Religion

Chris Brooke of “the Virtual Stoa has been waiting”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/%7Emagd1368/weblog/2005_10_01_archive.html#112895907444293364 for the “Brick Testament”:http://www.thebricktestament.com/ to get round to its Lego re-enactment of a key Biblical episode for Rousseau scholars, the Levite of Ephraim, a tale of gang rape, murder and dismemberment, and the occasion for one of JJR’s most obscure scribblings. Follow the links from the Stoa.

The idea that religion has a major influence on the nature of politics has been getting quite a run lately. There’s this Journal of Religion and Society study claiming that Religious belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide. On the other hand, here’s Niall Ferguson claiming that A faith vacuum haunts Europe. And Tom quotes Tory Michael Ancram saying much the same thing.

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I’ve been engaged in some correspondence which began around the question of whether or not “Mark Steyn rejects Darwin”:http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/mark_steyn_space_dwelling_robot_brain/ , but which has switched into a discussion of the views of philosopher and metaphysician, “Peter van Inwagen”:http://www.nd.edu/~ndphilo/faculty/pva.htm . Specifically, the following passage from Van Inwagen’s essay “Quam Dilecta”:

bq. I remember reading a very amusing response made by David Berlinski to Stephen Jay Gould’s statement that modern science was rapidly removing every excuse that anyone had ever had for thinking that we were much different from our closest primate relatives. Berlinski pointed out that you can always make two things sound similar (or “different only in degree”) if you describe them abstractly enough: “What Canada geese do when they migrate is much like what we do when we jump over a ditch: in each case, an organism’s feet leave the ground, it moves through the air, and it comes down some distance away. The difference between the two accomplishments is only a matter of degree.” I am also put in mind of a cartoon Phillip Johnson once showed me: A hostess is introducing a human being and a chimp at a cocktail party. “You two will have a lot to talk about,” she says, “–you share 99 percent of your DNA.” I’m sorry if I seem to be making a joke of this, but…well, I am making of joke of this. I admit it. Why shouldn’t I? The idea that there isn’t a vast, radical difference, a chasm, between human beings and all other terrestrial species is simply a very funny idea. It’s like the idea that Americans have a fundamental constitutional right to own automatic assault weapons: its consequences apart, it’s simply a very funny idea, and there’s nothing much one can do about it except to make a joke of it. You certainly wouldn’t want to invest much time in an argument with someone who would believe it in the first place.

I’m not a scientist (or a metaphysician for that matter), but I’m not shy to ask the advice of those who are. So comments are open for general observations on the passage. I’d be interested to know, though, whether anything as unvarnished as that can actually be pinned on Gould (van Inwagen provides no reference). I can well imagine him saying that chimpanzees and humans have a great deal in common compared what they share with, say, sharks or spiders (but that’s a different claim). The other thing that occured to me is that it is rather rich for someone to propose a laugh test to rule out counterintuitive scientific generalization when they themselves believe that “only human beings and elementary particles exist”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000189.html . My correspondent has corrected me to say that my characterization of van Inwagen’s view is inexact and that he holds that not only human beings by anything else with a “unified consciousness” can exist. So God and the angels are in too. That doesn’t really diminish my sense that when it comes to claims that are, on the face of it, laughable, van Inwagen may be a man throwing stones in a glasshouse.

I’m gradually making my way back to Tucson from Australia. Free advice: if you can avoid taking a flight across the Pacific oecean with a small child suffering from a cold and teething pain, go right ahead and avoid it. I am presently at an undisclosed location in the Pacific Northwest. Outside the hotel is a little plaza. A band has been playing Christian rock music to a small crowd. Lots of terrible, low-quality, saccharine power ballad stuff, complete with sexualized double-talk. (“There was a man in my room last night … ” Guess who it was.) Like Creed on valium. Hard to imagine, I know. They just closed out the show with a version of “I’m a Believer.” By far the liveliest song they’ve played, but with the lyrics changed. (“Then I saw _his_ face,” etc.) I suppose _something_ has to counterbalance the fact that a large chunk of the best music ever written is Christian music.

I’m sorry to get you worried about explosions two posts running, but you really should be reading Countdown to Annihilation! at Hitherby Dragons. (Especially PZ, who likes to keep abreast of scientific advances along these lines.) I feel bad excerpting just the premise because, though hilarious, it’s almost the least hiliarious bit. Make sure to start with the linked segment, then consult ‘latest entries’ for parts II, III & IV and the Lizard Cops bonus wossname.

"There!" says Mr. Lancaster. He rolls back the platform. He dusts
himself off. He rises. "It’s a perfect Origins Bomb, if I do say so
myself."

"Perfection is for God alone," corrects Mrs. Lancaster.

"Oh, Mrs. Lancaster," says Mr. Lancaster, beeping her nose. "You do keep me honest."

"What’s it do?" Iphigenia asks.

