by VorJack

During the recent discussion of Buddhism, the usual argument that Buddhism is a “philosophy and not a religion” came up. When having this discussion, I think it’s necessary to be clear which type of Buddhism you’re talking about. Think of it this way: if you’re arguing about Christianity, you don’t want to be talking about Universalist Unitarianism while the other person is thinking about the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Consider for example the broad stream of Buddhism usually called (in the west) Pure Lands Buddhism or Amidism. Like most forms of eastern religion, it seems to play well with others, so there are many combinations and permutations. Still, if you take a step back and squint, it looks like Pure Lands Buddhism may be the most popular form of Buddhism in the east.

One of the core concepts of Pure Lands is that a Buddha named Amitabha (there are several other renderings) provides an alternative path to enlightenment. The idea is that this current age, with its temptations and hardships, makes it extremely difficult for the commoner to engage in the meditative pursuits that lead to enlightenment. By exhibiting devotion to Amitabha, the believer may be reborn in the Pure Lands at a future time.

The Buddha Amitabha has created the Pure Lands as a place of peace and repose, where the (literally) born-again believer may be instructed by Bodhisattvas and attain enlightenment with relative ease.

Which, is you squint some more, looks quite a bit like heaven. And Amitabha sounds an awful lot like a messiah figure, with whom we are saved. My understanding is that the various Pure Lands groups occasionally have the same arguments that reformed Protestants do: saved by grace alone or saved by grace through faith?

I’ve also heard that the same arguments take place in certain Hindu sects, where they are known as the “cat school” and the “monkey school.” The cat school says that we are saved by grace alone, like a mother cat yanking up a straying child by the scruff of its neck. The monkey school says that we are saved by grace through faith, like a baby monkey who is lifted by mother, but then must cling on to her back.

I’d just like to echo what I said before: we’re all humans, and all faced with many of the same problems and failings. It shouldn’t be surprising that our religions end up sharing many of the same traits.

by VorJack

So it seems that Anne Rice still loves her some Jesus, but she’s calling it quits with Christianity. She says, “It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.”

Being called “deservedly infamous” by the author of gothic vampire novels and s&m stories must sting a bit.

I doubt she cares, but she’s managed to make folks on both sides a bit huffy. Hemant gets cranky at people who try to distance themselves from Christianity, while still being, you know, Christian. And of course, many Christians are irritated that Anne Rice isn’t acknowledging that there are other types of Christianity that aren’t anti-gay, anti-woman’s equality, and so forth. Has she never heard of the Episcopal Church or the UCC?

Does knowing a writer’s (or director’s, or actor’s, etc) religious belief affect your enjoyment of their work? Will you refuse to buy a book from an author whose beliefs you strongly disagree with?

by VorJack

Over at the Accidental Historian, Geds is starting a series on the Byzantine Empire. Like all good historians, he realizes that to talk about a period of history, he has to go back to well before that period actually began. Back to, say, when the universe cooled enough for protons to form.

Geds splits the difference and goes back to before Constantine, to the appearance of Christianity. In his discussion of religion in the Greco-Roman world, he throws out this:

There was absolutely nothing special about the persecution of Christians.

The Roman authorities saw Christianity as a potentially destabilizing force in exactly the same way it saw criminals and revolutionaries as a destabilizing force. The only reason we’re lead to believe the stories of the Christian martyrs are special is because we have a lot of them.

That reminded me of a quote from a Roman text dated to the early fourth century:

The guilty thief is produced, is interrogated as he deserves; he is tortured, the torturer strikes, his breast is injured, he is hung up … he is beaten with sticks, he is flogged, he runs through the sequence of tortures, and he denies. He is to be punished; he is led to the sword. Then another is produced, innocent, who has a large patronage network with him; well-spoken men are present with him. This one has good fortune; he is absolved. (quoted from The Inheritance of Rome. p.21)

Note the assumptions here. Do you see the casual acceptance of what Chris Wickham calls “judicial violence”? Do you notice the implicit class assumptions?

Does it change your perceptions at all to know that this text was a Greek-Latin primer for school children?

