Reader Mail: Re: QUestion

Kenneth Hynek • 17th Apr 2008 • Religion, Atheism, Religion, Catholicism, Health, History, Religion, Islam, Religion, Philosophy, Reader Mail, Religion
abortion, America, Barack Hussein Obama, Brian Flemming, Democratic Party, Earth, Eugenie Scott, Euthyphro, faith, Genesis, God, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illuminati, Inigo Montoya, Jehovah's Witness, Jerusalem, Jesus, Jews, Kyoto University, logic, Madeline Kara Neumann, Paradise, partial birth abortion, reason, Religion, Republican Party, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, science, Shinya Yamanaka, the Bible, the Church, theodicy, Thomas Henry Huxley, William Provine, Zionism

Joel writes in with some follow-up commentary to my previous reply to him. Once again, because it wanders a little bit over several topics, I’m going to break it up and respond in “interlinear” fashion.

So it took me a little while to figure out why and how our conversation had gone the way it had, and was very off-topic (as far as I was concerned). I believe that you and I have been having very different conversations.

I confess that this is possible, O Reader — very often, persons of opposite opinion wind up talking past each other, as opposed to addressing each other. In fairness, though, I think I have responded directly to everything that Joel has said, chiding him along the way for his refusal to engage — in any substantive way — the subject under discussion.

But if there has in fact been a digression (I confess that I do not detect it), let us see if we can perhaps get the discussion back on the topical “rails.”

A while back, Brian Flemming (a reasonably well known, on the web, atheist) took part in something of a debate on another guys website. The website in question was called something like “Ask a calvinist”.

The owner would have various people of different christian denomenations join him in asking each other 5 questions, and allowing each other to reply.

The guy certainly appeared to know his stuff.

Unfortunately, he was illequipped to debate Brian. Not because Brian was smarter or more informed or anything like that. Brian went in to, more or less, say that God doesn’t exist and Jesus almost certainly never existed (divine or otherwise).

The Calvinist went in to debate nuances of theology.

The two conversations just didn’t have a whole lot of contact in many ways, as you can imagine.

Brian: God doesn’t exist and there’s no reason to believe he does and…
Calvinist: I believe that God’s love is based on…

Anyhow, while our two conversations may not be THAT far apart, I do believe there’s a significant gap.

1. A number of times I’ve said I was speaking specifically about the situation in the U.S.. However, I’ve also said that my views on this extend globally. My only area of personal experience of is in the U.S.. Hence I focus on that.

Reciprocal to what Joel notes above, I have said that I consider the global picture preferentially to the more localized picture, and try to keep my “area of expertise” at a higher level than merely national, because there is no way to accurately comment on religion if one cannot consider the global picture (because Religion in America and religion outside of America are often very different things).

Perhaps this is not fair, and perhaps it is not conducive to a proper flow in conversation. But the fact of the matter remains that if one is going to comment on religion, one cannot simply comment on a local flavour only, and I will not stoop to doing so. I realize, then, that I am placing an expectation on those who write in, but equally I do not apologize for doing so — if we cannot respond to a call to challenge and better ourselves on a daily basis, we are not really living, are we?

2. While you see a distinction between various sects of christianity, as an atheist I simply don’t see those as significant. Honestly, the difference in theology between almost any two religions is virtually meaningless to me. I don’t see a massive difference, in many ways, between the basis for christianity and the basis for scientology (I see scientology as rather repugnant in that it is determined to scam as much money out of the pockets of its followers as possible. I can say many bad things about many christian churches etc., but credit where credit is due, they are all trying to give away salvation for free). All I care about is how those theologies then interact with the rest of the world. You may say that Islam is a much bigger problem, but any religion, it seems, can be easily twisted into violence. Islam is a problem with that today. The crusades and
inquisition used christianity. Oh, and at least in the U.S., it wasn’t that long ago that christianity was being used as a justification of violence against doctors.

One observes that while one or two rogue fools decided to take it upon themselves, ostensibly in the name of their Christian faith, to hunt down abortion doctors, the vast majority of Christians in America (and elsewhere) — even the ones who were themselves vocally pro-life — spoke out against the killings. Not that I expect this to matter to Joel, who seems interested only in painting with an extremely wide brush, but to any rational person it should come as a significant point. Yes, people have attempted to use religion as an excuse for their hatreds and particular evils in the past, and people likely will continue to do so. That doesn’t prove anything about the truth or validity of the religion as a whole; it merely demonstrates, in keeping with what the Bible observes in many places, that religious people are sinners too.

