- Chris Hallquist has written an open letter to theists on the problem of evil. He’s just looking for your thoughts, not a debate. He asks some really worthwhile questions. If you believe in God, why not go answer him? Either way, please help spread the letter around.
- Ted Cox has a great article on AlterNet about the fraud being committed under religious pretenses in “the unscientific, unregulated underworld of ex-gay therapy.”
- A Belgian Cardinal was recorded on tape “urging a victim not to reveal he was sexually abused by a bishop.” When? Last April, as scandalous stories of cover-ups were all over the news. Come on, guys. How despicable do you really need to be? (Via Coming of Age.)
- Physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow explain in The Grand Design (due out next week) why it’s “not necessary to invoke God” to explain the universe’s origins. Predictable freak-out follows.
- The Wall Street Journal “asked six leading thinkers to answer the question: What is moderate Islam?” The answers they get are very thought-provoking and insightful (doubly so when you consider that the WSJ is owned by News Corp).
Friday Link Roundup #14
All the same god?
I’m sick of hearing that Jews, Christians, and Muslims “all worship the same god.” It’s such a popular characterization amongst proponents of interfaith collaboration. It sounds so nice. But it just doesn’t make sense.
Suppose Alice says, “I believe in Zeus — he’s the god of the sky, and the king of all the gods.” And Bob says, “I believe in Zeus too — but you’re wrong, Alice, he’s the god of the underworld.” Then Carl says, “I believe in Zeus as well — but you’re both wrong, Zeus is the god of the oceans.” On a superficial level, they do all believe in some deity called Zeus … but at the point at which they disagree on major details about who Zeus actually is, it doesn’t mean very much to say that they all believe in “the same god.” They might as well have named these gods Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon; having different names wouldn’t make these three gods any more different in any meaningful sense.
Yes, I know that Christians include a version of the Jewish Tanakh as the Old Testament in their Bible. Yes, I realize that Muslims believe the Torah contains the teachings of Allah and that Jesus was a prophet. But that doesn’t mean that Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in a god with fundamentally the same attributes and teachings. Jews and Muslims believe in God as one being, while Christians believe in a trinity. Christians and Muslims believe that Jesus’ teachings reflected the teachings of God, while Jews do not — and Christians believe that Jesus was actually divine, while Jews and Muslims do not. These are pretty basic details, and they don’t match up! And there are many more examples I could give.
Here is a generous characterization of what is going on — it is not quite true, but I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt to people who make this silly claim about “all worshipping the same god.” The Jews have their understanding of God. Then, the Christians come along and say, “That’s pretty good, but we are going to make some modifications.” Then, the Muslims come along and are all right with most of the Jewish and Christian ideas about God, but they want to add their own stuff too. I guess I see the sense in which everybody is taking about the same god — I mean, everybody here is saying that they are describing the only god there is — but each group thinks that the other groups are deeply wrong in their understanding! I just don’t see any real sense in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims “worship the same god” in a way that would actually constitute theological or philosophical agreement.
One more lesson from the JWs
As the Jehovah’s Witnesses were wrapping up their spiel to us, they commended my husband and me for being “so open-minded,” taking their literature and giving them the time of day to talk to us. My husband asked them if they considered themselves open-minded, if they had read and considered the arguments that says that the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses are mistaken. One responded, “Why would I do that? I’ve already found the answers I believe are true.”
We were dumbfounded. We went a few rounds back and forth, but it was clear that we were on completely non-intersecting planes of thought. My husband and I pointed out that we also believe what we think is true. They didn’t seem to understand how that was relevant. One of them eventually mentioned a period of “rebellion” from her JW upbringing in her late teens, during which she “looked into other things,” but implied that since she had done that (whatever that was), there was no need to investigate further. They repeatedly said that they weren’t “forcing” anything on us and that we didn’t have to take their literature, but we pointed out that they did obviously think it was good that we did. They didn’t see the parallel. Finally, my husband and I let it go, and we all wished each other a good day.
After we closed the door, I had a little realization. We had been trying to impress upon them that, if they valued open-mindedness as they said they did, they should themselves be open-minded and educate themselves about the arguments against their beliefs. But this assumes that they value open-mindedness for its own sake. And they don’t.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses at our door praised open-mindedness in us, insofar as it meant that we would be open-minded to considering their beliefs. In other words, in their evaluation, open-mindedness has instrumental value but not inherent value. Open-mindedness is the way that non-JWs become JWs. They’re already JWs — the ultimate good end — so they have no need for open-mindedness anymore. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only people who have this sort of attitude.
