most of the hieroglyphics are incantations that will guide the departed person through the afterlife. So, for instance, you have a sarcophagus covered with hundreds of hieroglyphics. They tell you that it is so-and-so-and-so son of so-and-so-and-so, that he was a scribe or the keeper of the granaries, and the rest of it is please-Osiris-don’t-hurt-me-please-Ra-don’t-feed-me-to-the-alligators-please-Horus-I-wrote-down-the-right-words-so-I-deserve-to-live-in-the-underworld-forever-along-with-my-mummified-cat-no-longer-Fluffy. No biography, just religious hocus-pocus.
The extravagances expended upon preparation for the afterlife of Egyptian kings and nobles are infamous. But so imbued was Egyptian culture with this fixation that middle-class people were expected to make these preparations also. I saw the sarcophagi and other items of artisans. Preparation for death could cost the artisan a year’s wages. They had various cost-cutting measures. The middle-class sarcophagi had red and yellow paint to imitate the gold sheet they could not afford, and painted patterns to make limestone look like granite. Even the lowest professionals had to have something, so they made mummy-covers out of terra cotta (pretty amateur work, resulting in faces that looked almost Neanderthal). If they found a tomb that had been abandoned, they recycled the contents by erasing the names of the previous owner-inhabitant. Some of these items could have been a chance to preserve a record of, for example, how the pyramids were built—did the artisans (who were not slaves, but contractors) push the blocks up inclined planes? Or did outer space creatures use anti-gravity devices, as Erich Von Däniken claimed? Just how were the contractors chosen and how much were they paid? There is a little information, but not much. The Egyptians wrote a lot, but mostly incantations for the afterlife.
So powerful was the cult of the afterlife that conquerors got sucked into it. One of the sarcophagi was of a Greek ruler just before the Common Era. Everything looked just like it was Egyptian, even with hieroglyphics (which were used only for religion; commerce used a primitive alphabet)—but the face plate was a Pompeii-style painting.
The Egyptians were not the only ones to focus all their attention on religion and leave little record of their ordinary lives. In another part of the museum there are medieval paintings. They are all of religious themes. Occasionally a little bit of ordinary life and landscape would slip in as background. Only later did ordinary life and lives make it into paintings. At the end of one hallway is a permanent exhibit at the Philbrook: Bouguereau’s painting of the little sherpherdess, more lifelike than life, and whose eyes, everyone agrees, seem to follow you wherever you are.
Some of my own writings have suffered from religious limitations in the past. I have kept a daily journal (today’s entry was number 7548) for 21 years. The recent entries contain many things that I have learned from my experiences, observations, and from the news. Whoever reads them someday, should they happen to survive, will learn much about our times and how at least one thoughtful person reacted to them. But when I started the journal, it was a devotional book, in which I wrote only about the Bible, and wrote prayers of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (the ACTS system). A little bit about me, hardly anything about the world. My journal, at its inception, was very much like an Egyptian sarcophagus, covered with writing that would tell a person of the future very, very little, and which did not even help me very much. I felt an obligation to be pious rather than wrestling with difficult spiritual issues honestly. I am thankful that enough life remains to me that I can finally begin examining it.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The Dark Side of Altruism
I have written extensively about altruism, in my Encyclopedia of Evolution, as well as in my book Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out World, to be released this fall by Prometheus books. When animals are nice to other members of their species, they enjoy lots of benefits; nature is not simply “red in tooth and claw,” to use Tennyson’s oft-quoted phrase. Humans are, it appears, the animal species with the most complicated forms of altruism.
But clearly the positive benefits of altruism are not, by themselves, enough to have influenced the evolution of altruism. There is also a dark side to altruism. Animals also exercise violent actions against those who are cheaters in the altruism game. This confers a penalty upon those individuals who do not practice altruism. “Sweet revenge” appears to be as hard-wired in our brains as is friendship and love. And it is not just an instinct; it is a pleasure. It is a pleasure that can more suddenly and completely take over our brains than almost any other passion.
One example of this sudden, mindless zeal against cheaters took place in the aftermath of the European theater of World War II. In an earlier entry, I told about meeting with my cousins in a rural cemetery on Memorial Day weekend, and exchanging some of our uncle’s war stories. Here is one of them.