Not exactly the most shocking revelation, that.

But more importantly, Joel’s refusal to see a distinction between different Christian denominations — or, indeed, between Christian and non-Christian religions (!!) — is foolhardy, and I would even venture that it renders most of what else he has to say virtually meaningless. There is no logic or reason in the statement at all.

“While you see a distinction between various sports, as an non-sports fan I simply don’t see those as significant. Honestly, the difference in rules and methods between almost any two sports is virtually meaningless to me. I don’t see a massive difference, in many ways, between playing golf and playing football…”

Reasonable? No. Rational? No. Logical? No. Relevant? No. Indeed, were someone to come up to us and say that to our face, we’d laugh them out of the sports bar (and rightly so). Perhaps the Reader will think me heartless, but I am of no particular mind to let Joel slide simply because he is discussing religions instead of sports. The fact that he cannot engage the debate over religion in so basic a way as to acnknowledge the differences between religions and denominations thereof smacks of a kind a lazy arrogance. And yes, I realize that once again I am placing an expectation on those who write in, and again I do not apologize for doing so — again: if we cannot respond to a call to challenge and better ourselves on a daily basis, we are not really living, are we?

I submit to Joel that if he is not willing to engage the discussion at a sufficient level of academic honesty as to demonstrate even a basic ability to differentiate between different religions and denominations thereof (especially since I am willing to differentiate between “strains” of atheism — i.e. Richard Dawkins‘ atheism as compared to that of Sam Harris), he should not engage in the discussion at all.

Quite frankly, his refusal to engage steeps all his statements in a fundamental illogic and a willful falsehood.

3. While you may believe that the control christianity exerts in the U.S. is not, as I believe you put it, sinister, I beg to differ.

Every atheist does, don’t they, O Reader? And yet most atheists laugh it off when someone points to the rather disproportionate tendency of the ACLU to go after Christians. A curious double standard, no?

I have no idea what it is like in Canada, but the ‘christian right’ in the U.S. exerts a disproportionate amount of power and is very interested in breaking down walls between church and state. How do I
know this? Because their leaders come out and say it.

I observe, as I am sure the Reader has likewise done, that no supporting links accompany this assertion Joel has made. Curious.

That’s not to say that I’m giving the “Christian right” a pass; I too can think of a few glaring errors. But then, I can think of some rather shocking stuff that high-profile atheists have also said. And while Sam Harris is not a politician, and does not hold office in the U.S., his assertions that disagreeable elements in society (including believers, most likely) should be dealt with by way of deadly force, if that is what is necessary to bring about his desired “end of faith,” is far more concerning than any pronouncement I can think of that Bush et. al. have made in recent memory.

How do I know they have so much power? Because one of our two political parties panders to them endlessly. The other party just sucks up to them some.

I agree with this statement, O Reader. Mind you, pace Inigo Montoya, I do not think this statement means what Joel thinks it means. After all, if we examine the current contenders for the next presidential election in the U.S., we observe that it is the two Democratic Party candidates — Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton — who have been playing the faith card really heavily. On the Republican Party side, the only remaining candidate is the candidate who has discussed his faith the least, winning the party nomination over an ardent Mormon and a former Baptist minister!

Indeed, looking at the track record of recent Republican governments, I see no real evidence of pandering to religious sentiments, with the one notable exception being the opposition of the Bush government to embryonic stem cell research. But then, embryonic stem cell research has, after a decade, shown no real promise, while Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University has demonstrated that skin cells can be modified into any other type of cell, thus providing a technique to achieve what stem cell research supposedly promises to achieve, but without the need to destroy fertilized embryos.

On most other issues I can think of — torture of prisoners and abortion are easy examples — the American government hasn’t done anything in particular to pander to Christian sentiment (unless one counts the banning of the partial birth abortion method as a major concession to Christian demands, which would be foolish to say given that nothing was done to diminish the number of abortion providers or, indeed, the number of abortions performed). This blogger keeps a pretty comprehensive list of examples.

