Author Archive for Vince
Yesterday, we posted Peter Harrison’s accounting of events in the Dawkins Drama and did so because it was falsifiable and depended on witness corroboration.
It’s not been falsified but has been corroborated here and in much greater volume on Pharyngula.
It’s safe to say Peter’s outline of the events is accurate.
We also know by Dawkins’ own words in his Outrage response and via PZ’s account that he, Richard, did not want the forum to continue as was, was involved in the decision process, and holds Josh Timonen in as much esteem as when he dedicated a book to him.
(That’s Josh on the left, by the way.)
Yesterday I offered three maybes that required more evidence before adjudicating anything—either condemning or vindicating Dawkins.
We can now do some adjudicating.
1. Maybe Josh Timonen lied about Dawkins being fully informed and involved in the decision. As outlined above Dawkins himself says this is not so.
2. Maybe Peter Harrison made up the entire content of his blog post. As outlined above, it defies the evidence to believe this (and was never tenable in the first place).
3. Maybe Dawkins wasn’t duped at all and approves of how everything was handled. This one’s still possible; there is no hard evidence to demonstrate the tech guy Dawkins so values has duped him.
Of course it’s also possible that Josh Timonen systematically deceived Dawkins about how the decisions were being carried out and how the forum’s staff and members were treated and that Dawkins is responding to an imaginary outrage fabricated for nefarious purposes.
It’s also entirely possible that the truth continues to exist between the extremes of Dawkins’ entirely approving the deceptions and being victim to them.
So the drama now revolves around what Dawkins knew and when he knew it.
There’s no need to reproduce the facts of the case here. It’s being vetted widely on the net, including another post from Peter Harrison that declares his belief that Dawkins knows little or knew it late, that he’s a victim.
It betrays the sort of hero worship for Dawkins that I mentioned yesterday. It’s impossible to vindicate Dawkins right now, just as it’s impossible to condemn him right now.
The only facts we know are that Josh Timonen has acted less than honestly on behalf of the Richard Dawkins Foundation and that Dawkins publicly supports Timonen. Pledging support to Timonen does not imply knowledge of all Timonen did nor does it imply lack of that knowledge.
Still, Peter goes on to explain (I can’t say defend) his belief that Dawkins is duped and that Josh Timonen is something akin to JR Ewing in cunning capacity.
It seems that Josh and Andrew not only lied to the public by shifting blame onto members and mods while deleting the evidence, but it seems they have worked hard to cover up their mess from Dawkins too.
He concludes with the rational urging “to be calm, and not too quick to attack Richard Dawkins when there isn’t any evidence that he was behind such heavy-handed and dishonest behaviour.”
I would urge that rational people would also be calm and not too quick to victimize Richard Dawkins when there is plenty of evidence that he trusts, values, and publicly supports the people you’re accusing of victimizing him.
Until Dawkins answers the evidence (or refuses to answer it) there is no ground to adjudicate what he knew and when he knew it.
“Active deceiver or entirely deceived” is a false disjunction right now and villainizing anybody to defend either side is not rational. Neither side can be rationally defended. There is only emotion, hope, and belief. Those are the things of hero worship.
The drama continues.
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All posts in this series:
- What Did Dawkins Know and When Did He Know It?
There’s a Jesus legend in Mark 9 in which John tells Jesus that the disciples had stopped a man from driving out demons in Jesus’ name because that man was not one of them. Jesus tells them not to stop people like that because “whoever is not against us is for us.”
Mark me down as agreeing with Jesus.
Anybody that doesn’t reject the Jesus myths is guilty of empowering the Jesus myths, especially in the Cultic American Culture.
When Ann Coulter suggests invading foreign countries, murdering their leaders, and foisting Christianity upon the citizenry, it does no more to discourage Jesus myths than do the apparently benevolent church ladies that run the local Christian daycare.
Both feed the Cultic American Culture by appealing to various stripes of Christians and by fueling the unquenchable fire of intraChristian debates about true and proper faith.
The assumption when Christians get together is that Jesus is real. It doesn’t matter if they’re getting together to worship or to argue. It doesn’t matter if they’re the most liberal or the most fundamental. The question among Christians is not whether Jesus is. It can’t be; they agree on that. The question among Christians is what Jesus is.
No matter how much they disagree, no matter how much vitriol they spew, no matter how much they insist their Jesus is the Jesus, they’re still insisting on Jesus.
That’s a fundamentally important distinction. It’s a distinction that makes aligning with Christians against other Christians self defeating.
When we align with Christians we’re entering the what Jesus is argument and participating in that argument is a tacit yes to the more important question whether Jesus is.
Do I really “agree with Jesus”? Of course not. I’m not adducing Mark 9 as something to be believed and our lives ordered around. I’m mocking the whole idea of demon possession, exorcism, and Jesus.
It’s called being facetious. I can do it here where my intentions are obvious, but I wouldn’t seriously invoke Jesus (or any bible verse) to support or condemn anything.
That would be raising my incidental agreement with a single biblical verse to the approbation of Christianity itself. Aligning with Christians, even if our agreement seems more than incidental, makes the same approbation.
Tomorrow: The Cultic American Cultural Residuum – Subscribe now.
Apparently, there’s a lot of intraweb drama surrounding the suddenly defunct Richard Dawkins Forum.