The Germans had been defeated, and Allied troops, including my uncle Bill when he was a very young adult, fresh off an Oklahoma farm, were escorting German prisoners of war to prisons. All of them were on foot—the Allied guards, and the prisoners. This was, from the viewpoint of the Allied soldiers as well as most of the defeated Germans, a fair thing: once the war ended, there was no more need for killing, and now it was time for justice, which meant the execution, after judgment, of only the men who were most responsible for causing the war. But Bill recognized that one of the prisoners was an SS soldier. The SS soldiers had been trained as Nazi killing machines. For them, the war would not be over until death. They had all just finished eating lunch, and Bill wanted to light up a cigarette as he was, by himself, guarding the prisoners. It was windy. For just a moment—and he knew as soon as he did this that it was unwise—he leaned his rifle against the wall of a building to shelter the match from the wind. That was all of the time it took for the SS soldier to jump up and grab the rifle, with the intention of killing Bill. He grabbed the rifle also. The SS soldier, who was quite large, pushed against Bill, who was quite small, and Bill pushed back; they pushed each other a second time. Bill knew that he could not withstand the strong enemy. So when the SS soldier pushed a third time, Bill moved aside and tripped him. As the SS soldier fell, Bill took another gun out of its holster and shot the SS soldier in the back. He went into a trance, and just kept shooting. It took him awhile to notice that he had used all eight of his bullets, and the gun was going click-click-click. His comrades were now at his side.
Uncle Bill had slipped into a state that the Vikings called “berserk,” which is a term that specifically describes an alternate state of mind, almost dreamlike in quality, which encompasses a warrior in the midst of battle. We use the term loosely today to describe people who are out of control due to anger, but it is a mental state that anyone can slip into, and it clearly provided evolutionary benefits to our ancestors. It is an extreme form of the dark side of altruism. While I do not believe that it is good for us to go berserk, except in extreme situations such as Bill’s, it is clearly beneficial for us to not just promote good and altruistic policies and actions, but also to connect evil and selfish policies and actions with swift and sure punishment, of the appropriate variety. For example, Wall Street executives should not simply be scolded for causing the financial meltdown of 2008; they need the appropriate form of punishment, which is financial.
In extreme situations, such as Bill’s in 1945, there is no time for a trial. But those who execute sweet revenge need to explain their actions. Bill had to explain himself before a military panel. It was clear that he was defending himself and his comrades against an obviously evil enemy. But Bill also had a sense of humor. When a commanding officer asked him why he had used eight bullets, he said, “I didn’t have nine, and seven wasn’t quite enough.”
This essay also appeared in my evolution blog.
But clearly the positive benefits of altruism are not, by themselves, enough to have influenced the evolution of altruism. There is also a dark side to altruism. Animals also exercise violent actions against those who are cheaters in the altruism game. This confers a penalty upon those individuals who do not practice altruism. “Sweet revenge” appears to be as hard-wired in our brains as is friendship and love. And it is not just an instinct; it is a pleasure. It is a pleasure that can more suddenly and completely take over our brains than almost any other passion.
One example of this sudden, mindless zeal against cheaters took place in the aftermath of the European theater of World War II. In an earlier entry, I told about meeting with my cousins in a rural cemetery on Memorial Day weekend, and exchanging some of our uncle’s war stories. Here is one of them.
The Germans had been defeated, and Allied troops, including my uncle Bill when he was a very young adult, fresh off an Oklahoma farm, were escorting German prisoners of war to prisons. All of them were on foot—the Allied guards, and the prisoners. This was, from the viewpoint of the Allied soldiers as well as most of the defeated Germans, a fair thing: once the war ended, there was no more need for killing, and now it was time for justice, which meant the execution, after judgment, of only the men who were most responsible for causing the war. But Bill recognized that one of the prisoners was an SS soldier. The SS soldiers had been trained as Nazi killing machines. For them, the war would not be over until death. They had all just finished eating lunch, and Bill wanted to light up a cigarette as he was, by himself, guarding the prisoners. It was windy. For just a moment—and he knew as soon as he did this that it was unwise—he leaned his rifle against the wall of a building to shelter the match from the wind. That was all of the time it took for the SS soldier to jump up and grab the rifle, with the intention of killing Bill. He grabbed the rifle also. The SS soldier, who was quite large, pushed against Bill, who was quite small, and Bill pushed back; they pushed each other a second time. Bill knew that he could not withstand the strong enemy. So when the SS soldier pushed a third time, Bill moved aside and tripped him. As the SS soldier fell, Bill took another gun out of its holster and shot the SS soldier in the back. He went into a trance, and just kept shooting. It took him awhile to notice that he had used all eight of his bullets, and the gun was going click-click-click. His comrades were now at his side.