I swear, my maxim about Rome and Caesar gets a little bit more accurate every day. Muslims see Jewish conspiracies around every corner. Atheists obssess over the looming Christian theocracy that never seems to materialize, but is always So! Very! Close! And yet the examples always seem so…trivial.

It is an era that many of these groups come out and say is a time for christianity to take over the government and make gods kingdom here in the U.S..

All I can really say to this, O Reader, is…”meh.” “Meh,” because even if some nuts-for-brains Evangelical gets into office and takes it upon himself to try and build the New Jerusalem on American soil, he will fail, as surely as the Romans failed to rebuild the Temple. Every human scheme to prematurely usher in Paradise on Earth, whether headed up by evangelical Christians or secular utopian socialists will fail, as surely as such schemes have failed in the past.

And that’s assuming that such a person ever takes office in the first place. Ralph Nader has a better chance of winning a two-term presidency than does any sufficiently misguided Christian have of carrying out any sort of utopian enterprise. And to act in almost paranoid fashion in response to the misguided musings of a minority of American evangelical Christians is…well…paranoid. Irrational. Delusional, even…as surely as all the conspiracy theories surrounding Zionism or the Illuminati are delusional.

That, my friend, is the country I live in and the battle we fight.

Indeed, O Reader…open war has been declared in the streets of America.

These groups truly do try to subvert the will of the American people and they truly do not care what the Constitution says (not that our current administration seems to care much about that either…).

Nor do many atheists, O Reader.

I mentioned before the example of Cartese, which was the online handle of another atheist in the service of the American military, who openly advocated for the government to step in and declare all religious people mentally incompetent and unfit to own property/drive cars/vote. Whither the Constitution? Other atheists lobby for a complete removal of all Christian symbols from the public eye — not just on governmental buildings and the dollar bill, but on private property as well. Whither the Constitution then? A court in the U.S. just compelled a private business owner, a Christian photographer, to pay restitution to a client she refused to do business with (the client in question was a lesbian seeking a photographer for her “wedding”). Whither the Constitution? Sam Harris is on record as saying that unwelcome elements in a new, faithless society might have to be dealt with via the use of deadly force. Whither the Constitution?

More importantly, in all examples: whither the will of the individuals affected? Does will even matter to an atheist? Or is William Provine the more correct when he denies that free will even exists?

Coming briefly back to Cartese, I notice that as this conversation has progressed, Joel’s tone has begun what I should call a predictable shift away from tolerant discourse toward intolerant paranoia. To his credit, he at least began at the level of tolerant discourse, unlike some others that I have debated on this blog. But to his detriment, he is letting something darker and much uglier show through now.

Pity.

And yes, it is organized, and deliberate, and self-conscious, and yes, it IS sinister.

The regular Reader will remember Rehmat, who says much the same thing about Jews as Joel is saying about Christians in the above sentence. Not coincidentally at all, I consider Joel’s assertions to have about the same credibility as I do Rehmat’s. I trust the intelligent Reader will see why.

Honestly, I don’t think people in western countries realize what goes on here in the U.S.. If I recall some recent polls and studies, the U.S. is one of the most religious, industrialized nations. People don’t realize that, every day, there is an organized effort to get the book of Genesis taught in science classes.

Perhaps the Reader will think me callous, but I really can only look on this issue with a bit of a “so what?” attitude. Oh, that’s not to say that I’m a raving Young Earth Creationist; in plain point of fact, I think that particular school of thought is mostly bunk. But equally…so what? So people are trying to get the Genesis stories taught in science classes. It would hardly be the first time that metaphysics has intruded into the realm of scientific education — one recalls Eugenie Scott’s campaign to see removed from biology textbooks the assertion that evolution was a random, unguided process. Scott is herself an atheist, but at least she could recognize that it was beyond the scope of science to decide whether or not evolution was an “unguided” process, and that the inclusion of the statement in a widely-used textbook was careless, problematic, and unfair.

And frankly, atheists have to be willing to stand up and assume a goodly measure of the blame for enforcing the conflict model in the relationship between science and religion. My God, but do they have to assume a measure of the blame! After all, post-Enlightenment atheism latched on to things like the theory of evolution as proof — proof! — that religion was bunk and God a mere fiction. The likes of Thomas Henry Huxley did more damage than good when they latched on to Darwinian theory and established a conflict model as the dominant mode of the relationship between two fields of study that need not have ever been in conflict.