"It’s a way to prove Creationism right for once and for all," says Mr. Lancaster. "When I push this button—"

Here he indicates a large red button labeled "Emergency Proof of Creationism."

"—everything in the universe that is older than ten thousand years
old, and every human who evolved from lower life forms, blows up!"

Iphigenia frowns. "But that’s nobody. You said that people were made by God."

Mr. Lancaster’s eyes dance.

Iphigenia will always remember this moment. When Mr. Lancaster is
very happy his eyes get a marvelous crinkle at the edges. It makes
Iphigenia want to laugh and hug him. And sometimes he will sweep her up
and spin her around, or tell her a wonderful secret, like where the
Apostle Paul is really buried, or race her through the house around and
around and around.

His eyes are crinkly like that now.

"That’s the marvel of it," he says, "The absolute marvel of it! It’s
the world’s deadliest bomb—and it won’t hurt hardly anything!"

"We expect there are a few things that will qualify," explains Mrs.
Lancaster. "Sinister bloodlines descended from lizards, ancient
gyroscopes from alternate timelines, the angels of nations, and so
forth. Exceptions. Nothing the world can’t do without."

Those guys at Powerline would totally push the button.

I was delighted when a commenter found my comment spam fiction worthy of connecting with Rebecca Borgstrom’s (previously unknown to me) spam fiction "The Noise Dreams of Signal." She’s got this Roald Dahl, Donald Barthelme sort of sensibility, with a taroty aftertaste worthy of either or both Crowleys. Reminds me of this story I’m never going to write about a congregation of fundamentalist Christian tarot card users who insist on literal readings of the text. ‘You’re going to die, and you’re going to see four cups, and six wands, and a fool, and a guy hanging upside down …’ Course it turns out that’s just how it goes.) I, for one, welcome our new Snavering Lavelwod overlords. (Say it three times fast.)

The Church of England is currently having a vote about the advisability of ordaining women as bishops. Apparently up to 1000 clergy are thinking about leaving the C of E over this issue. While pondering this grave crisis in the spiritual life of the nation while watching Newsnight last night (it was my turn to take the bins out), I came up with the following theory, which I think has some predictive power.
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What with Tom Cruise and his Scientology-driven antipathy to psychiatric medicine “in the news”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8344309/ recently, it might be worth revisiting an old post about the claims that Scientology makes for its founder, the appalling L. Ron Hubbard.

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While blogosphere triumphalism is one of my least favorite forms of triumphalism, this is pretty neat. Harper’s Magazine wrote a story about Colorado Springs’ large evangelical New Life Church. Colorado Springs blogger Non Prophet wrote about the article, and attracted the attention of both Jeff Sharlet, the author of the article, and Rob Brendle, associate pastor at the Church. Non Prophet ended up interviewing both; he asked Brendle what errors he thought Sharlet had made, then let Sharlet answer those criticisms. It’s an interesting exchange, and one that just wouldn’t have happened a few years ago.

It doesn’t seem to me to be unreasonable to guess that there’s an indirect link between this “NYT story”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/15chaplain.html?hp&ex=1116129600&en=00e6129405ca2b50&ei=5094&partner=homepage on evangelizing Christians making life uncomfortable for non-believers in the armed forces, and the “riots in Afghanistan”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/13/AR2005051300301.html that followed a _Newsweek_ report that a copy of the Koran had been flushed down the toilet by Guantanamo interrogators. Other services than the Air Force have a spotty track record in the area of Christian-Muslim sensitivities; to the best of my knowledge, “General Boykin”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/16/attack/main578471.shtml was never disciplined for the flagrantly offensive comments that he made in 2003.

This is important stuff; as Robert Kaplan “said”:http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200307/kaplan in the _Atlantic_ (sub required) a couple of years ago, the US armed forces are what administer the American imperium, such as it is. Kaplan claimed that this was a good thing, pointing to the positive role that army officers could play, and quoting Winston Churchill’s dictum that the Americans were ‘worthy successors’ to the British Empire. However, the inheritance may run in different directions than those that Kaplan highlighted. What’s happening in Afghanistan is reminiscent of the rebellion of 1858 in India, where false rumours that the British were issuing cartridges smeared with the body fat of cows and pigs were lent credibility by the efforts of Company officers from Britain to evangelize among their troops. There’s no evidence whatsoever that fundamentalist Christians were responsible for any decision to flush Korans down the toilet. Indeed, I suspect that they weren’t; if the _Newsweek_ “story”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7693014/site/newsweek/ bears out, this is more likely to be a general cultural problem in the military than something that can be specifically attributed to a sub-group of officers. But still, an organization’s culture is in part a product of the actions that are tacitly encouraged or discouraged by its leaders. A military establishment in which extremists who believe that Allah is a “false idol” can not only survive, but prosper and reach high military rank, and in which non-Christians can experience systematic bullying and intimidation, is likely to have problems when it not only has to deal with “idol worshippers,” but has to take their beliefs seriously. Certainly, I can’t imagine that interrogators in the US military would ever have flushed a Bible down the toilet to shock a Christian prisoner into cooperation, regardless of whether this was likely to have worked or not.