Peter Harrison, a now former member of the moderation team, posted an account of it.
Most of the blame is being heaped on Josh Timonen, the site’s creator, designer, and administrator. Aside from alleging several shocking actions Josh took to squelch criticism and disagreement, Peter posted a letter from Josh to the moderators.
Here’s an excerpt with emphasis added.
This announcement does not require a response, but we wanted you to be aware. Please do not email Richard with complaints, we have discussed this transition thoroughly with him, and he is currently on tour in Australia and New Zealand. Please do not attempt to inflame the users, start any petitions, or “relocate” groups of users to a separate forum. Do not use any of the data held by the foundation (such as email addresses) through the control panel to cause any trouble. Any behavior of this kind will not be tolerated. We don’t expect you to do these things, but we say all of this only to discourage any well-intentioned moves that would only frustrate the situation.
What interests me is the effort so many atheists (in the comments of Peter’s blog post and elsewhere) are making to ignore Timonen’s bolded words and divorce Dawkins entirely from the situation.
Yes, it’s rational to withhold judgment until all evidence is gathered and Dawkins certainly deserves the opportunity to speak and to respond to charges of inappropriate behavior done in his name and with claims of his approval.
Obviously the atheists rushing to condemn Dawkins, threatening to publicly call him out, and promising to cease donations to his foundation are irrationally and emotionally overreacting.
But rationally withholding judgment until the evidence is complete meansjust that. It’s no less irrational to effectively call Josh Timonen a liar or Peter Harrison a slanderer in the effort to defend Dawkins before hearing all the evidence.
It’s the latter irrationality—condemning Timonen or Harrison—that interests me because I’ve said before and I’ll say again that hero worship is not becoming an atheist and that I see too much of it surrounding Dawkins and (to lesser extents) Sam Harris and Chris Hitchens.
Maybe Josh Timonen lied about Dawkins being fully informed and involved in the decision.
Maybe Peter Harrison made up the entire content of his blog post. (But I doubt it since he provided both written records and details that could be refuted by many witnesses.)
Maybe Dawkins wasn’t duped at all and approves of how everything was handled.
Or maybe the truth lies somewhere amid all of those extremities?
The point is that Dawkins cannot be defended at this point without irrationally condemning somebody else. To call one of the other men a liar because we can’t or won’t imagine that Dawkins is involved in the drama is irrational to the point of slander.
If, until, and when Dawkins does respond to the situation, the conversations around this particular internet drama will tell us a lot about atheist free thought over and against mere atheist hero worship.
Regardless, there’s a certain unfortunate irony that a forum bearing Richard Dawkins’ name which evolved into a complicated and spectacular entity is now threatened with extinction because an intelligently designed forum has been created to replace it.”
Somewhat coincidentally, there was a post on the atheist reddit yesterday claiming, “Not all Christians/churches are horrible.” It seems to be the contrapositive to my claim yesterday that all Christianity is Self Projection as God and we need to treat it that way.
The redditor had been to a funeral officiated by an openly gay Presbyterian minister that used the homily as occasion to discuss the “ignorant Christians” that ignore science and believe Genesis 1.
Here is the full comment. You can read it with the responses if you like.
I wanted to share this because I found that it gave me some hope.
I attended a funeral this past weekend and the service was held at a Presbyterian church. I always feel super awkward in church and even more so when hymns are sung and people are praying.
But I was pleasantly surprised to realize that one of the two pastors there was openly gay, and during, I guess you could call it a short sermon, he spoke about how he felt bad for ignorant Christians who ignore all the different aspects of science, aren’t aware of the big bang and believe that God actually made the universe in 6 days.
Now, you can still nitpick all the different angles here, but c’mon, they’re not doing half-bad.
I can’t help but wonder if he also rejected life after death on scientific grounds or talked about the deceased being with Jesus. Regardless, that would be nitpicking angles.
I’m not going to nitpick different angles, I’m going to reject outright the idea that atheists should find hope in any form of Christianity or in any particular SPAG.
Is that pastor more tolerable than Fred Phelps? Almost certainly. On a human-to-human, who’d-you-wanna-have-a-beer-with basis, there’s no doubt who all of us would prefer bending our elbows.
But, iss he more tolerant than Fred Phelps? No, he’s only tolerant of different things. He rejects Phelps on Christian grounds, just like Phelps rejects him on Christian grounds.
The two are using the same bible to argue that Jesus loves and wants to ordain homosexuals on the one hand and hates and wants to burn homosexuals on the other?
Who’s wrong? They both are.
Whether “all Christians are horrible” isn’t the question. Nor is whether some Christians are more palatable than others or whether some Christians are more sophisticated, informed, or thoughtful than others.
The correct question is whether Christianity is ever valid and the answer is no.
How particular Christians or their SPAGs affect us is irrelevant. They are all Self Projecting as God and using the bible to support their claims and to condemn others that disagree with them.
Just to make the point, ordination of practicing homosexuals is currently forbidden in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and (as of October 2009) fifty three percent of its members and fifty nine percent of its elders oppose changing that practice.
They have the mishomonistic bible to back them up. (As an aside, mishomonistic Presbyterians are no doubt nicer and fuzzier than Phelps, so do we approve their mishomonistiic gods more than his?)
The pastor in question apparently pities those “ignorant Christians” too, so much that he also SPAGs away the bible verses about being in submission to his elders and authorities and claims an illegal ordination.
See how that works? He looks down on the Christians that believe the parts of the bible he rejects. He knows best and will SPAG all over any Christian (or atheist, no doubt) that disagrees.
Don’t miss the point. It’s not to join mishomonistic Christians to condemn homosexuals and it’s not to pick on this one pastor.
The point is that no matter how superficially enlightened, all Christianity reduces to the same rank pride because all Christianity is Self Projection as God.
As one redditor aptly commented, “In other words.. you enjoyed the religious people as long as they werent talking about god, religion or theology. think about that.”
When a particular SPAG abhors us, the issue is with he S(elf) in SPAG, not the G(od). The G is always a reflection of the S—duh, it’s Self Projection as God.
When we confuse the S’s and G’s, we’re implicitly approving certain SPAGs because others might be more offensive, confusing, or irritating to us.
When we do that, aren’t we picking and choosing gods just like the Christians? Aren’t we really SPAGging?
I guarantee that there are proof texts and rationalizations for the gods we “get” and for the ones we don’t. Does that mean the gods we get are any more valid than the ones we don’t?
Of course it doesn’t. And in practice the Christians that SPAG the gods we get are no more or less Christian than Christians that SPAG the gods we detest.
All Christianity is Self Projection as God and we need to treat it that way.
When we don’t, when we fail to reject equally all SPAGs—from Fred Phelps’ god to the apparently benevolent, science-believing gay pastor’s god—we both enable SPAGging and accommodate the cultural misnomer that atheism is just another religion.
Tomorrow: Agreeing With Jesus: Christians Cannot Be Our Allies – Subscribe now.
I got a question and dug into the Pastors’ Dirty Tricks File to answer it:
Question: One of the things I’m slowly realizing is that every pastor I ever had knew of the mythology of scripture. (I know not every pastor went to seminary, but all of mine did.) To a small or great degree, they all fibbed to me about its historical rigor. None of them thought I was ready for the truth. Or perhaps they didn’t think I needed to know it as far as they were concerned.
Vince, what keeps these guys going? Just the knowledge that there will be a ready market for their services once they graduate?
Answer: I don’t think that most of them consider it fibbing but as a sort of gnostic superiority—most of them deceive themselves before setting out to deceive others.
From the gamut of fundamentalists that hear directly from god through the erudite fundamentalists schooled in theology, church history and the original [sic] languages and all the way to the most liberal that understand historical and textual criticisms and the bible’s mythology, the effect is identical.
They understand things you common pew sitters don’t.
What keeps them going? I dunno, but based on the people I knew in both seminary and ministry (from mainline to the most orthodox reformed) I sort of suspect that the personal needs religion fills for all religious people are amplified among those that pursue professional christianity.
That need is filled and fueled by the gnostic superiority. They meet the needs they have as Christians by fibbing (however they do it) to you.
Most Christians reject Calvinism and its sovereign god. The more sovereign the god, the more the rejection becomes repulsion.
Even most American Calvinists reject anything too tyrannical and SPAG a god that looks more like the Cultic American Culture’s god than an arbitrary despot:
Yes god is sovereign, but he doesn’t really condemn anybody. Sure god elects people for salvation, but he loves everybody. Of course, salvation depends on god and not man [sic – Calvinists don’t normally say humans], but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a sincere and free offer of the gospel for everyone.
They’re the sort of Calvinist you find in a conservative mainstream Presbyterian denominations like the Presbyterian Church in America happily cavorting with their colleagues from the liberal mainstream Presbyterian Church (USA) and all the other Christian sects in the local ministerial association, hospital chaplain ministries, or church women united.
When I was a Christian, I called them “Tolerant Calvinists” because they “tolerated a false gospel” instead of anathematizing it. (Sometimes I still shake my head at my Christian self—tolerant Calvinists, sheesh.)
Of course, they called me a “hyper-Calvinist” because I did anathematize the “false gospel” and SPAGged a god of divine capricious whim:
Yes god is sovereign, so he condemns whom he wants. Sure god elects people for salvation and hates those he doesn’t. Of course salvation depends on god and not man [sic – I didn’t normally say humans], so there is no free offer of the gospel.
I suppose I can see why that god is upsetting to a lot of people, which is exactly what we need to be wary of. When atheists prefer on god to another (as opposed to one Christian to another), we’re on the dangerous ground of implicitly validating one gods over another.
We cannot pretend that any SPAG god is more legitimate than any other because it happens to be the god we’d SPAG sans our rational faculties.
My Christian pride was wrapped up in a peculiar understanding of how god and salvation work and so is every other Christian’s. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pride over being chosen or pride over choosing.
That’s why if we condemn one god in favor of another, even implicitly, the favored god’s Christian hears approval.
It’s the flip side of yesterday’s post. While Christians can rightly call insisting on a heinous biblical description of god “atheist spagging”, rejecting
All Christianity is Self Projection as God
The Tolerant Calvinists and I each had our proof texts. We agreed on many (those that support the so-called “Five Points of Calvinism”) and agreed to dismiss many (those that contradict the so-called “Five Points of Calvinism”).