(Interestingly, the Church never really saw a problem with evolutionary theory, noting that a truth and another truth cannot contradict; Catholicism, in particular, has always left it up to individual Catholics to decide whether they accept the reality of biological evolution, and the tone of the Church’s official statements has always recognized the theory’s probable validity. Protestantism, on the other hand, went in two directions, with some Protestant denominations taking essentially the same view as the Catholic Church, while others decided to push back.)

Can we really blame some evangelical Christians for biting back at people who would abuse a scientific theory by drawing a metaphysical conclusion (i.e. the non-existence of God) out of it?

I am a Catholic first and foremost, but I see no fundamental conflict between my faith and my education in the sciences. I wholeheartedly accept that God is the creator of all the Universe, and I wholeheartedly accept various evolutionary theories, be they concerned with biological evolution or stellar evolution.

They don’t know that doctors hide medical options from their patients (not simply refuse to
give them these treatments, but actively hide the options) because of religion. They have no idea how thoroughly christian dogma has invaded our society.

I might point out to the good Reader that modern American society has not been “invaded” by Christians — this is but paranoid rambling on Joel’s part — any more than it has been “invaded” by white people. America — by which I mean the United States of America, the extant nation in its present form — was founded, colonized, and peopled by people who were, for the most part, Christians! They are not the invading cultural archetype; they are the prevailing cultural archetype. And it should come as no surprise, in a nation where over 70% of the population professes some manner of Christian belief, that the government of America should occasionally hint at Christian influence.

That’s called “representative government” O Reader, and I am led to believe that, by and large, it works very well. God forbid that a government which purports to represent the people of the land should in some way share the beliefs held by a significant majority of the populace!

As to whether doctors hide medical options from patients, I again observe that Joel has been lax in citing sources to corroborate his claim. Perhaps it does happen; if it happens in a manner which endangers the patient, that is immoral. I can understand a doctor refusing to perform a procedure he or she might consider immoral (i.e. sex-change operations, abortions) — refusing to discuss treatment options may well be a different ball of wax.

But sadly, I have no data to work from, and cannot speculate any further on the matter. Perhaps Joel will be good enough to furnish us with some additional information, although given the downward trend in the tone of this conversation, I find myself doubtful that this will prove to be the case.

(don’t even get me started on the fate of Madeline Kara Neumann)

The Reader may think me cold and heartless, but I fail to see what the death of a child of parents who were Jehovah’s Witnesses has to do with a systemic conspiracy perpetrated by the religious in American society. This is why I keep stressing to Joel, and to others, the importance of being able to tell one’s apples from one’s kiwi fruits.

For example, here is a Catholic blogger decrying what happened to poor Madeline. Personally, as a Catholic and as a human being, I am disgusted at what happened to this young girl, whose parents forbade her from receiving life-saving treatment because of the peculiar tendency of the cult to which they belong to refuse different forms of medical treatment, including blood transfusions. I can’t abide that aspect of the JW movement, and consider it immoral when it jeapordizes the life of any person, young or old.

The Catholic Church has not promulgated any doctrine forbidding treatments of this nature to its members, and for good reason — Catholicism does not set itself in opposition to the sciences, including medical sciences; it understands science as an alternative vehicle for learning what God seeks to teach to the world (we term it “natural revelation”).

I am routinely derided when I (somewhat jokingly) point out that the nation-states which have been the most murderous throughout history have been those nations of the 19th and 20th centuries which have made atheism the explicit policy of the state (i.e. China, North Korea, the Soviet Union when it was still around). It is not fair, I am told, to tar and feather all of atheism based on a few rather glaringly large bad apples. Perhaps it is not…but then, it is even less justifiable for Joel to attempt to tar all Christians with the bad decisions of two members of a pseudo-Christian cult, is it not?

Seriously, what is it with atheists? It always begins so well…and it always goes downhill. Whether they verge into theodicy (a non-issue for Christians), Euthyphro (also a non-issue for Christians), guilt by association (a logical fallacy), or historical criticisms that have to look back more than 250 years in order to find something with meat on its bones (so to speak — and then the poor dears hate it when someone points out to them that the hands of atheism, by the same criteria, are even bloodier), the discussion always spirals downward.

And then the insults start. ;)

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