This is the world that early Christianity found itself in.

by VorJack

The newest battle over creationism in the schools may take place in Louisiana. You may remember a small flap over Governor Bobby Jindal’s passage of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, which allowed school boards to approve supplemental material to be added to the science curriculum. Several watchdog groups predicted that it might lead to lawsuits.

The Livingston Parish School Board looks like it may be first in line to test this hypothesis. According to The Advocate:

During the board’s meeting Thursday, several board members expressed an interest in the teaching of creationism, an alternative to the study of the theory of evolution, in Livingston Parish public school classrooms.

[...]

Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

While there is some mention of the ACLU, there is no sign that the board is thinking about the legal ramifications of this. Some of the arguments that were made are just odd, for example:

Martin, noting that discipline of young people is constantly becoming more of a challenge for parents and teachers, agreed: “Maybe it’s time that we look at this.”

I’m guessing that this is the standard “We need to teach them Christianity so they’ll be moral” argument, though it may just be a poorly written section of the article.

by VorJack

I’ve previously made reference to the post A Sociologist Lives Among Christian Fundamentalists: His Conclusions over at Blog on the Way. One of the insights that Jeri mentions is about the damage done to the fundamentalist community by the constant outrage:

These days, even those American Christians who oppose abortion, sexual promiscuity, and homosexuality find the Fundamentalist culture of Outrage to be unacceptable. [...] Indeed, in America’s increasingly pluralistic society where tolerance is now accepted as essential just for domestic peace in the nation, the Fundamentalist habit of Outrage has become increasingly polarizing even among conservatives. More and more, the culture of Outrage resembles ignorance, fanaticism, and even disobedience to God.

That “culture of outrage” is also present in many conservative Christian groups who aren’t technically fundamentalists, and I believe we’re seeing signs that it is causing damage. The constant battle over issues of morality – the Culture Wars – are pushing some people, particularly young people, away from their communities.

That’s basically what I get from books like The Outsider Interviews, which is a follow up to the Barna Survey at the core of the work unChristian. It seems that many in America’s younger generation have a perception that the Christian church is hostile, arrogant and judgmental. Young men and women, both inside and outside the church, feel that the American Evangelical Christian church isn’t … well, isn’t very Christian.

There was a recent post at CNN’s Belief Blog based on a conversation with Jim Wallis that expands on that, Has The Religious Right Lost It’s Children?:

Wallis said the children of ultra-conservative Christians are deserting their parents’ theology in droves. Wallis is the president of Sojourners, a network of progressive Christians.

He says a new generation of Christians are tired of their faith being defined by two issues: fights over abortion and homosexuality.

(As an aside: I’d be a lot happier if this wasn’t coming from Wallis, a man who has been predicting the eminent fall of the Religious Right for over a decade now – usually with very flimsy evidence. Here’s Frederick Clarkson with a rundown.)

My impression is that the younger folks are trying the leave the acrimony behind without leaving their faith. In many cases, I still get the feeling that they accept the party line about homosexuality, women’s equality and abortion, but they’d rather talk quietly about Jesus than shout about the Bible.

by VorJack

Hemant reports that Christopher Hitchens is exhausted as a result of his chemo. But it’s not stopping him from turning in scathing articles like this one: Mel Gibson Isn’t Just an Angry Narcissist. The gist of it is that Gibson’s meltdown is easiest to explain if you simple accept that he’s an anti-Semite and a racist, but no one is seems to be talking about that conclusion.

(I like John Cole’s summary better: “Hitchens may have cancer, but he can still kick Braveheart’s ass.”)

We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.

[...]

Yet I still saw a report the other day about a fan site where the members were just beginning to ask, “What’s with him?” Why is there this reluctance to call something by its right name? It’s not as if Gibson was issuing a cry for help. On the contrary, what he is issuing is the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry—and sexual hypocrisy—that stretches from the Crusades through the Inquisition to the “concordats” between the church and Hitler and Mussolini. Yet he’s still reporting for work. When will Hollywood, and the wider society, finally decide to shun and spurn him utterly, both for what he is and for what he represents?

My guess is that Hitchens thinks that this in another case of the deference shown to religion; many people are unwilling to blame the schismatic sect of Gibson’s father for instilling Gibson with his paranoia, anti-semitism and racism.