Uncle Bill had slipped into a state that the Vikings called “berserk,” which is a term that specifically describes an alternate state of mind, almost dreamlike in quality, which encompasses a warrior in the midst of battle. We use the term loosely today to describe people who are out of control due to anger, but it is a mental state that anyone can slip into, and it clearly provided evolutionary benefits to our ancestors. It is an extreme form of the dark side of altruism. While I do not believe that it is good for us to go berserk, except in extreme situations such as Bill’s, it is clearly beneficial for us to not just promote good and altruistic policies and actions, but also to connect evil and selfish policies and actions with swift and sure punishment, of the appropriate variety. For example, Wall Street executives should not simply be scolded for causing the financial meltdown of 2008; they need the appropriate form of punishment, which is financial.
In extreme situations, such as Bill’s in 1945, there is no time for a trial. But those who execute sweet revenge need to explain their actions. Bill had to explain himself before a military panel. It was clear that he was defending himself and his comrades against an obviously evil enemy. But Bill also had a sense of humor. When a commanding officer asked him why he had used eight bullets, he said, “I didn’t have nine, and seven wasn’t quite enough.”
This essay also appeared in my evolution blog.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The Evolution of Religion
The evolution of religion is too big of a topic to cover in one blog entry or, as I am discovering, in a single encyclopedia entry (as I begin to work on the revised edition of Encyclopedia of Evolution). Religion, as Richard Dawkins points out, is a set of memes that propagate themselves through genetically- and socially-based instincts. Nevertheless, we can speculate about the evolutionary functions of some components of religion. I will speculate on one of them here.
On Memorial Day weekend, I met with some of my family at a cemetery to place plastic flowers on graves. This is nothing if not a religious ceremony. Winganon Cemetery is out in the country, several miles into the hills from Chelsea, a very small town in Oklahoma, which is over twenty miles from Claremore, which is a small city, which is over twenty miles from Tulsa. This is where my parents are buried, as well as the parents of my two cousins, whom we joined there. Also buried there are the grandparents and the great-grandparents that we all shared. Had my daughter not been kept away by a medical emergency, there would have been five generations, living and dead, represented at that place.
Religion is all about connectedness—in fact, that is what the word means, from the Latin ligere, from which the word ligament comes. We were there because our identities are not just who we are at this moment, but as descendants. The human mind operates in four dimensions—we are always thinking about the past and the future. Most humans, except for atheists, include an unseen spiritual world as part of this connectedness; even agnostics leave open this possibility.
We did not look very religious. We were trampling all over our parents’ and ancestors’ graves as we forced plastic flowers into adobe-hard ground. Then we stood in the sun or sat in meager shade to talk about current situations or about the experiences of our predecessors. One cousin and I shared war stories told by our deceased uncle. We did not have sanctimonious ceremonies. But we were doing exactly what our ancestors would have wanted us to do, had they been able to see us: we remembered them, and then built more connections. Neither my cousin or I had heard the stories told by the other.
The human mind works in four dimensions all the time. I realized this later as I reclined on the bed, beside a fan, with one of our cats. I just let my mind wander, and I suppose the cat was doing the same. But the cat was presumably thinking only about its comfort at the present moment, which vague memories of territoriality and food, and vague anticipation of hunger. My mind, however, wandered exclusively in the fourth dimension, remembering past events (most of them trivial) and wondering about the almost infinite possibilities for the future (many of them disturbing). The human mind, even at rest, lives in a cosmos of connectedness, which is to say, religion, broadly defined.
This essay also appeared in my evolution blog.
On Memorial Day weekend, I met with some of my family at a cemetery to place plastic flowers on graves. This is nothing if not a religious ceremony. Winganon Cemetery is out in the country, several miles into the hills from Chelsea, a very small town in Oklahoma, which is over twenty miles from Claremore, which is a small city, which is over twenty miles from Tulsa. This is where my parents are buried, as well as the parents of my two cousins, whom we joined there. Also buried there are the grandparents and the great-grandparents that we all shared. Had my daughter not been kept away by a medical emergency, there would have been five generations, living and dead, represented at that place.