Update: _Newsweek_ is now “saying”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051500493.html that it erred in its report.

I’d like to draw a little more attention to one of those squares.

(Executive Direcector of Reclaiming America Gary) Cass also presents another small-town activist, Kevin McCoy, with a Salt and Light Award for leading a successful campaign to shut down an anti-bullying program in West Virginia schools. McCoy, a soft-spoken, prematurely gray postal worker, fought to end the program because it taught tolerance for gay people — and thus, in his view, constituted a “thinly disguised effort to promote the homosexual agenda.” “What America needs,” Cass tells the faithful, “is more Kevin McCoys.”

Compare that to evangelical writer Tony Campolo:

Roger was gay; we all knew it, and we all made his life miserable. When we passed him in the hall, we called out his name in an effeminate manner. We made crude gestures, and we made Roger the brunt of cheap jokes. He never took showers with us after gym class, because je knew we’d whip him with our wet towels.

I wasn’t there the day some of the guys dragged Roger into the shower room and shoved him into the corner. Curled up on the floor, he cried and begged for mercy as five guys urinated all over him.

The reports said that Roger went to bed that night as usual, and that sometime around two in the morning, he got up, went down to the basement of his house, and hanged himself.

When I heard about Roger, I realized that I wasn’t a Christian. I was a theologically sound evangelical, believed in all of the points of the Apostles Creed, and had declared Jesus to be my Savior. But I know now that if the Holy Spirit had actually been in me, I would have stood up for Roger. When the guys came to make fun of him, I would have put one arm around Roger’s shoulder, waved the guys off with the other, and told him to leave him alone and not to mess with him because he was my friend.

But I was afraid to be Roger’s friend. I knew that if I stood up for a homosexual, people would say cruel things about me too. So I kept my distance. I had done better, who knows if Roger might be alive today.

I desperately hope that we have more Tony Campolos than Kevin McCoys. Specifically, I desperately hope that there’s more Campolo than McCoy in me.

Some interesting posts at Non Prophet, the Colorado Springs-based blogger who previously revealed that Focus on the Family had distributed Michael Moore’s home address. He’s been writing about Soulforce, a group that protests against the use of religion to condemn gays from a Christian perspective.

Soulforce protestors recently attempted to deliver this letter to Dr. James Dobson at Focus on the Family’s Colorado Springs headquarters. The Reitan family were arrested for trespassing when they entered the premises with the letter (photos here.)

Non Prophet was on the ground to interview the Reitans after they were released. Check it out.

Just by the by, commenters on last week’s Exit, voice, loyalty thread who wanted to be deleted from the baptismal register of their churches may be interested in a 2003 ruling by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. A man contacted the parish priest asking to have his name removed from the baptismal register, saying he had been enrolled in the church against his will and did not want the church to keep any of his personal data.

The priest found no record of the baptism – the man was living in Holland and seems to have had bad information – but suggested that a reasonable solution would in any case be to add a note to the record saying the man no longer wished to be associated with the Catholic church. The Data Protection Commissioner agreed, finding the priest’s suggestion both appropriate and considerate, and noting that the register was a factual statement of an event. Which seems fair enough from the data protection point of view, but probably no consolation to people baptised as Catholics who do not wish to be counted as such.

As to myself, I figure I’m better off inside the tent, pissing in. I did perform an act of protest, though. The day after Benedict XVI’s election as pope, I took out my shortest skirt, pulled on my highest heeled FMBs, and flounced the mile and half to work. It was one just as (in)effective as anything else I could think of and made road-crossing surprisingly easy.

From a WP story “about the conclave”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6132-2005Apr20.html:

bq. Although the cardinals swore an oath of perpetual secrecy about what occurred in the conclave, many began to talk about it on Wednesday.

I know it’s impossible to properly conceive of eternity within the finitute of the human mind, but you’d think the Cardinals might have done better than “about 24 hours after the Conclave.” Still, the article is worth a read for its glimpse of the politics of the Church at its highest levels.

It’s a well-known fact that new Popes are always in need of advice. For instance, the late Pope John Paul II could have saved a terrific amount of theological confusion amongst under-twelves if, before his “visit to Ireland”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/04/03/when-the-pope-came-to-ireland/ in 1979, he’d been told to make sure everyone knew that the word “Suffer” in the phrase “Suffer little children to come unto me” actually means “Permit” or “Allow.”

What bit of advice should we give the new Pope, I wonder? On the Biblical side, I’m a fan of “Micah 6:8”:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=micah%206:8;&version=31, myself. (“And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”) But you may have a different ideas.