But part of me is wondering if this isn’t another case of the “Polanski effect.” Is it maybe that people are unwilling to call out the “genius” behind the Passion of Christ for being a racist, the same way they’re unwilling to just admit that Polanski is a rapist on the run from justice? And if so, why?

by VorJack

This was kicked around a bit in yesterday’s post, but let’s focus on it a bit more.

How should the attendees at Comic Con respond to Westboro Baptist?

Some thoughts: Westboro seems to want two things, publicity and lawsuits. So the best response is to deny them both, while still marginalizing them.

Some folks have had luck just blocking them from the view of their intended victims, but I think most of us would rather be more proactive.

Absurd mockery seems to work, like the way Purdue’s Society of Non-Theists dealt with an annoying campus preacher. That was pure serendipity – he just happened to show up on their annual Pastafarian Preaching day – but it’s hard to take someone seriously when people are dancing around them singing pirate songs.

Any ideas?

by VorJack

Cracked.com has gotten ambitious and published a list of 10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On. And … eh, it’s Cracked.com. Not bad – I’d say he’s usually half right on both sides – but don’t expect anything deep.

For example, they do the classic comparison of theistic villains and Stalin:

Yeah, yeah, I know the Christians are saying that the guy who fights an unjust or needless war is violating God’s law, and thus isn’t a good Christian. Meanwhile, the atheists are saying that Stalin was merely bloodthirsty, separate and apart from his disbelief in a higher power. Both believe, then, that it is a corruption of their belief system that allows unjust slaughter to happen.

The problem is that atheism is not a belief system, and it has no moral dimension. I’m perfectly happy saying that atheists are just as likely to be horrible people as believers. But you can’t corrupt something as simple as atheism: you either hold a belief in a deity or not.

Atheism is clearly no guard against bad behavior, but no one – well, no one sane – has argued that it is.

And some of is is mystifying, for example:

Atheists, even if you reject the idea of God completely and claim to live according only to the cold logic of the physical sciences, you all still live as if the absolute morality of some magical lawgiver were true.

Do what, now?

Sorry, that’s the southern expression of male bafflement. Have I actually claimed to live only by “cold logic”? I’ve got a microwave, I could warm it up. And the idea of dedicating oneself to living within the physical sciences is just … odd. “With the FSM as my witness, I shall always obey the laws of thermodynamics!” … yeah.

But the most painful part is the confusion of categories implied by his statement “absolute morality.” In this, and later paragraphs, he seems to be saying that if you don’t have God, you don’t have a basis for declaring anything morally good or bad. Thousands of years of thought into the matter of morality and ethics just … gone. You need a God or you got nothing.

by VorJack

Victor J. Stenger, author of works like God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, came out with a work last year titled The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason. In it, Stenger apparently has a section on the nonhistoricity of Jesus.

First off, he doesn’t do himself any favors by confusing Philo and Josephus. It looks like a simple mistake of confusing quotes, but someone should have caught it.

But second, is this really the battle we want to be fighting?

I know I’m suspect in this discussion, because I’ve stated that I do not accept mythicism. But I think it should be pointed out that even the most scholarly of the mythicists – Robert Price and Richard Carrier – acknowledge that it’s a very complex argument.

For example, Carrier has pointed out that a lot of the arguments from previous generations of mythicists have been really bad. Pointing to parallels between the Gospel stories and other myths in the Greco-Roman world doesn’t cut it. You need to explain why the biblical authors were adapting those stories. Carrier has argued that you really need a solid grasp of Jewish writings and other ancient literature before you can understand what was going on.

Lacking that knowledge, the mythicist argument is going to be counter-intuitive and, therefor, a hard sell.

In contrast, what do we gain from making the mythicist argument? If nothing else, it should be noted that even to mythicists, Paul and the authors of the Gospels did believe in Jesus – just a semi-divine Jesus who wasn’t present on earth. If we could, through masterful debate and sound reason, push believers back to that point, we still haven’t really gained anything for atheism.

I’m not going to argue against mythicism here, but I will argue that mythicism should not become a plank in the New Atheist platform. It is a difficult argument that stands to gain us very little.