As atheists and skeptics, we are often told by those who hold supernatural beliefs that we should “be more open-minded.” It’s easy to then get caught up in a debate about what “open-minded” really means and why rejecting a claim because of evidence does not equate to close-mindedness — but this is all irrelevant to someone who doesn’t actually think open-mindedness is the point. Undoubtedly it is a worthwhile conversation to have with some religious believers and pseudoscience proponents, but this encounter reminded me that it is not necessarily appropriate. We should remember to question further, and make sure we understand what values are really being praised.
Taking tolerance too far
Last time we talked about Unitarian Universalism, I was explaining how — in my experience — UUs tend to refrain from criticizing the beliefs of others, no matter how implausible or even disproven they are, in the name of respecting each person’s search for truth. The reason usually offered for this attitude (and the occasionally-explicit instruction in this attitude) is the importance of “tolerance,” “celebrating diversity,” or “being accepting of differences.”
Certainly, one of the big selling points of liberal religion in general is that it is tolerant, or even accepting, of differences. I want to be clear that I agree this is an important, positive value. But while I am as eager to celebrate diversity as the next privileged white person with a guilty conscience, I think there is a point at which accepting differences should take a backseat to attempting to figure out what is actually true.
It’s good to respect people of all different religions. But respecting people and respecting ideas are not the same thing. Some unfounded or mistaken beliefs may indeed lose out once we discuss all alternatives openly and exercise our “free thought,” but thoughtful dialogue is not disrespectful to the people involved. Sometimes, the best way to show that you respect someone is to help them understand why one of their beliefs is incorrect and damaging to themselves and others. Friends don’t let friends waste their lives worshipping imaginary deities.
It’s strange — but this misguided understanding of “respect” and “tolerance” is something that UUs share with groups at the opposite orthodoxy extreme. Consider the fundamentalist Christian parents who feel they are not respected because creationism is not taught as science in public schools. Consider the Muslims who feel they are not respected because a non-Muslim decided to draw the prophet Muhammad in an editorial cartoon. I’m sure you can think of many more examples; those are just two off the top of my head. These people do not feel they are being respected unless you agree with them.
UUs try to have it all ways — as the image at the top of this post so wonderfully illustrates. That’s a sticker for sale in the Unitarian Universalist section of a store called Northern Sun. (I laughed to see that the UU and the Pagan sections are cross-linked with each other.) What I was actually looking for as an illustration was a flag that we had hanging in the church I attended growing up, with a chalice in the center and other religious emblems surrounding it. I couldn’t find that flag, but I did find a photo of this stained-glass window now in (at least) two UU churches. The caption offers this description (emphasis mine):
The REHNBERG MEMORIAL WINDOW created in 1974 in Rockford, Illinois by artist, Frank Houtkamp. The interlocking of the six circular representations of the six major religions of the world indicated that they all share in the same quest for meaning. The central symbol of the Flaming Chalice represents Unitarian Universalism’s willingness to accept whatever insight each of the major traditions may offer – as well as a determination to explore all new claims to truth and understanding.
What it seems like UUs are trying to say is, “Yes, we respect you! And you! And you! You’re all correct, okay? Let’s all get along.” While I sympathize with the sentiment, I think this is a very incoherent approach. These different belief systems are mutually exclusive with each other. They make different factual statements about the nature of reality. Many of them teach that people who believe in others of them are evil or at least deeply and horribly wrong; some advocate punishing these evil people as soon as possible, and others teach that these people will be punished in an afterlife or a subsequent life. Anyone with a basic understanding of logic can see that they cannot all be correct here.
I understand that many UUs, when they talk about “truth” or “whatever insight each of the major traditions may offer,” are thinking about the sort of way we can learn about “human truths” from fictional literature — but I still think this is counterproductive. We don’t need to study world religions to come up with the idea that compassion is important, yet citing religious belief as the source of this understanding just gives cover to religion’s many atrocities. And we must remember that even this watered-down understanding of “truth” is not universally shared by UUs. Many find it appropriate to celebrate the holidays of other religions, recite the prayers of other religions, or make other religious observances according to different traditions. I have attended multiple Passover seders held in UU church multipurpose rooms. We could have learned about the insights Judaism has to offer without pretending to be Jewish.