We also conflict on the verses supporting “ands” against the verses supporting “buts” as the extension of those points.
Among the Calvinist stripe of Christian, aligning luminaries to your cause is important and we both had Calvinist luminaries that agreed with us. (We equally claimed Calvin himself because he said both the “ands” and the “buts”.)
If you think the god I SPAGged is abhorrent, you’re giving too much validity to the god concept. The fact is that you can’t understand why someone would create that god—and that you probably wouldn’t like me.
That’s fine. I’m still going to go right to sleep tonight.
I’ve met atheists that are irrational, needy, emotional twits. I’m sure they’d SPAG gods that are irrational, needy, emotional twits that just can’t help but love everybody. If I think the god they’d SPAG is pathetic, I’m giving too much validity to the god concept. The fact is that I don’t really like them.
That’s fine. I hope they still go right to sleep tonight.
The thing is whether I care much for them, I need to understand that a god I’d SPAG is just as ridiculous and just as objectionable as a god they’d SPAG. And whether they care much for me, they need to understand that a god they’d SPAG is just as ridiculous and just as objectionable mine.
When we fail to do that, it’s an implicit approval of some particular god as more valid than another. That’s nonsense. Whether it’s rank Calvinist Fundamentalism, rank Arminian Fundamentalism, or a more moderate version of either, all Christianity is Self Projection as God and we need to treat it that way.
When we don’t we enable SPAGging and accommodate the Cultic American Culture’s misnomer that atheism is just another religion.
“I think Calvinists must be real assholes,” is an acceptable opinion. “The Calvinist god is worse than the Arminian god,” is not.
Tomorrow: Avoiding the Bane of Religious Atheism – Subscribe now
If you’re a deconverted Catholic and never officially renounced your church membership, that kook in the funny hat is still counting you as a minion.
I understand if you don’t care, but if you do, here’s a video from ZJ explaining how to get your name off the rolls.
Whether you were a Catholic or not, be sure to read ZJ’s defection letter and the obnoxious and condescending response from Cardinal Francis George.
Related Posts:
God Is the Bastion for Bigotry – ZJ on Maine’s mishomony
Ash Wednesday, Demonic Doctrines, and Self Projection as God
Bonus Post: Calling Bullshit on the Catholic Church
Bonus Commentary – Bob Spitzer, Dishonest Priest
Posts mentioning the Catholic Church
We’re working on the theme issues and will be back to normal soon.
Content’s all here.
As hard as it is to believe, Christians sometimes rebut the that all Christianity is Self Projection as God by declaring, “Well Atheists SPAG, too!”
It’s hard to understand exactly what they mean.
Rejecting god belief and self projecting god belief seem to be mutually exclusive acts. Choosing which parts of the bible to believe and ascribing those parts as the premises that define God seems to preclude rejecting the entire bible as a book of mythology and declaring that there is no such God.
Still, they say it; so let’s try to understand what they do mean.
When a Christian says “The bible says X,” there is always a contrary or contradictory “The bible also says.”
To the rational mind that demonstrates the bible’s unreliability and ultimately its god’s nonexistence. To the Christian mind it demonstrates a superior personal understanding of God and a peculiar insight into his revelation.
That’s why Christians argue amongst themselves about what the bible really means and atheists don’t.
We know that it doesn’t mean anything because it’s archaic and antediluvian mythology. Same basic reason we don’t argue about Thor comics.
But Christians think the bible does mean something. They think it’s a peculiar revelation of ethic and meaning. (That’s a fair broad brushing of Christians from Fred Phelps to Howard Teeple.) And they think they understand that ethic and meaning better than other Christians.
So they argue with each other about it and they imagine that debates with atheists are framed by the same parameters as those arguments: disagreements about what the bible means or what God is really like.
The result is predictable.
When an atheist offers a biblical counterexample to the Christian’s beliefs, it’s to demonstrate the Christian’s entire belief system is invalid, but that point is lost on the Christian who thinks the debate is over what the bible really means and what God is really like.
So he concludes that the atheist is promulgating a particular concept of God as true and valid and charges: “Well, Atheists SPAG too!”
An extreme example of this, but one that makes the point, is a Christian that told me it’s impossible to talk about God without SPAGging.
He was right because he was talking about Captial-G-God, a particular diety he believes to exist. But atheists aren’t talking about God; we’re talking about small-g-god, which is only a concept in the minds of Christians.
At least we should be.
We don’t argue with each other about what the bible really means because we know it’s bullshit. That’s exactly why we need to resist arguing with Christians about Capital-G-God.
When we do, Christians can accuse us of SPAGging and we might just be culpable.
The Straw God Fallacy
It’s tempting to pick and choose the bible’s most heinous descriptions of god and define them as God or to select the bible’s most offensive ethics and its most atrocious instructions and define them as God’s.
That’s the Straw God Fallacy aren’t wrong to call it SPAGging. Kicking the stuffing out of a half-stuffed straw god doesn’t compel Christians simply because it’s not compelling.
The bible is certainly replete with monstrous descriptions of god (in both testaments, odious morals, and appalling instructions for living; but it also has some more attractive descriptions of god, some honorable morals, and some reasonable instructions for living.
If the bible was totally dark and devoid of sentimental and appealing content, we’d only have fundamentalists because there’d be nothing for the more sensible Christians to SPAG.
There’s no more logical reason for us to insist on the Straw God than for Christians to insist on their own SPAGs. To say otherwise is to ascribe the bible the authority and validity that Christians claim for it.
It’s to SPAG the God that fits our purpose.
Forcing the Christian to deal with all of the bible and to substantiate why he SPAGs as he does is a valid and effective line of argument, but forcing the Christian to define his God by a god that we’ve constructed is to SPAG.
It’s exactly what Christians expect from other Christians.
Repeating what we said earlier: Choosing which parts of the bible to believe and ascribing those parts as the premises that define God seems to preclude rejecting the entire bible as a book of mythology and declaring that there is no such God.
Our family watched Hancock last night. It was a pretty good movie. I like Will Smith.
During the movie Chloe, who is five, said she wants “to be on TV.” In fact, she wants us to buy a giant screen to watch her. (She described something roughly the size of a drive in theater screen.)
It wasn’t a huge surprise. She’s been creative and artistic with a flair for drama since she’s been alive.
What made me really happy is that she’s defined a dream.
Will it last? I dunno; she’s five. I do know that it won’t falter because of lack of encouragement.
In fact, Rebekah, who’s seven hustled Chloe to her room where she read to her from Women in Profile: Entrepreneurs about Mary Pickford then helped her create and act out a play for the rest of us (they didn’t finish watching Hancock).
Yep; I’m sort of bragging about them, but I couldn’t do that if I’d not deconverted. I’d have to brag about how they were becoming “godly women” or some such bullshit.
It occurred to me that if we’d continued in Christianity our beliefs wouldn’t have allowed for a child to dream of such sordid things as acting careers, especially daughters.
Hell, we wouldn’t even have been watching Hancock.
Rebekah has that Women in Profile edition because she aspires to artistry and entrepreneurship. That wouldn’t be acceptable, either.
That’s what Christianity does. It squelches personality and personhood. The more devout you become, the more your personhood needs squelching.
The good news is that squelching personality and children was never really part of my beliefs. Happily, personhood has long been a core part of being and somehow buoyed me along through Christianity until I was willing to swim out of the cesspool myself.
That’s in part because I never yielded my personhood to a religious twit and in part because I had a couple of daughters. How could I raise daughters to believe the bible that marginalizes, dehumanizes, and insults them?
How could I teach Josh to believe those things about his sisters. Or about his mother?
Richard Collins made a couple of great tweets today about raising children apart from indoctrination. Here is one and this is another.
Take a look at them and think about following him.
Sir Elton John knows what Jesus wants. . . and wanted.
Like every other Christian, Sir Elton seems to have a peculiar understanding of Christianity and its message. He also believes Jesus was gay.
In his interview with Parade magazine this week, John said:
“I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East — you’re as good as dead.”
That’s about as SPAGgy as it gets.
Bill Donohue said it was calling Jesus “a sexual deviant,” one of the countless dehumanizing perjoratives that Christians hang upon gay people.
It’s sure to get worse.
What I don’t understand is the motivation gay Christians have to extricate Jesus from the pervasive Christian mishomony.
Related Post: Does Jesus Condemn Homosexuals?
Josh is almost nine and he loves science. But he hates science class.
He has a laboratory set up in the basement where he does experiments and learns the scientific method and scientific principles. He likes to talk about evolution and he reads books on scientific topics that fascinate him.
But he doesn’t even want to talk about science class and isn’t really sure what purpose it serves. The kids sit there reading along in their books while the teacher plays a CD that reads the chapter to them.
Yep, that’s science class and he hates it.
Do you blame him?
Lately the CD is droning about fossils and Josh wonders why it doesn’t talk about evolution or anything “interesting” when there’s so much that is so fascinating.
That’s a good question.
When I think back to my own experiences in junior high and high school science—I don’t remember elementary science much, which is probably telling—I don’t remember being fascinated. I do remember memorizing taxonomic tables.
I remember that even the “experiments” weren’t really experiments. They were prescribed, step-by-step activities. Hypothesis, method, and discovery didn’t exist, which pretty much precluded fascination.
It was an extension of education’s listen-and-follow-the-instructions-to-gain-approval model.
Why is there so little fascination when there’s so much that is so fascinating?
I think I know the answer. Science is a victim of the American public education that is designed to discourage thinking and creativity: Memorize what I tell you, repeat it back to me, and move on the bell.
Eat when you’re told. Face the front.
Stay in line. Raise your hand to speak.
Ask to pee.
The goal is to turn out cogs that fit into factories, corporations, and government offices, not to turn out people that make change and foster greatness. It’s to produce citizens that are easy to manage and simple to govern. People that don’t ask questions, challenge authority, or dispute the status quo.
If Josh had different parents that didn’t value the things public education squelches and encourage the things it dampens, how long would it be before his disdain for science class became a disdain for science?
Without me, the two things would be identical in his mind, wouldn’t they? As it is, he’s fortunate in that regard and his disdain is correctly for the science teacher.
But what about the other twenty kids in his class? Their sense of wonder and interest in discovery that science fulfills is being quashed and science is being minimized.
Aside from producing an easy-to-manage citizenry, do you know what else that sort of education creates?
Christians.
The Cultic American Culture depends on Americans that don’t know how to think and aren’t interested in learning.
A significant distinction between Christianity and science is that Christianity claims to have capital-T-Truth.
Science, on the other hand, provides an incomplete and constantly improving picture of reality. When science can’t answer a question, it will investigate further. When Christianity can’t answer the same question, it will claim a fairy tale is capital-T-Truth.
Even so, over time and generations, Christians do reject bible belief for knowledge.
Consider that as science answers questions for which religion has always provided mythological answers– Copernican theory, evolution, mental disorder– the religious, sometimes slowly, but always surely, seem to come along.
Even now, the official beliefs of Christian denominations are being altered to match reality. Even the Resurrection itself, is being modified to fit with reality in some quarters.
There will be a time that its as uncommon to find a Christian that believes Creationism in the face of evolutionary science as it is to find one now that believes in a geo-centric universe in the face of Copernican science, or believes in oil annointing in the face of medical science.
Because Christians and scientists agree: Science proves correct in the long run.
The problem is that it won’t matter. When scientists gain a better understanding of reality, they abandon their previous errors. Christians do not.
Christians aren’t giving up belief for reality. They’re perverting reality by subsuming it under the umbrella of belief. They don’t even realize they’re agreeing that science proves correct.
That’s why we have Christians praying while medical science cures people. Instead of having the church elders slather them with oil and pray, they go to doctors. Any fool knows that a geezer with some baby oil isn’t going to cure a disease, but the fools feel better when they add prayer to what will cure the disease.
And when it’s cured, they’ll credit the prayer. It’s the identical mentality that rejects Genesis 1 and 2, but asserts intelligent design in its place.
Religious practice wanes but faith, the big thing, remains. Science and reality are SPAGged into it and until Christians consider their own SPAG and make a conscious decision to give it up, any science can be SPAGged.
It’s Ash Wednesday and that’s good news for fish purveyors.
Today and each Friday until Easter most Catholics are forbidden to eat meat because the Catholic Church imposes comical, if not quite strident, demands upon its members.
To sum up those requirements, Catholics between the ages of 18 and 59 are obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. In addition, all Catholics 14 years old and older must abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all the Fridays of Lent.
That’s from American Catholic.org.
Here’s a bit more about those requirements.
According to Father John Huels in The Pastoral Companion (Franciscan Herald Press), abstinence does not include meat juices and liquid foods made from meat. Thus, such foods as chicken broth, consommé, soups cooked or flavored with meat, meat gravies or sauces, as well as seasonings or condiments made from animal fat are not forbidden. So it is permissible to use margarine and lard.
So, I can have some mashed potatoes with beef gravy as a side to my fish. I can make gravy from the drippings from the beef roast that my 13-year old is allowed to eat.
Nice. Too bad I can’t get some bacon, though.
Oh, wait.
Huels states that even bacon drippings which contain little bits of meat may be poured over lettuce as seasoning. And Huels notes that no one considers gelatin or Jell-O to be meat.
Cool. So now I can have tuna seared in bacon fat on a salad with bacon ranch dressing, a side of mashed potatoes with beef gravy, and some Jell-O for dessert.
I wonder if most Catholics know what 1 Timothy 4 says about requiring others to abstain from certain meats?
1 Timothy 4:1-3, The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.
I wonder if they care?
Or, maybe the Catholic Church doesn’t really forbid anything at all. They hinted at it when they gave us Jell-O, didn’t they?— no one considers gelatin or Jell-O to be a meat.
What people consider to be meat matters? American Catholic.org says that it’s the deciding factor:
Huels gives a norm long used by moral theologians: If in doubt whether a particular food is considered meat, look to the common estimation of persons in the area. Custom is the best interpreter of the law.
Of course it is—because Christianity is Self Projection as God.
Biblical literalists have a bevy of proof texts to simply reject science as dangerous and ungodly. It’s something to be avoided.
Here are a couple of the verses:
1 Timothy 6:20 from the King James Bible: O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:
Most modern translations more correctly translate the Greek word gnosis as knowledge, but it’s still knowledge opposed to the faith committed to Timothy.
Here it is in the popular NIV: Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge,
In either case the false knowledge endangers one’s faith:
1 Timothy 6:21 (NIV): which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you.
Faith believes what it believes and rejects contrary evidence. That’s what Hebrews 11:1 teaches the literalists:
Hebrews 11:1 (NIV): Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
They have already learned in Hebrews 4:3 that faith is what distinguishes them from the unbelievers that reject the gospel of Jesus:
Hebrews 4:3 (NIV): For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.
And in Hebrews 11:3, they learn it’s the same faith that believes in Jesus and saves them through preaching causes them to believe in creationism:
Hebrews 11:3 (NIV): By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Verses like these insulate the Fundies from correctly defining evolution, much less offering any evidence beyond an antiquated book of immoral foolishness to support their creationism.
They have no need to do either, because simply giving ear to the dangerous scientists jeopardizes faith which is believing in God against all the evidences of science. There’s simply no need to argue or even to listen.
That unthinking literalism actually exalts them in their ignorance and irrationality so they can look down on the learned and be proud of their ignorant and irrational nonsensical beliefs:
1 Corinthians 1:18-21: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
The Bible is a veritable source of proof texts for being proud of one’s own ignorance and unwillingness to be educated.
Remaining ignorant is the key to heaven.
Not Just the Fundies
That wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if the bible was relegated to those for whom it was intended: people without much going for them that have every incentive to believe in a “better” world to come where God will exalt them above the people they envy in this world:
1 Corinthians 1:26-31; 2:7-9: Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. . . No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”
Unfortunately Christianity isn’t relegated to those people. Instead of it being a fairy tale that might attract the lame and the pathetic, people that suck at living life—it’s an indoctrination that otherwise capable people are taught to believe. 
Not only among the Fundies that systematically and rigorously indoctrinate their children from birth, but among the mainstream that indoctrinates its own children through Vacation Bible School, Sunday school, and bible story books.
The methods and severity differ, but the lessons are the same: We believe in the supernatural, not in science.
Talents are squandered and lives are wasted believing mythology. Lives that could escape circumstances of birth are fenced by mythology and hemmed by Christian pride in rejecting knowledge and understanding in favor of invisible fairy tales.
Evolution is only doubted in the minds of ignorant and uneducated Americans that are products of the Cultic American Culture. Unfortunately, according to Trinity College’s study of American “Nones,” that’s a majority:
Over half of Americans flatly reject evolution or regard it as highly unlikely.
An Apology and a Disclaimer
I don’t normally like to interject that many bible quotes into a post and I know that SPAG allows people to accommodate all of those verses to less fundamentalist versions of Christianity.
But this is a case where the fundamentalists hold sway over mainstream America. Beyond the lives wasted on devout and literal Christianity, fundamentalism and creationism influence society.
That means a majority of Americans walking around with high school diplomas (and more than a few bachelor’s degrees) believe that an antediluvian book of mythology is akin to the entire corpus of scientific understanding.
That’s why it’s important to see both the disdain the bible has for knowledge, understanding, and observable reality and how it ties that disdain to faith, salvation, and Jesus.
On the one hand, it’s why the mainstream that never thinks seriously about religion or science but is indoctrinated by the Cultic American Culture is antagonistic to science: It’s contrary to the American god concept.
On the other, it’s why thinking fundamentalists tend to deconvert: All Christian mythology—from creation, to Noah, to Jesus—rises and falls together.
Without the willingness to reject the entire corpus of human knowledge in favor of the bible, Christianity makes no sense.
That’s a lesson American Christians need to learn.
Faith and Belief
The idea that Christianity (American theism) and atheism (rejection of American theism) are symmetric opposites is ubiquitous among American Christians. They’re so indoctrinated into a faith-based culture that they simply cannot differentiate faith and reality.
They cannot distinguish “another belief” (as in, “Atheism is just another belief”) from “lack of belief” because in the Cultic American Culture, belief is all there is.
That’s why we hear the stupidity like “atheists are mad at god”, “atheists are rebelling against god”, or “atheism is just another religion” instead of “atheists have educated and reasoned understandings of the world” and “atheism is the educated and reasoned rejection of religion.”
American Christians can only conceive of the reasoned and informed rejection of Christianity as the opposite of their unreasoned and uninformed belief in Christianity.
Reasoned rejection of a belief is meaningless to them.
Science v. Religion
The idea that Christianity and American theism are symmetric opposites is reflected in the equally mistaken American idea that science and faith are competing explanations of reality and that we must choose whether to have “faith in science” or “faith in God.”
Of course, we don’t argue that science and God are mutually exclusive. We object to the idea of competing explanations and reject the “faith in” nonsense.
The choice is “science” or faith in God.
Anybody reasonably and logically thinking through all the tenets and premises of their Christianity will become either a fundamentalist or an atheist.
Often a fundamentalist then an atheist. Faith pushes us to fundamentalism because the bible is an antiscientific book and reason saves us from it because the bible is an antiscientific book.
Relevant Atheism pushes people between the logical extremes: Atheism or Fundamentalism. There is no middle ground.
From the Pastors’ Dirty Tricks File:
This outstanding comment made me think of a trick pastors use to capitalize on the Cultic American Culture’s groupthink. Because it’s a groupthink trick, it would normally be used from the pulpit.
The trick is simple: Say something true but in such a way that any American Christian will dismiss it out of hand
Here’s an example (from the comment): “Evolutionists think. . . that humans. . . are related to bananas!”
Delivered correctly and said with the proper mix of disdain and disbelief and it’s virtually guaranteed that a congregation of Americans will reach the unanimous bobbleheaded conclusion that believing that is just as ridiculous as the pastor made it sound.
They’ll probably even laugh.
It plays on the American disdain for the idea of being anything other than a special and exalted species and having rights from God that no banana possesses.
It’s an argument from authority. Part of the Cultic American Culture’s indoctrination is to esteem the person in the pulpit. That authority is augmented because being related to a banana just sounds so silly to the uneducated (which is most) Americans that they don’t consider whether it’s true.
And as a groupthink trick, it plays on the American need for acceptance and peer approval that’s met in religion. Questioning whether a ridiculous idea that the entire congregation just laughed at might be true means I might be laughed at.
Thought is curtailed and the questions of God and science are never engaged. The sermon’s content will probably be quickly forgotten, but the indoctrinated rejection of science will linger.
Of course, concerning evolution, I’m something closer to a monkey’s cousin, but that title didn’t have the nice ring to it.
Either way, accepting or rejecting evolutionary science seems to follow believing and disbelieving God concepts.
According to Trinity College’s useful study of religious Nones, thirty-three percent of Nones “definitely” accept evolution and seventy-three percent of them reject that there is “definitely a personal God.”
Among the general population, it’s virtually the opposite: Thirty-six percent of Americans flatly deny human evolution while seventy percent believe there is “definitely a personal God.”
The study “interprets” (its word) those stats to mean “Nones do not put much credence in creationist teachings and prefer to arrive at their beliefs independent of religions.”
I spent a long time deciding whether that wording annoyed me. At best it seemed obvious, if not tautological (the areligious don’t have religious views of evolutionary science). At worst it sounded like an indictment: Nones don’t give a hearing to creationist teaching before concluding.
But to be fair, the study was evenhanded throughout without an obvious bias or agenda beyond statistically categorizing and understanding areligious Americans and the authors’ credentials are more scholarly than evangelical.
Still, I don’t like the conclusion’s wording and would “interpret” the stats to mean “on whole, Americans do not put much credence in science, preferring to believe religious dogmas while the Nones make more reasoned and informed decisions based on evidence.”
I’m not a scientist and I’m not going to play one on the internet, but I know Creationism is ridiculous, that “creation science” is a misnomer, and that religious dogma is the only reason to put any credence in creationist teachings.
I also know that even considering being evolved rankles American Christians—and not just the literalists. I know that because I’ve observed it repeatedly.
Evolution Pisses Off Christians
Christians that deny evolution don’t just reject it. They despise it. It pisses them off. If you meet an American that insists “Humans definitely did not evolve from other life (they’ll probably say apes),” you’ve met an American that’s offended by the very idea.
And there are a lot of them.
I once saw Ron Cammenga, then a minister and now a seminary professor in the Protestant Reformed Churches ask high school and college aged students “where does evolution say you came from?”
Predictably, he didn’t tell them the truth.
Instead, he began acting like an ape then declared in that loud preachery voice, ‘Evolution says you came from the monkeys!”
Yes, that’s an anecdote, but a brief survey of orthodox and fundamental Christian literature will show you that it’s not an anomaly.
Was he lying? I don’t think so—at least not outright. He certainly wasn’t telling the truth, but I think he really believes that’s what evolution is, because he’s the product of generations of inbred denominational indoctrination that arrogantly and cowardly refuses to study the question.
Ron Cammenga acted the ape because he SPAGs a literal bible and biblical literalists know that without Creationism they have nothing. They also know that it’s best to stick to indoctrinating the next generation and preaching to the choir.
Biblical literalists have a bevy of proof texts to simply reject science as dangerous and ungodly. It’s something to be avoided. Those verses insulate them from correctly defining evolution, much less offering any evidence beyond an antiquated book of immoral foolishness to support their creationism. (More on that tomorrow.)
But a third of Americans aren’t biblical literalists; nevertheless they flatly reject evolutionary science and biblical mythology is the only reason to do that.
It’s another point that the mainstream rejects atheism and follows the fundamentalists, preferring to believe rather than to think.
The question germane to relevant atheism is “Why?”
Dignity Is Divine
I think the answer is that we are, in fact, not only the cousins of monkeys, but of slugs and of toads and of moss.
If the Christian parody of evolution pisses them off, reality is all the worse.
The facts run hard against the Cultic American Culture’s ideas of God and of creation. Those ideas are appealing and they’re comfortable; people have heard them from childhood.
God made the heavens and the earth and put man over it. He might not have done it in six literal days, but he did it. Those are self-evident American truths, after all. 
A created human ancestry is palatable. It preserves human dignity. It even has the convenient separating of races in Genesis 11 for the bigots.
The evolved human animal isn’t nearly as flattering as being personally handcrafted by the Creator to rule his creation. And humans, especially American Christian humans, like to be flattered.
Evidence aside, being the deputy of a Divine Sheriff is a pretty cool gig. (Especially when you’ve SPAGged the Sheriff.)
And that’s just how most Americans approach the question: Evidence aside.
That’s why they might reject much of Ron Cammenga’s fundamentalism, but will agree with his simian parody of evolution.
Their rejection isn’t rational. It’s unthinking and it’s visceral.
Americans don’t like the idea of being related to moss. And when we try to explain evolution to them, that’s all they hear.
What Do We Do?
In this post we mentioned this video and Richard Dawkins’ conclusion that “you cannot argue with a mind like [Kurt Wise].”
He’s right about that. But because evolution is a point where the mainstream follows the kooks—we can’t argue with minds like theirs, either, only for different reasons.
Unlike Ron Cammenga or Kurt Wise, mainstream Americans don’t give a damn about a literal bible, but they do give a damn about not being an ape.
So, if we can’t argue with minds like that, what can we do?
Antiscientific America is a problem, a big problem. But probably not one that science can solve. The underlying problem is that the Cultic American Culture has taught Americans that dignity and value are external to themselves and how they live their lives.
I suggest we start by dealing with the ridiculous idea that dignity and meaning are possible if and only if humans are by Divine Design.
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