Religion is all about connectedness—in fact, that is what the word means, from the Latin ligere, from which the word ligament comes. We were there because our identities are not just who we are at this moment, but as descendants. The human mind operates in four dimensions—we are always thinking about the past and the future. Most humans, except for atheists, include an unseen spiritual world as part of this connectedness; even agnostics leave open this possibility.
We did not look very religious. We were trampling all over our parents’ and ancestors’ graves as we forced plastic flowers into adobe-hard ground. Then we stood in the sun or sat in meager shade to talk about current situations or about the experiences of our predecessors. One cousin and I shared war stories told by our deceased uncle. We did not have sanctimonious ceremonies. But we were doing exactly what our ancestors would have wanted us to do, had they been able to see us: we remembered them, and then built more connections. Neither my cousin or I had heard the stories told by the other.
The human mind works in four dimensions all the time. I realized this later as I reclined on the bed, beside a fan, with one of our cats. I just let my mind wander, and I suppose the cat was doing the same. But the cat was presumably thinking only about its comfort at the present moment, which vague memories of territoriality and food, and vague anticipation of hunger. My mind, however, wandered exclusively in the fourth dimension, remembering past events (most of them trivial) and wondering about the almost infinite possibilities for the future (many of them disturbing). The human mind, even at rest, lives in a cosmos of connectedness, which is to say, religion, broadly defined.
This essay also appeared in my evolution blog.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
America and Israel, again
The big news this week is about the Israelis using deadly force to attack a ship that was delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza. We must grant that Israel did make some effort to prevent an armed confrontation. They offered to let the vessel unload its cargo in Israel, so that the Israelis could inspect it and then give the humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, and the vessel refused. It seems apparent that the vessel was intended not just to deliver humanitarian aid but to provoke the Israelis and call world attention to the blockade of Gaza. But to most observers the Israeli commando raid was vastly disproportionate to the offense. One observer, quoted on radio, said that Israel has used military force as its main and sometimes exclusive venue of relations with its neighbors ever since the 1967 war, and quoted a Jewish proverb: To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
The Israeli government, though officially neutral on religion, clearly considers itself to be the continuation of God’s Kingdom as described in the Hebrew Bible, which we call the Old Testament. As I noted in an earlier entry, they seem to base their self-identity on the Biblical nation of Israel which conquered its neighbors by genocide. I suggest that they look at the rest of the Hebrew Bible—in particular, the prophets. I will use the prophet Amos as an example.
Amos’ prophecy is structured as a spiral of denunciations, starting with Damascus. “For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment…” This wording implies the same thing as when a parent says to a child, “That’s enough!” which does not mean “That was exactly the right amount of disobedience,” but rather, “You have gone too far.” Next, Amos denounces Gaza, then Tyre, then Edom, then the Ammonites (the people, not the extinct mollusks), then Moab, making a circle around Judah, spiraling closer and closer. And then, with exactly the same literary construction, the prophet says, “For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,” then says the same for Israel.
Even back during the days of ancient Israel and Judah, “Bible days,” as some would call them, “God’s kingdom” was called to the same standards and subjected to the same judgment as all other nations. This is clearly not American policy. America accepts Israeli acts that we would condemn if any other nation committed them. Israel listens too much to Joshua; they should listen more to Amos.
The Israeli government, though officially neutral on religion, clearly considers itself to be the continuation of God’s Kingdom as described in the Hebrew Bible, which we call the Old Testament. As I noted in an earlier entry, they seem to base their self-identity on the Biblical nation of Israel which conquered its neighbors by genocide. I suggest that they look at the rest of the Hebrew Bible—in particular, the prophets. I will use the prophet Amos as an example.
Amos’ prophecy is structured as a spiral of denunciations, starting with Damascus. “For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment…” This wording implies the same thing as when a parent says to a child, “That’s enough!” which does not mean “That was exactly the right amount of disobedience,” but rather, “You have gone too far.” Next, Amos denounces Gaza, then Tyre, then Edom, then the Ammonites (the people, not the extinct mollusks), then Moab, making a circle around Judah, spiraling closer and closer. And then, with exactly the same literary construction, the prophet says, “For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,” then says the same for Israel.
Even back during the days of ancient Israel and Judah, “Bible days,” as some would call them, “God’s kingdom” was called to the same standards and subjected to the same judgment as all other nations. This is clearly not American policy. America accepts Israeli acts that we would condemn if any other nation committed them. Israel listens too much to Joshua; they should listen more to Amos.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Cannons of Canonicity
Conservative Christians, such as those among whom Frank Schaeffer used to operate (see previous entry), claim that the Bible is the supreme source of authority. But this is not really the case at all. I will explain three ways in which this is so.
First, there is no clear “revelation from God” as to which books should be included within the New Testament “canon.” For centuries after Jesus, there was dispute among different factions concerning which books should be included. “The New Testament” consists of 27 books that one of these factions eventually chose for inclusion. But even in this faction, which eventually became “The Church,” there was a little disagreement. The first list that has all 27 books, and only those books, that was “universally” accepted was the list prepared by Athanasius in 327 CE. Athanasius was one of the men chosen by Emperor Constantine to help resolve disputes within the church that Constantine had joined and which became the official religion of the Roman Empire. (See Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted for more information.) Therefore, the authority of this list largely depends on the authority of Constantine. While he was far from being the worst Roman emperor, he was by no means someone who would be considered godly by today’s self-appointed Christian leaders. For example he had his wife Fausta and his son Crispus executed as political opponents. Before he was emperor he had vanquished Frankish kings and troops fed to beasts as entertainment. He had the decomposing body of a challenger, Maxentius, fished out of the Tiber and decapitated, and then had the head sent to Carthage. At about the same time that he was building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he also built a pagan monument, the Arch of Constantine. He was not baptized until just before he died. Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them,” but the life of Constantine was not particularly holy—not enough to give him the authority to have established by decree which books should be in the New Testament. So conservative Christians apparently accept Constantine as the supreme authority, since he (as Emperor) determined the canon.
Second, there is no clear “revelation from God” as to which exact wording should be accepted for the canonical books. There are several versions of each of the New Testament books, and it is not clear which, if any, is original. It is difficult to believe in “the exact words of Jesus” when the gospels that are in the Bible today, and the ancient variations of those gospels, contain words that are not exactly the same. Many fundamentalists solve the problem by simply declaring that the 1611 King James Version is the true Bible. What about all of those years before King James? Well, I guess those people had no hope of being Bible-believing Christians. King James I was not a particularly bad king, but he was not someone whom modern conservatives would consider to be a good one either. He initiated the first formal series of witch hunts in Scotland. Conservative Christians believe his version of the Bible but not, apparently, his book Daemonologie. Perhaps most astonishingly, conservative Christians embrace his version of the Bible yet overlook the clear possibility of King James’ homosexual relationships. Conservative Christians consider homosexuality to be the worst thing in the world, worse even than murder and torture and rape. There were rumors throughout James’ life of his affairs with male courtiers such as Esmé Stewart, later Duke of Lennox; Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset; and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. A restoration of one of James’ palaces in 2004-2008 revealed a previously secret passage linking the bedchambers of James and Villiers. Perhaps, to conservative Christians, James’ homosexuality is made up for by his affair with Anne Murray (not the singer, but Lady Glamis). King James was most likely a practitioner of a lifestyle that conservative Christians consider most despicable, yet they base their faith on the Bible translation that he commissioned. James’ express purpose in having this translation done was to establish the divine right of kings. James was particularly bothered by egalitarian Presbyterians; he said of them, as I recall reading someplace, that “every Tom, Dick, and Harry tell me and my council what to do.”
[But you have to grant that King James got one thing right. He considered smoking to be morally bad and unhealthy. Here is a quote from a treatise he wrote in 1604: “Have you not reason then to be ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof. In your abuse thereof sinning against God harming yourselves both in person and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil nations and by all strangers that come among you to be scorned and held in contemp; a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”]
Third, there is no clear guide as to how the Bible should be interpreted. Each conservative Christian leader considers himself or herself to be the ultimate authority on how to interpret them. I do not have time here to mention the numerous ethical offenses of leading Christian Right preachers of the present day.
If we are to accept Constantine, or King James, or Christian preachers as authorities for what to believe about the Bible, then their lives should (as Jesus said) be exemplary. They were not and are not. Instead, Christian preachers merely enforce their own preferences about the Bible by sheer force—the cannons of canonicity.
First, there is no clear “revelation from God” as to which books should be included within the New Testament “canon.” For centuries after Jesus, there was dispute among different factions concerning which books should be included. “The New Testament” consists of 27 books that one of these factions eventually chose for inclusion. But even in this faction, which eventually became “The Church,” there was a little disagreement. The first list that has all 27 books, and only those books, that was “universally” accepted was the list prepared by Athanasius in 327 CE. Athanasius was one of the men chosen by Emperor Constantine to help resolve disputes within the church that Constantine had joined and which became the official religion of the Roman Empire. (See Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted for more information.) Therefore, the authority of this list largely depends on the authority of Constantine. While he was far from being the worst Roman emperor, he was by no means someone who would be considered godly by today’s self-appointed Christian leaders. For example he had his wife Fausta and his son Crispus executed as political opponents. Before he was emperor he had vanquished Frankish kings and troops fed to beasts as entertainment. He had the decomposing body of a challenger, Maxentius, fished out of the Tiber and decapitated, and then had the head sent to Carthage. At about the same time that he was building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he also built a pagan monument, the Arch of Constantine. He was not baptized until just before he died. Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them,” but the life of Constantine was not particularly holy—not enough to give him the authority to have established by decree which books should be in the New Testament. So conservative Christians apparently accept Constantine as the supreme authority, since he (as Emperor) determined the canon.
Second, there is no clear “revelation from God” as to which exact wording should be accepted for the canonical books. There are several versions of each of the New Testament books, and it is not clear which, if any, is original. It is difficult to believe in “the exact words of Jesus” when the gospels that are in the Bible today, and the ancient variations of those gospels, contain words that are not exactly the same. Many fundamentalists solve the problem by simply declaring that the 1611 King James Version is the true Bible. What about all of those years before King James? Well, I guess those people had no hope of being Bible-believing Christians. King James I was not a particularly bad king, but he was not someone whom modern conservatives would consider to be a good one either. He initiated the first formal series of witch hunts in Scotland. Conservative Christians believe his version of the Bible but not, apparently, his book Daemonologie. Perhaps most astonishingly, conservative Christians embrace his version of the Bible yet overlook the clear possibility of King James’ homosexual relationships. Conservative Christians consider homosexuality to be the worst thing in the world, worse even than murder and torture and rape. There were rumors throughout James’ life of his affairs with male courtiers such as Esmé Stewart, later Duke of Lennox; Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset; and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. A restoration of one of James’ palaces in 2004-2008 revealed a previously secret passage linking the bedchambers of James and Villiers. Perhaps, to conservative Christians, James’ homosexuality is made up for by his affair with Anne Murray (not the singer, but Lady Glamis). King James was most likely a practitioner of a lifestyle that conservative Christians consider most despicable, yet they base their faith on the Bible translation that he commissioned. James’ express purpose in having this translation done was to establish the divine right of kings. James was particularly bothered by egalitarian Presbyterians; he said of them, as I recall reading someplace, that “every Tom, Dick, and Harry tell me and my council what to do.”
[But you have to grant that King James got one thing right. He considered smoking to be morally bad and unhealthy. Here is a quote from a treatise he wrote in 1604: “Have you not reason then to be ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof. In your abuse thereof sinning against God harming yourselves both in person and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil nations and by all strangers that come among you to be scorned and held in contemp; a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”]
Third, there is no clear guide as to how the Bible should be interpreted. Each conservative Christian leader considers himself or herself to be the ultimate authority on how to interpret them. I do not have time here to mention the numerous ethical offenses of leading Christian Right preachers of the present day.
If we are to accept Constantine, or King James, or Christian preachers as authorities for what to believe about the Bible, then their lives should (as Jesus said) be exemplary. They were not and are not. Instead, Christian preachers merely enforce their own preferences about the Bible by sheer force—the cannons of canonicity.
Friday, May 21, 2010
The Church of Hopeful Uncertainty: A Message from Frank Schaeffer
In the 1970s and 1980s, Francis Schaeffer was an iconic figure among evangelical Christians. He popularized the intellectual underpinnings of religious and political conservatism. Perhaps his principal sidekick was his son Franky, who wrote his own books, including one that defends capitalism as the Christian system by which the world should run. Franky now goes by Frank and visited Tulsa yesterday to tell us about the changes that have emerged in his thinking since the 1980s. He is now appalled at the monster that political evangelical Christianity created.
Schaeffer and many others describe the political right, today, as the American Taliban. It is no joke. The religious right does not want democracy; they want to establish a religious dictatorship, and they are accumulating caches of weapons to do so. Polls repeatedly show that a large minority of Americans actually believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. There is no more opportunity for dialogue or compromise with this position than it is possible to have meaningful compromise with Al Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban. Schaeffer pointed out that the conservatives among whom he grew up, such as his father and William F. Buckley, would not recognize the monstrous form of conservatism that now dominates the political scene. Schaeffer said that Barack Obama represents our last and best hope to avoid a religious dictatorship in the United States; if his presidency fails, a religious dictatorship is nearly certain. The motivation of the religious right is not godliness—an astonishingly large number of the leaders of the religious right lead immoral lives—but power, and they have no more esteem for truth than they do for godliness. He also pointed out that conservative leaders would publically talk about Christianity but in secret they would laugh at the Christians who played into their hands. Schaeffer changed his views when he realized that he would not want to live in the world he was trying to create, and that the secularists whom he publicly opposed were better people, personally and morally, than the leaders of the religious right. Schaeffer said that if Obama fails, this nation is screwed for the next hundred years.
Schaeffer also talked about what he now considers to be true religion. To the American Taliban, all that matters is that you assent to certain religious doctrines and are willing to use any and all means to oppose those who disagree with them. But to those who are truly religious, the right way is openness to the beauty and awe of the universe. The American Taliban fantasizes that it fully understands the truth; but we can never know the full truth. Our brains are biological structures that evolved within a physical universe; we are “stuck in” the universe and cannot objectively observe it or ourselves. Schaeffer opposes fundamentalist atheists as much as he does fundamentalist Christians, although, of course, the former are not dangerous like the latter. He describes his religious affiliation as “the church of hopeful uncertainty.” We cannot understand the universe any more than an infant can. We can never be certain but there is reason for us to believe that goodness and love are fundamental truths. Theology just gives us a rationalization for what we already know is true and good. In saying this, Schaeffer echoed the views of evolutionary psychologist Michael Gazzaniga, although Schaeffer may never have heard of him.
Schaeffer said nearly everything that people like me are saying, but much more powerfully—and from a position of being a former insider in the religious right.
Schaeffer and many others describe the political right, today, as the American Taliban. It is no joke. The religious right does not want democracy; they want to establish a religious dictatorship, and they are accumulating caches of weapons to do so. Polls repeatedly show that a large minority of Americans actually believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. There is no more opportunity for dialogue or compromise with this position than it is possible to have meaningful compromise with Al Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban. Schaeffer pointed out that the conservatives among whom he grew up, such as his father and William F. Buckley, would not recognize the monstrous form of conservatism that now dominates the political scene. Schaeffer said that Barack Obama represents our last and best hope to avoid a religious dictatorship in the United States; if his presidency fails, a religious dictatorship is nearly certain. The motivation of the religious right is not godliness—an astonishingly large number of the leaders of the religious right lead immoral lives—but power, and they have no more esteem for truth than they do for godliness. He also pointed out that conservative leaders would publically talk about Christianity but in secret they would laugh at the Christians who played into their hands. Schaeffer changed his views when he realized that he would not want to live in the world he was trying to create, and that the secularists whom he publicly opposed were better people, personally and morally, than the leaders of the religious right. Schaeffer said that if Obama fails, this nation is screwed for the next hundred years.
Schaeffer also talked about what he now considers to be true religion. To the American Taliban, all that matters is that you assent to certain religious doctrines and are willing to use any and all means to oppose those who disagree with them. But to those who are truly religious, the right way is openness to the beauty and awe of the universe. The American Taliban fantasizes that it fully understands the truth; but we can never know the full truth. Our brains are biological structures that evolved within a physical universe; we are “stuck in” the universe and cannot objectively observe it or ourselves. Schaeffer opposes fundamentalist atheists as much as he does fundamentalist Christians, although, of course, the former are not dangerous like the latter. He describes his religious affiliation as “the church of hopeful uncertainty.” We cannot understand the universe any more than an infant can. We can never be certain but there is reason for us to believe that goodness and love are fundamental truths. Theology just gives us a rationalization for what we already know is true and good. In saying this, Schaeffer echoed the views of evolutionary psychologist Michael Gazzaniga, although Schaeffer may never have heard of him.
Schaeffer said nearly everything that people like me are saying, but much more powerfully—and from a position of being a former insider in the religious right.
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