Their hearts are undoubtedly in the right place. But when UUs practice religious tolerance by deeming all religions equally true, they’re missing the point of being a freethinker.
Jehovah’s Witnesses on hell
The Jehovah’s Witnesses at our door the other day tried to tell us that they weren’t “knocking” any other religion. I should have responded by saying simply, “Of course you are; you think they offer the wrong teachings, don’t you?” That would have been sufficient to make the point. They were coming to tell us that they were correct and we were wrong. They wanted us to start believing what they believe.
Instead, I said, “Of course you are; you think they’re going to hell, right?”
One of the missionaries quickly assured me that they absolutely did not believe that anyone would be sent to hell. Her phrasing betrayed a bit of hedging — she kept referring to “people who never learned the truth during their life,” “people who were mentally insane,” and other people who could not reasonably be blamed for not holding these beliefs. We didn’t get into a discussion of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, and the concept that God made each of us the way we are, and the implications that this has on all these different cases. I’m not even sure what they thought about people like us, who listen to them yammer on at our doors and then fail to become Jehovah’s Witnesses. They seemed to be claiming that a “correct” reading of the Bible reveals that there is no hell of fire and brimstone at all, so we steered the conversation in that direction.
I know that there are verses in the Bible that suggest that the two options for the afterlife are heaven and death, and other verses which suggest that everybody goes to heaven. When I pointed out to the JWs that Revelation specifies that only 144,000 people will go to heaven (a figure I know they are familiar with) so presumably the rest of us go someplace else, they agreed but answered that those people will live forever in a paradise on Earth. Huh? I hadn’t heard that before.
The missionaries handed me a little booklet called What Does the Bible Really Teach? One of them assured me that I could read it alongside the Bible, “or even alone, without the Bible,” and it would answer all my questions. (I chuckled a bit at this — I’m sure they’d love it if I read this without the Bible nearby.) She opened the book to page 64, a section called “Knowing the Truth About Death is Beneficial.”
Read the full post »
At least this is in the Fashion section
The whole point of this NYT article seems to be point out a religious fad.
In that earlier incarnation, “I was going along, going along, going along, and I got eaten,” said Dr. [Paul] DeBell, who has a private practice on the Upper East Side where he specializes in hypnotizing those hoping to retrieve memories of past lives. Dr. DeBell likes to reflect on how previous lives can alter one’s sense of self. He, for example, is more than a psychiatrist in 21st-century Manhattan; he believes he is an eternal soul who also inhabited the body of a Tibetan monk and a conscientious German who refused to betray his Jewish neighbors in the Holocaust.
I gotta say, I love that that’s the quotation from him they decided to go with.
According to data released last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a quarter of Americans now believe in reincarnation. (Women are more likely to believe than men; Democrats more likely than Republicans.) Julia Roberts recently told Elle magazine that though she was raised Christian, she had become “very Hindu.” Ms. Roberts believes that in her past life she was a “peasant revolutionary,” and said that when her daughter sits in a certain way she knows “there’s someone there I didn’t get the benefit of knowing … It’s an honor for me to continue to shepherd that.”
Well, if Julia Roberts told it to Elle magazine, that’s proof enough for me!
It’s a pretty credulous article, but all it purports to do is describe a trend, so I’m not sure how much I can fault it for that. They did find a psychology professor — Dr. Jim Tucker of the University of Virginia — to say a bit about how the notion of past lives is “scientifically dubious” about halfway into the three-page article, and near the end it says that the research being done on the topic is “on the fringes of legitimate science.” But of course, they go back to that same psychology professor at the end and it turns out that “he likes to keep an open mind.”
“There can be something that survives after the death of the brain and the death of the body that is somehow connected to a new child,” he said. “I have become convinced that there is more to the world than the physical universe. There’s the mind piece, which is its own entity.”
This trend doesn’t sound like a truthful epiphany to me. It just sounds like white Americans trying to appropriate some pieces of Asian culture in an attempt to feel more exotic, spiritual, and special. I’d love to sit down with Julia Roberts and see how much she actually knows about Hinduism. I suspect that she and the many others who claim to have “past lives” or believe in reincarnation don’t know much of anything about what it means to be Hindu, Buddhist, or any other religion they’re laying claim to. They just know it gets a lot of admiring coos from their yoga classmates.
Hooray, Jehovah’s Witnesses!
In the past at this blog, I’ve griped about how I always seem to miss Jehovah’s Witnesses when they come to our door. My husband sometimes takes a tract or two for me to pore over in amazement later, but it’s so disappointing not to be able to talk to them face-to-face. People confident enough in their beliefs to go door-to-door interrupting our lives to preach to us? I’d love to see how they answer some of my questions.
Well, yesterday, my luck turned around! In the afternoon, two young women knocked on our door with tote bags full of Watchtower magazines over their shoulders and New World Translation Bibles in hand. As I heard them introducing themselves to my husband in our doorway, I rushed over to join them.
The first question we asked was what reason they had to believe that the Bible was true. If you want to come and tell us the “good news” in the Bible, fine — but you had better start by explaining to us that this is a book worth believing in the first place. One of them happily opened up the latest issue of The Watchtower and pointed us to a colored box on the page surrounding some line of scripture. She began, “It actually says right here in –” and as she said the name of the book (I think she was citing 2 Timothy 3:16 but might have misremebered) my husband cut her off. “No. You don’t understand. If it’s in the Bible, it doesn’t count. That’s circular logic.”
They were a little bit flummoxed by this, and started assuring us that the Bible is full of verses that explain how correct the Bible is. We tried again. One of us said, “Of course the Bible says that the Bible is true. I don’t doubt that at all.” They were visibly relieved, and we went on to explain how, if we haven’t decided the Bible is true yet, it doesn’t help to point to the Bible’s assertion on the matter to change our minds. They were starting to get it.
One of the missionaries claimed that there are lots of fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, as well as later-confirmed scientific knowledge — for example that the Earth was round. We’ve been over that silly claim already; I repeated my explanation that saying that the Earth is a “circle” is not the same as saying it’s a “sphere,” and that that combined with saying that the sky is a “tent” doesn’t paint a picture of accurate science at all. She was “sorry to hear [I felt] that way about it.”
Eventually, one of the women volunteered to explain why she believed the Jehovah’s Witness version of Christianity. She was a convert, she said, and though she was brought up to believe in God and the Bible and all that, it didn’t make her a good person. She was “a drunk and a fornicator,” and she would “go to church but then get high afterward anyway.” A few years ago she learned about Jehovah’s Witnesses and started reading their literature, and she found herself inspired to clean up her act. It gave her the motivation to be a better person. The other woman chimed in at this point and they both explained how they’ve found JWs to be upstanding, well-behaved, “clean” people across the board.
My husband had a very diplomatic answer to this, which was good because I think I was too floored to have a snappy comeback. (Someone is actually presenting this to me as proof?) He said something like: “I have a lot of respect for many religious people. They seem to be trying their best to be good people, and they do a lot of good stuff for the world.” (Much nodding from the missionaries.) “The thing is, I know a lot of people like that, and some of them are Christians, some are Muslims, some are Buddhists, some have no religion. But all these beliefs are mutually exclusive, they can’t all be right! It’s got to be pretty clear that ‘helping someone behave right’ isn’t proof that an idea is true.”
At this point I was ready to join in: “Belief in Santa Claus motivates plenty of children to behave, but that’s no reason to believe Santa Claus is real — surely Jehovah’s Witnesses would agree with that.” I got a good laugh on that line.
But … a laugh was about all we got. One of them said, “Well, we’re not here to knock any other religion, or anything like that,” and our conversation meandered around to other topics (to be covered in later posts). That was all we got in the way of proof — unconvincing assertions about fulfilled prophecy and scientific knowledge, and the claim that it’s useful to encourage good behavior. In other words, no better than the nonsense I encounter every other day. You’d think that people who go door-to-door would be more prepared than that … but, apparently not.
What makes a cult
I appreciated seeing this video over at Common Sense Atheism the other day. It’s called The Cult of Christ, by YouTube user DiscoveringReligion, and it juxtaposes clips from a parody video about how to be a cult leader with real video clips of Christians following that recipe.
When Luke posted the video, he titled it, “Charismatic Christianity as a Cult.” The video itself has a disclaimer at the beginning:
Although the vast majority of Christians do not engage in the extreme behavior depicted in this video, the kinds of abuse propagated in the name of Christianity must be brought to the attention of moderate Christians everywhere.
But the main points in the video aren’t unique to Charismatic Christianity. Virtually every flavor of Christianity promises that your life will be better if you live it for the glory of the Christian God, and that through God and Jesus your dreams can be fulfilled. Virtually all induce guilt for supposedly “sinful” acts and choices, and threaten the “sinner” with everlasting hell if they do not repent and worship the Christian God. Thought-stopping rituals and repetitive acts are more plentiful and more blatant among some denominations than others, but they’re hardly unique to Charismatics.
The video says, “A good con man takes a little bit of truth and a lot of lies and pulls the wool over the eyes of the ignorant” — and this almost perfectly encapsulates the teaching of the Bible in nearly every Christian Sunday school class. There are some good moral principles in here, so believe that story about Jesus being the son of God and also God at the same time! There are real cities and real historical people mentioned in here, so believe that part about heaven and hell!
Of course the speaking in tongues part is extreme. Of course the young-Earth creationism is extreme. But the cultlike characteristics are not. Some cults are worse than others, to be sure, but we shouldn’t give moderate Christians a complete pass on this stuff just because they’re not murdering little children accused of witchcraft. They’re still doing the emotional manipulation, the lying, the financial extortion, the thought-stopping. They’re still teaching guilt and self-loathing, paranoia and fear. If these are the things that make a cult, it doesn’t matter how silly or how normal they happen to look on video — it’s still a cult.
Friday Link Roundup #13
- NY Magazine offers a profile of David Koch, one of the political and financial powers behind the Tea Party movement. (Via Truth Wins Out.)
- Bill Donohue organized a rally against perceived discrimination since the private owner of the Empire State Building chose not to light the building’s windows in honor of Mother Teresa. The misunderstanding of civil rights is sad enough, but strangest to me is how Donohue acknowledges that this is not something Mother Teresa would even have wanted.
- Pope Pius IX’s 1864 Syllabus of Errors lays out some important points of Catholic doctrine, including the wrongfulness of church-state separation, the necessity of Catholic theocracy, and the notion that civil law has no authority over church decisions. (Via Ross Douthat.)
- You’ve probably seen this corny Christian painting before; someone showed it to me a while ago. Recently, though, I happened upon this spoof by ShortPacked! which is quite excellent. Make sure to compare and contrast the mouse-over text.
No inalienable right to federal grants
In a move that shocks no one, a coalition of religious organizations has voiced disapproval of proposed laws that will make it more difficult for them to get gobs of money from the government while refusing to hire anyone who doesn’t have the same invisible friend.
More than 100 religion-based organizations are protesting a provision in pending legislation that would prohibit them from receiving federal money if they consider a job applicant’s religion when hiring.
In a letter sent Wednesday to all members of Congress, the groups contend that the provision would dilute protections they have under the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as under the Constitution.
“Those four lines in the legislation would be a seismic change in bedrock civil rights law for religious organizations,” said Steven McFarland, chief legal counsel at World Vision USA, a Christian aid organization that is leading the protest. “The impact would be huge and severely affect our ability to help children and others in need.”
The provision is in legislation to reauthorize the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which makes grants to nonprofit social service organizations.
When the government gives money to charitable organizations, they are acknowledging that those organizations already have infrastructure set up that puts them in a good position to administer aid. Essentially, the government is hiring these organizations to act on its behalf to do its work — similar to hiring contractors. And guess what? The branches of our government, and the contractors they hire, are not allowed to discriminate in hiring.
What Steven McFarland and the rest of his coalition seem to miss here is that this legislation would not “severely affect [their] ability to help children and others in need.” It would severely affect their ability to make sure that only people of their special little club are the ones doing the helping. If your mission is really about charity, why should you care? If you do care … it makes it pretty clear that caring about people in need is not actually your focus.
(Reminds me of this story at Friendly Atheist a few weeks ago, about a food bank in New Zealand that was short-staffed because they were turning away atheist volunteers, since “the aim was to increase church involvement” and atheists wouldn’t help that.)
Religious organizations are allowed to choose to hire only people who believe in their religion. They just can’t use government funds to do that. What is so hard to understand about this?
-
Recent Comments
Aristarchus on All the same god?
jorge alvarado on All the same god?
NFQ on One more lesson from the JWs
vinny on Finding purpose as an atheist- vinny on One more lesson from the JWs
- NFQ on All the same god?
- jorge alvarado on All the same god?
- Aristarchus on All the same god?
- jorge alvarado on All the same god?
- NFQ on All the same god?
Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll
