The Left is a Religion

Most think of our western Left as a political movement. I see it as a religion. For tens of millions of Americans, it’s the faith they’ve taken up to replace Christianity, a new pseudo-religion that’s evolved to fill the God-shaped hole in America’s soul. To effect this mass apostasy, the Left co-opted structures from Christianity, warping and perverting them.

Consider:

1) It has its redemptive martyrs, its "victims"--with the added bonus that this time millions gain automatic victim status without doing a thing. They need only be born a minority or identify as LGBT, or even, given radical feminism, just be female.

2) It has an eschatology that Marx and his forebears hijacked from biblical religion and which has been inserted as First Principle into all the left's sub-movements under the rubric "Progress!" History is understood as progressing toward an earthly utopia of diversity and unbounded sexual play. In a radical reversal of Christian teachings on male/female and chastity, it is the sexually disordered who are seen as closest to the sacred in this new religion, heralds of a coming age of pure kink devoid of responsibility or repercussion. The coming utopia will also be socialist in the old sense: "You will own nothing, and you will be happy," as a recent slogan puts it.

3) It has its rites, rituals, in-group symbols: the Protest Rally, the “Pride Parade”, “taking a knee”, identifying clothing and pins, and now even magic amulets (those cloth squares on the faces in the photo above).

4) It has a Dark Realm it struggles against, which we could call: White Daddy. America's Founders, generals, political leaders, inventors, hardheaded businessmen--they did not forge and defend the new nation, making it the success it became, but rather infected it with the curse of their male whiteness, their white maleness. Curse is a religious rather than political concept. We see the peak of this hysteria in recent years in relation to the last president. Trump was loathed not because of his policies but merely because his look, speech manners, and gestures were all suggestive of the Left's archetypal evil: White Daddy. Trump’s very cheerfulness infuriated our leftists, being reminiscent of the businessman who has work to do and enjoys his work, or the father who doesn’t take seriously the political diatribes of his kid just home from college. “OK, honey, whatever you say. Pass the potatoes.” The opposition to Trump was less a political opposition than the visceral loathing of an archetype, a ritual howling against a tribal mask: White Daddy.

5) Finally, cementing its status as religion, the Left requires dogmatic belief in things that are not only unprovable, but radically counterintuitive. The more nonsensical the belief and the louder it’s shouted, the more pious the believer shouting it. “MEN HAVE PERIODS TOO!” “Meat is RACIST!” “Speech is VIOLENCE!” etc., all meant to signal that the leftist in question is both well-catechized in this month's new “revelation” and willing to defend it.

Whereas the Christian professes faith in certain difficult doctrines about Christ--that He is the incarnate Son, that He rose from the dead, that He is the Second Person of the Trinity--the leftist must profess belief in impossible miracles in our everyday reality: men can give birth; a majority white nation that twice elected a black president is also a “white supremacist” nation; the biological being that is not a person a few hours before birth becomes a person upon changing location, etc., etc.

That the Left is in fact a replacement religion, an ersatz religion drawing its power from our spiritual malaise, goes a long way to explaining why it is so hard to fight. For one, as many have noticed, reasoned debate is now useless against leftists. Why? To put it simply, because they have defined “reasoned debate” as characteristic of the culture of White Daddy, and will not lower themselves to such.

Seriously.

Certainly the modern Right has elements of religion too: the Constitution as a nearly sacred document or the reverence for the flag come to mind. But these pale in comparison to what we now see on the Left.

The reason is simple: though many prominent figures on the Right are only nominally religious, the core cultural base of voters remains faithfully Christian. Still holding to the true faith, they needn’t sacralize politics. Believing in God and the redemption promised through His Son, they emphatically do not believe in salvation through politics. They know humanity is fallen, that evil will rear its head no matter what political arrangement is tried. They know sin cannot be legislated or reformed away. Thus they do not believe in promises of utopia here on earth.

This is why the Right is more likely to leave you alone to manage your life according to your own lights, while the Left is eager to micromanage everything you say or do. The Left, having put itself in charge of the Final Salvation of Humanity, must force you to get with the program for salvation to work. And as this salvation involves the whole of the social and material realms, no aspect of your life will be left unaffected. Notice the recent politicization of everything? This is because the Left, being utopian, is totalizing by necessity, like previous totalitarian movements. It seeks to transform all aspects of social reality, from diet, to sexuality, to speech, to entertainment, to child rearing, to anything you can name.

In brief, the Left is not content with human reality as it is; it cannot let human reality alone, because it can do better. This makes the Left toxic. It is toxic both to liberty and to all that is natural and set in humanity.

With the gross overreach shown during the COVID pandemic, with the increased awareness that our public schools are now little more than leftist boot camps, Americans are finally starting to realize just how controlling our Left has become. But how to fight it, now that it's seized so many insititions?

It's my view that the Left has gained such strong hold because we've neglected to call it out for what it is: a new religion, a mass cult that sees your life and your children's lives as raw material to be shaped according to its doctrines.

Tens of millions of sane Americans are in dismay over what the Left is now getting away with. Pinning it down by openly naming it a fanatical cult out to impose imagined realities on the rest of us might help these mostly silenced Americans find their voices. Once they recognize the Left as a mass cult, they will glimpse more effective ways of fighting back.

Starting with: "In America we have freedom of religion. Me, I'm not part of yours."

E.M.

Richard Dawkins and the Question of Zombie Rights

"What on Earth is a why question?" --Richard Dawkins: The Delusion (80)
To forestall any misunderstandings I ought to begin by acknowledging that I fully respect Richard Dawkins’ right to speak his mind. That such a mind has spoken, and at such length, can only be seen as a boon to the scientific community. With Dawkins, after all, we finally have incontrovertible proof that zombies can speak.

Of course we already knew, starting mid-1980s, that zombies could tie a tie. But the proof Dawkins has provided of linguistic competence raises the zombie debate to a whole new level. And now many other zombies (as demonstrated by “lively” discussions now splattered over the Internet) are themselves entering the lists in greater and greater numbers.

Though recent studies correlate high-functioning autism with atheism, I think for Dawkins and the other New Atheists the diagnosis isn’t apt. No, with this latter crowd I believe we are dealing with full-on zombism.

Whether Dawkins and these other newly vocal zombies are what is called philosophical zombies or whether they are rather the traditional flesh-eating zombies is not a question I can answer here. Personally I incline toward the theory that finds in them elements of both. In any case, it is not the type of zombie that concerns me, but rather their sudden ascent to language.

What does it mean?

We are still at a loss to answer this question. Admittedly, my current interests are not so much in their recent acquisition of speech, but more in what they actually say when they do speak. Or when they write. Because Dawkins has also proved that zombies can write human-like prose.

From the start, when they first began talking back in 2004, I noticed that New Atheist zombies were liable to toss out all manner of interesting material. It’s the striking oddness of their pronouncements, floundering there at the edge of human language, that’s kept me following their “work”. That they self-identify as atheists is secondary for me. Because in their pronouncements, it’s not so much the atheist element that stands out, but the zombie element. Non-zombie atheists have been around for centuries, and one might at any time have a beer with them. But with Dawkins? Could one have a beer with Dawkins?

Others have remarked on this too. With Dawkins and his fellows there’s a certain zombie panache that both attracts attention, if only for the curiosity of the phenomenon, and horrifies. There's a manic, mechanical flippancy one almost never finds elsewhere.

For instance, Dawkins last year opined that we in the non-zombie community would do well if we aborted infants with Down syndrome. The remark was worthy of note for a number of reasons. First, it demonstrated a nascent zombie “desire” to play some kind of directive role in human affairs. Why? That zombies presume to give us advice on social issues is striking in itself, almost as if my electric range were to start telling me how it wants the French toast made.

Still, regardless of the lame and often horrific things Dawkins and other New Atheist zombies say, I believe we should allow them the right to say on. If only to keep an eye on them. Further (because many have already started to think along these lines) even if we did have prenatal tests that could determine a child would be born with a mind like Richard Dawkins’, I would not be among those in favor of aborting it. The tests, after all, might be inaccurate. It’s happened before. And ethically speaking, the possibility of error more or less ties our hands. Myself, I'd rather let a hundred babbling zombies live than abort one healthy baby by mistake.

Doubtless some will see my position as extreme.

To what degree a person suffering from Dawkins syndrome is a human person like the rest of us is still hotly debated, but again, I think we must err on the cautious side. Zombies like Dawkins do have rights. Though I grant that their work does tangible harm, we must keep in mind that their innate idiocy has so far managed to undermine the influence they might otherwise have. Their own speech clearly proves their inhumanity to anyone with ears to hear. Rather than outright censorship, then, I think it sufficient for now if we simply keep an eye on them, all the while adamantly resisting their crazed efforts to change us.

Yes, I'm aware that some fear we are now on the brink of a Zombie Apocalypse. But I think such fear is premature. Given the limited number of actual zombies out there (a few thousand perhaps) added to the aforesaid stupidity of their discourse, I highly doubt a Zombie Apocalypse is imminent. So far most people are smart enough not to be swayed by the shabby rhetoric zombies deploy. I predict this will continue.

There are so many sad questions raised by Dawkins syndrome. Why it broke out so suddenly and with such virulence in the first decade of this century no one knows. We still don’t really understand the etiology of New Atheist zombism. More research is needed, and swiftly. Once we’ve got a clearer understanding of what is turning these men (it is mostly men) into zombies, we can begin work to decrease the incidence of zombism in coming generations.

A careful study of the early years of the most prominent New Atheist zombies might provide helpful clues. With Dawkins himself, some have speculated that an accident at the time of birth or in youth may be to blame. Did perinatal asphyxia perhaps shut down the parts of his brain capable of spiritual intelligence? Or did he maybe, as a child, drink a bottle of laundry detergent, thinking it was soda?

Dawkins and Sam Harris are very possibly walking/talking evidence of the need for better child-proof packaging. It’s a tragedy really, for everyone. On the one hand, the whole English-speaking world suffers from their drooly pronouncements, their frantic construction of straw men; on the other, they themselves suffer from their inability to comprehend the human minds around them.

I sometines ponder what it’s like to live inside such brains, where all the neural activity is located in the mechanical and calculative sectors.

Oh, and the moneymaking sectors. The “Dawkins Circle”, after all, which Dawkins himself launched some years ago, is certainly proof that zombies can make a quick buck. There is a clear cult-like hierarchy to the organization, carefully designed to lure others who may have drunk laundry detergent. And the price exacted from sycophants each time they try to move up a level--it's repugnant really, but has so far proved surprisingly successful in English-speaking countries. Which makes one wonder: Is there maybe something in our drinking water?

So how does the sycophant proceed once he's joined the Dawkins Circle?

Consider: For $1,000 a year you enter the first level, what is called the “Reason Circle”, which allows you discounts on cult merchandise and the chance to meet “personalities” from the Richard Dawkins foundation; but not Dawkins himself.

For $2,500 a year, the price of joining the “Science Circle”, you get a chance to actually attend an event where the Alpha Zombie will speak; but you won’t necessarily meet him.

Then come the “Darwin Circle” at $5,000 a year and the “Fifth Horseman Circle” at $10,000 a year. Those who have attained to the Fifth Horseman Circle will get to sit at a table with . . . Richard Dawkins Foundation Executive Director Robyn Blumner.

It's mind-boggling almost.

In fact if you want to get close enough to the center of this Zombie Circle Jerk to actually kiss the Ring of Reason, you’ll have to come up with a staggering $100,000 a year. That’s the entrance fee for what is called “The Magic of Reality Circle”, which I take to be the very rectal center of the organization. For your $100,000 cheque, you’ll get a "private breakfast or lunch" with Dawkins himself.

Don’t ask about dinner. Dinner is a different price scale entirely.

This is all as ingenious as it is zombiesque. Can one imagine non-zombie scientists like Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein creating such an organization? Or any of the prominent Western scientists who are also Christians?

Yes, it’s sad what can happen to otherwise normal humans when they fall under the spell of the Dawkins. Or at least it’s sad what can happen to those with money. Because look--the lower classes (even the middle classes!) are not meant to attain Reason in this particular cult. And really: Why in God's name would anyone pay such money to sit by and maybe, just maybe, talk with a tie-wearing zombie?

I can talk with my coffee grinder any time for free. Like a zombie, my coffee grinder is entirely lacking in spiritual intelligence. I don’t much see the need to spend my hard-earned money on the Dawkins model. But others, perhaps because of the water, beg to differ.

As a zombie is a human-like creature adept at simulating humans but lacking consciousness, so New Atheism is a religion-like phenomenon adept at simulating human meaning but lacking soul. With the Dawkins Circle, Richard Dawkins is using a religion-like hierarchy to soak money, in sometimes substantial sums, from deluded admirers who want to say they sat next to him. Founding this little cult does demonstrate business acumen. But money is, here, largely a matter of the merely calculative. What do zombies need money for anyway? Dawkins’ success in building this cult doesn’t do anything to controvert the sad reality of his zombie state. He and Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett with them, have brains in which all the eggs are in one basket--the calculative. And the three of them together, along with a few frothy others, are swiftly on their way to becoming one huge, messy Omelet--an insipid, spreading, tasteless Omelet that those of us with human brains had best keep a close watch on. Because if these zombies aren't using their financial power for human means, what in the end will they use this power for?

A crucial part of our close watch must be the constant work of keeping zombies and their repellent ideas away from Christian children. And Jewish children. And Muslim children. And Hindu children. This task is especially difficult because the young are so susceptible to the lure of virtual or mechanical things, as anyone knows who sees how quickly children take to computer games. We must remember that the relation zombie discourse holds to human language is similar to that which computer-generated images hold to the real world. In short, it is seductive but deceptive; it is empty. New Atheist zombies clearly recognize that enticing our children into alignment with them is their surest route to dominating us. It's a perilous mix of factors we face here. We must not let them succeed.

It is my thesis that the arrogant and eggy certainties of the zombie mind are aimed specifically at engulfing our more flexible and receptive human minds--especially those of our children: Christian children, Hindu children, Shinto children, Shia children. To defeat this threat, we must point out the irreality of zombie discourse at every turn.

As I’ve already mentioned Dawkins, Harris and Dennett, I should probably say something about Christopher Hitchens, the so-called Second Horseman of the Arsepocalypse. Hitchens passed away three years ago. Though there's still some debate on the question, I personally believe Hitchens was not in fact a zombie, though he did exhibit increasing zombielike symptoms in later years. Hitchens attributed his esophageal cancer to a life of drinking and smoking, but I suspect a different culprit: the existential pressure wearing him down as the zombie part of his psyche struggled to push out the remaining human elements.

Which raises a frightening question: Is zombism perhaps infectious? Did Hitchens maybe contract his condition from the wrong drinking buddies? God forbid. And yes, I mean the real God.

To conclude, I believe we must continue, at least for a time, to allow the New Atheist zombies to speak and write as they will. But even as we do so, we must be wise enough to see the serious threat their discourse poses, and we must take every single utterance they produce with a big grain of salt.

Like I do, when my refrigerator tries to tell me what juice to buy.

“Thanks for the advice, Siri,” I say, “but you can’t taste the juice, so why get involved?”

And Siri shuts up. Unlike our New Atheists, she at least knows when she’s out of her league.

Which is why I prefer dealing with the simpler mechanical devices. They may say impertinent things now and then, but at least they’re not likely to go and start their own fake religion. I mean--Can you imagine a vacuum cleaner trying to tell us our place in the universe? Before the rise of the New Atheism, I couldn't imagine such a thing. Now I can.

Eric Mader
Taipei
02/07/15

This and 42 other important public service announcements can be found in my new book Idiocy, Ltd.

Dealing with New Atheist Bigotry: Some Basic Steps

Teacher and student? New Atheists’ non-stop bigotry toward religious people was bound to lead to no good: Richard Dawkins and Chapel Hill murder suspect Craig Hicks

“Christian moron”, “religitard”, “sky fairy”, “medieval superstition”, “imaginary sky friend”--these are just a few of the words that get spat in one’s direction these days if one acknowledges one is a Christian.

It didn’t use to be like this, back, say, before Sam Harris published The End of Faith in 2004 and effectively launched the New Atheist Movement. Harris, Richard Dawkins, a few other writers and a gaggle of comedians all soon joined up in gleeful support of insulting religious people. Educated citizens were no longer to be civil toward those who didn’t recognize the truth Harris and Dawkins spoke. The New Atheists’ policy of confrontation and insult supposedly had a good purpose besides: it would snap people of faith out of their “silly nonsense”.

A handful of popular books and a lot of TED talks later, the protocol has shifted between atheists and people of faith. Specifically: the former must go out of their way to demean the latter (there are a handful of useful terms and soundbites for doing this) and the latter are to retreat to the margins of society, eventually to disappear.

Though there are signs that the New Atheist dog has had its day, there is also contrary evidence that the movement and its methods continue to gain support among the partly educated. So while most professional philosophers, sociologists and scientists now reject Harris’ and Dawkins’ extremist cultural thinking outright, many “bookish” members of the public continue to take their cues from these New Atheists. And various entrenched New Atheist ideas--that religion is something society must “get over”, that people of faith are at fault for the world’s wars, that religious people are brainwashed and inherently reactionary--these continue to spread like wildfire over the Internet and in the “liberal” press at large.

Such rabid anti-religious proselytizing has its risks. If religion, as the New Atheist leaders have insisted, is at the root of most of our evils, then it won’t take long before many of the their followers start believing that religious people themselves are evil. And should be gotten rid of.

This has happened in history before of course, both during the French Revolution and later under many of the communist regimes. People of faith were persecuted, imprisoned and often executed because of a dominant ideology that claimed to serve Reason and Progress. To have faith, during these periods of political terror, was seen as something inherently “outdated”, part of a backward “past” that we were all “moving beyond”.

Sound familiar? As a Catholic who blogs frequently, I don’t know how many times I’ve been told in recent years that my thinking on this or that subject was “outdated”, that I should “grow up” or “get over it” because society is now “moving beyond that”.

I often have to point out in reply that at age 49 I’m pretty grown up, that I’ve spent a lifetime of study, living in different cultures, and that in fact I used to be an atheist--but learned better.

I said that anti-religious indoctrination of the New Atheist sort had its risks. Last week in North Carolina a man nearly my age, Craig Hicks, a militant New Atheist, murdered three Muslim neighbors he’d previously argued with over parking. The Muslim sisters he killed had told their father on previous occasions that their neighbor Hicks clearly hated them for who they were: Muslims. Hicks’ Facebook posts show a slightly more equal-opportunity hate: both Christians and Muslims in his mind were a serious social problem to be met head on.

Whether Hicks’ action was a hate crime or not is still being debated. Other neighbors have claimed he argued with them too over parking issues. But there’s the rub, no? He didn’t finally execute the other neighbors.

I believe that what the New Atheists have created is a hate movement. Under cover of science and “rationality”, they’ve managed to promote a virulent but socially sanctioned bigotry. I strongly suspect Hicks is an example of how this bigotry may build up in individuals until it finally leads where bigotry usually leads: criminal violence.

I don’t at all believe that atheists as such are inherently violent people. I do believe, however, very strongly, that those who support the New Atheism are largely motivated by a deep-seated personal hatred for people of faith. The New Atheism is different from simple atheism. All one needs do is look at the way New Atheist writers write and talk about religion. And their followers, generally less polished, are even more direct in their fury.

This is not the case with atheists in general. It certainly wasn't the case with those I knew back in the years before 2004. The atheists I knew then had personal or intellectual reasons they didn’t believe, but were not likely to see people who did believe as a menace to be gotten rid of.

Though I consider atheism a normal part of the modern West, I see the New Atheists, who are actually anti-theists, as a dangerous and almost cult-like movement motivated more by hate than by the rationality it claims to serve.

I am writing this post today for other believers. Because I think that we as people of faith need to learn to quickly identify, label and respond to the kinds of tag words New Atheists typically throw around. We need to condemn these terms as bigotry as soon as they appear. This is what I mean by labeling. We need to say aloud: “That is a bigoted term.” And as for responding, personally, I’ve come to believe that we must then swiftly cut off further discussion with those who use such language. We must literally walk away or refuse to respond further to them. Especially if they defend their language or double down on it.

Identify, then, is to recognize clearly when you are dealing with New Atheist-inspired ranting. Labeling is to open your mouth or start tapping at your keyboard to point out immediately that such language is bigotry. Responding is to indicate that one isn’t going to discuss such important issues with a bigot.

Among bigoted terms I include those I opened with: “imaginary sky friend”, “medieval superstition”, “Christian moron”, “religitard”. There are others of course--some used more often against Muslims or Jews or people of other traditions. But these are the ones I usually run up against.

I’ve spent a lot of time this past year debating my Catholicism online, arguing history and ethics with folks apparently hardwired with the idea that progress is by definition making people of faith like myself go away. This is usually rather ironic for me, because on other issues I often agree with my debate opponents. Typically, in economic and various other areas, I’m on the political left. But still, for them, certain of my social or historical ideas make me the Enemy.

Yes, such debates and online wrangles are often tiresome and circular. The sad fact is that my opponents usually know very little about the faith they’re trying to erase. And they refuse to recognize besides how the Judeo-Christian tradition is the historical root of their own precious notions of human rights. They are often historically shallow, as if world history began in the 18th century.

But although I get tired of these discussions, I also recognize them as a necessary part of living in the trenches of a cultural war the New Atheists started--a war we cannot avoid. So these little “debates” with friends and others are arguably important, because the war in general is important. But how best conduct ourselves?

In online or verbal debate the other person may strongly disagree, that goes without saying, they may even got rather hot under the collar, but once they start referring to people of faith as “morons” or “insane”, or once they start referring to God as “your imaginary friend”, they should be told that such language is bigoted, and if they continue with it the discussion should be cut short. Why? Because in the current social climate people of faith should no longer let such anti-religious bigotry slide by as a part of “normal debate”. It is not normal debate, no more than it would be normal to start referring to African Americans or immigrant groups with slurs during a discussion of relevant social issues. When others attack one’s dignity directly, trying to stress a lower (social or mental or cultural) status, that is bigotry, quite simple.

The New Atheism is doing everything it can to paint religious people as 1) stupid, 2) full of hate, 3) outdated. What would one call it if a group were seeking to paint, say, Asian immigrants as stupid, belligerent and outdated? One would call it bigotry. New Atheism practices a similar bigotry, in this case against a huge population of people spread over the world: religious people. An excellent brief post at Philosophy out of the Box sums up this bigotry well (the comments by Kevin Stern following the post are also very useful):

Atheism becomes bigotry when it makes prejudicial statements about religious people. Prejudice is prejudice and intolerance is intolerance, and both are irrational regardless of who commits it. Despite its scientific pretensions and its pronouncements of love for reason, many atheists offer arguments laden with logical fallacies[,] hasty generalization, strawman arguments, and most of all ad hominem attacks.

Aside from the ethical sewer that bigotry leads to if unchecked, there is the further issue of how historically inaccurate, how tendentiously selective, New Atheists’ depictions of religious people usually are. Just look at their dismissive treatment of Christians, who are supposedly uneducated, motivated by hate or living in the past. Negating such bigoted propaganda, Christians are not known for stupidity (only look over the role of Christians in intellectual history, even modern history), they’re among the world’s most active in helping those in need (i.e., sharing love rather than hate), and they are definitely not outdated (they happen to currently exist, in the modern world, in huge numbers).

In The God Delusion, one of the veritable scriptures of the New Atheist movement, Richard Dawkins makes the astonishing claim that he can find little evidence of Christians winning Nobel Prizes in science. This is important because, in physics or chemistry, winning the Nobel is proof positive of serious achievement. Communities with a high number of Nobel laureates are necessarily on the cutting edge. Dawkins’ guiding assumption in The God Delusion is that fellow scientists nearly all agree with him on religion. He writes: “The only website I could find that claimed to list 'Nobel Prize-winning Scientific Christians' came up with six, out of a total of several hundred scientific Nobelists.” (126) Here Dawkins demonstrates the kind of shoddy “research” New Atheists do to back up their flippant assertions. The “only website I could find”? The facts are otherwise, as Dawkins surely must know. One 2002 study, Baruch Shalev’s 100 Years of Nobel Prizes, finds that 73% of Nobel laureates in chemistry, 65% in physics, and 62% in medicine self-identified as Christians.

How many of Dawkins’ half-educated readers are led to believe Christianity and science are incompatible because of the Master’s unfounded claims? More Nobel winners in science have self-identified as religious than not, and most religious laureates have self-identified as Christian. Why is Dawkins allowed to get away with such unfounded claims? I suspect it is because the great majority of his readers pick up his book already deeply biased against religion. As the writer is a scientist, they are willing to believe any mud he cares to fling. Without checking.

Another obvious area the New Atheists are dead wrong is in their claim, which has been repeatedly disproved, that most of the wars over history have been caused by religion. But I’m not even going to bother addressing this here: the hypocrisy of it is almost nauseating when one puts it next to the death tolls officially atheist governments ran up in modern times. (A recent book on the problem by scholar Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, raises the pertinent questions and shows up the shallowness of the old atheist canard about war.)

In any case, historical facts carry little weight once a movement gains traction--especially if that movement is based on contempt for some cultural other. I recently see “imaginary sky friend”, to refer to God, appearing in interviews and articles not even related to atheism, as I see increasing references in public discourse to “insane Christians” (as if insanity was a defining characteristic of the group) or to Christians or other religious people “still living in the Stone Age”--as if we were not actually part of the modern world. Offhand insults like these need to be called out, and refuted.

Some might find that these terms or insults do not constitute actual bigotry. For one, I’ve been told that since Christians are supposedly the “dominant” group in America, they can’t be victims of bigotry because “they control things”. Uh-huh. Aside from the fact that Christians obviously do not in fact “control America”, this says nothing essential about the nature of bigotry. It is only a comment on the relative social position of different kinds of bigots.

Second, some might insist the term “imaginary sky friend” isn’t bigoted because, after all, the person using the term doesn’t believe God exists and so is right to refer to God as “imaginary”.

I strongly disagree.

When someone uses “sky fairy” or “imaginary friend” to refer to God, they are not doing so to show others they don’t believe. They are doing so as a way of insulting anyone who does believe. These terms are meant to insinuate that I as a believer am somehow childish compared to them: just like many children, I have my “imaginary friend” because I haven’t “grown up”. Whereas nonbelievers, in this register, are no longer stuck in the silly nonsense of childhood.

Repeatedly insinuating that some group of adults is inherently childish is a kind of bigotry. It was bigotry when men used to insist that women were inherently childish. It is likewise bigotry to insist that religious people are childish.

Referring to God as an “imaginary sky friend” is bigoted moreover because it is not commensurate with the subject at hand. It shows a lack of recognition for the important role belief in God has played in the long unfolding of our history as a culture--regardless of whether or not one believes oneself. As a term it is meant to demean all those who have taken the question of God seriously (virtually all philosophers in the Western tradition) even as it shows historical shallowness on the part of the person using it.

For these reasons I’m inclined to cut off discussion with someone using this slur in the same way as I’d leave a dinner table where people were using racial slurs. One shouldn’t dignify bigotry with one’s presence.

Am I maybe wrong here? In fact I’ve often hear from debate opponents that I shouldn’t be so sensitive about these insults--that imaginary sky friend or religitard or Christian idiot are “just words”.

Of course these are the same people who go ballistic when they hear someone using a racial or anti-homosexual slur. Then it is suddenly no longer “just words”. Then it is time for someone to lose their job.

Well, in my mind my left-leaning friends are right to stand strong against racial or anti-homosexual slurs. It’s just that slurs against religious people are also examples of bigotry. And the New Atheists have been coining and promoting such bigotry to the best of their ability for a decade now. And in general the liberal press has given them and their followers carte blanche to do so.

Anti-religious bigotry, like any form of socially sanctioned hatred, will feed on itself and only get worse until, as I’ve said, it leads where bigotry always leads: to violence and oppression. The momentum behind this vicious cycle will only be broken when people of faith loudly call out New Atheist bigotry for what it is and shun those who insist on using it.

Eric Mader
Taipei

Postscript
Many thanks to the Freedom from Atheism Foundation for bringing my attention to probably the sharpest response so far to the Craig Hicks case, “The Chapel Hill Murders Should Be a Wake-Up Call for Atheists”, by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig. Learning of the murders, Richard Dawkins tweeted the following: “How could any decent person NOT condemn the vile murder of three young US Muslims in Chapel Hill?” Breunig brilliantly underlines how Dawkins’ very response reveals the shallowness of his understanding of culture. In a few sentences she makes clear just why the New Atheists are not to be trusted when they offer visions of a better social order based on atheism:

Dawkins takes the obviousness of his moral frame for granted; he doesn't feel the need to offer an earnest denouncement of these murders because he does not honestly believe any person could view them as an outgrowth of a system decent people like him are a part of. But this is a persistent problem with the New Atheist movement: Because it is more critical of religion than introspective about its own moral commitments, it assumes there is broad agreement about what constitutes decency, common sense, and reason. Yet in doing so, New Atheism tends to simply baptize the opinions of young, educated white men as the obviously rational approach to complicated socio-political problems. Thus prejudice in its own ranks goes unnoticed.

Exactly. Dawkins and Harris and their millions of secular fans do not understand culture well enough to realize just how constructed our social ideas are. Our modern Western sense of decency and common sense, as well as our concept of human rights, is the product of a very complex cultural history. It is not “natural”, and Dawkins, who has grown up and continues to live in a culture deeply shaped by its Christian background, is naive to assume that these common values will continue to prevail once one has aggressively turned one’s back on the tradition out of which they grew. There is good reason our modern concepts of human rights and individual liberty arose in Western Europe, i.e., in a Christian civilization, rather than elsewhere. Dawkins, in a very fundamental sense, is biting the hand that feeds him. While he benefits from his privileged social milieu, his angry followers, raised in less “decent” surroundings, may easily turn to less “decent” ways of expressing their anti-religious grudge--a smoldering and irrational grudge Dawkins and Harris glibly fan.

It’s Time to Eradicate Christianity: I mean, look what happened at Charlie Hebdo!

We must finally shut up Christians once and for all! It's the only reasonable course of action, no? The attackers who killed twelve people in downtown Paris last week did so in the name of their prophet Muhammad, who was the founder of Islam, which is a religion, as everyone knows. Well, think about it, Christianity is also a religion, as are Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism--so it only follows that it’s time to eradicate these “outmoded” belief systems. We must eradicate them now! They have no place in our modern secular world.

Yes, my title is intentionally extreme. It’s a caricature of what I see coming regularly from the pens of atheists and their followers. To tell the truth, in recent years a month doesn’t go by without me reading one or another article that begins bewailing some recent atrocity committed by extremist Muslims, only to morph quickly into an argument against religion in general, then more specifically into an argument against Christians and Christianity. Jeffrey Tayler’s January 9th piece in Salon, with its transparent title "We must stop deferring to religion; Laughable absurdities must be laughed at", performs this same old dishonest shuffle using the Charlie-Hebdo attack as fodder.

Tayler lists a series of recent terrorist atrocities and points the finger directly at Islam: "There are many other well-known examples [of such attacks]. The point is, Islam is implicated in all." But then, oddly, in the next paragraph, he proceeds to shift the whole weight of his argument:

Faced with this uncomfortable but persistently deadly reality, what should we and our politicians (and pundits) do? For starters, we need to cease granting religion--and not just Islam--an exemption from criticism. If we do not believe the fables foisted on us (without evidence) by the faithful, we need to say so, day in and day out, in mixed company, and especially in front of children (to thwart their later indoctrination). We must stop according religion unconditional respect, stop deferring to men (and mostly they are men) who happen to preface their names with the titles of reverend or rabbi or imam, and de-sanctify the sacred, in word and deed.

Laughable absurdities--be they virgin births, parting seas, spontaneously burning bushes--deserve not oblique pardons (“We don’t have to take everything in the Bible literally”), but outspoken ridicule; courses in “religious studies” in campuses across the country might better be referred to as “lessons in harmful superstition, dangerous delusion, and volitional insanity.”

Uh-huh. How did the argument shift suddenly from the serious problem of radical jihadism to the whole of humanity's religious culture? The answer is clear: it shifted on the dime of Tayler's personal hatred of religious people. (Never mind the lame misunderstanding of academic religious studies he reveals in his last line. Such lapses are typical of him, and characteristic of the New Atheism generally: they know virtually nothing about the subjects they harangue us on.)

This bait-and-switch has become something of a rhetorical cliche on the part of Britain’s and America’s fanatical secularists. They use radical Islam as a stalking horse to go after their real target: the tens of millions of Catholics and Protestants who make up majorities in their own countries. And in the net they cast they manage to catch all the world's other religious people as well. It is both intellectually dishonest and, as David Robertson points out, cowardly. (NB: Though I agree with Robertson’s general argument, there are elements in the piece I don’t agree with.)

And so it is again. I already see them quickly co-opting the tragedy in Paris to argue that religious faith is “irrational” and “dangerous” in essence, and that prominent voices from faith communities must be aggressively pushed from the public sphere, must be ridiculed to the margins of society where they can finally be shut up.

Never mind that Christians have not been guilty of one suicide bombing or attack, or that Christians (Iraqi and Syrian Christians especially) along with moderate Muslims and Yezidis, have made up the great majority of ISIS’ and al Qaeda’s victims during these recent bloody years of conflict. No, the logic seems to be something like: The killers in Paris believed in God. Followers of other religions also believe in God. You do the math.

The absurdity of this kind of reductionism is no less annoying for being spread out over the several paragraphs of an article, as one typically sees in Slate, Salon and like publications. (The liberal press still features occasional dissenting pieces, it’s true, but the general trend is toward ever more bashing of religious people. Even Salman Rushdie allowed the Charlie Hebdo attack to lead him toward ill-considered words on the place of religion in culture.)

That modern Islam has a serious problem does not mean that religion itself is the problem. For one thing, religion is a universal human phenomenon; for another, our modern Western notions of individual liberty and human rights could never have been formulated without the Judeo-Christian base they arose upon.

Yes, that’s right. Balking about it or twisting up your face in a scowl won’t change history.

Do you want to see the first time in history that something like a concept of universal human rights was put into words? In fact it is in the Bible, in the New Testament, where the Apostle Paul writes:

In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. . . . There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Jesus Christ. (Galatians 3:26;28)

This text was written around 55 CE. It is an ancient text, but it offers us an uncannily contemporary-sounding vision of human dignity and equality. And that is no mere coincidence: in fact the New Testament is behind much that is greatest in our Western heritage. Here Paul’s recognition that God became unified with humanity in Jesus Christ leads him to a further recognition of the dignity of human being as such. So that every individual person, regardless of gender, race or social standing, is due a kind of absolute dignity. This biblical teaching is the root of what grew into our modern notions of inalienable rights, freedom of expression, a non-negotiable individual dignity. There’s a reason these concepts first developed in Western Europe. At the time of the Enlightenment and before, European civilization was Christian.

The men who gunned down twelve people last week in Paris did not recognize these rights. But that is no stain on the record of religion itself. It is rather the result of a twisted and radicalized movement that has arisen within the religion founded by Muhammad.

Many supporters of the New Atheism like to argue that “more people have been killed in the name of religion” than for any other cause. This claim is itself a cliche, and it is in fact untrue. That the claim has been repeatedly debunked by historians doesn’t seem to matter to the New Atheists however. They will make hay from whatever they can, and cliches have proven to be one of their most fertile fields. (To see some of the reasons the claim is untrue, one may consult, for instance, Karen Armstrong’s comments on her recent book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. I’m not going to repeat the various arguments here; in any case Armstrong is certainly not the only scholar to address the silliness of the old claim.)

But also: Even if the claim about religion and wars were true, it wouldn’t settle the issue. Because if we are to judge and condemn world religions by tallying up the numbers of people who have died at the hands of religious fanatics, then we must apply the same method to judging dogmatic secularists--aka today’s prominent atheists. What happens when committed secularists, people like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, take the reins of a culture?

To get an idea we may study what happens in societies that outlaw belief in God, that treat religious faith as a social aberration or failure of scientific reason. In fact we have several such societies that did precisely this, and their record is horrendous. Whether we look at the Soviet Union, communist China, or any of the other radically secular projects, we find literally millions of victims. In these societies religion is treated as a kind of mental illness or inveterate stupidity (the way Harris and Dawkins view it), and its adherents are brutalized en mass. Overly confident in its own “scientific” ideology of human “progress”, the cultural elite quickly becomes overseer of a vast gulag.

The answer to violence committed by religious fanatics is certainly not the imposition of a fanatical secularism. The problem with Dawkins, Harris and glib cheerleaders like Bill Maher, is that they are historically shallow. When they talk about history or society, they literally don’t know what they’re talking about. I refer to people like Harris and Maher as “liberal fundamentalists”--which is of course a contradiction in terms, a contradiction they should be ashamed of. Because our liberal Western societies are only liberal to the extent that they are pluralist; our liberal political orders recognize and regularly deal with deep incompatibilities of belief among citizens, which is what makes them valid as liberal communities to begin with. Religious beliefs are not merely among these variously held beliefs--no, in the case of Christianity they ethically underpin the whole project.

Against Harris, Dawkins, Maher and all their followers who would use the tragedy at Charlie Hebdo to attack religion in general, I would say: There is no feasible way to impose an ethical, one-size-fits-all atheist system on humanity and expect anything but dismal results. At the end of the day, lib-fundies (liberal fundamentalists) pose as great a danger to our Western societies as religious fanatics do--if not even more of a danger, since they naively claim to be fighting for the human rights enshrined in our constitutions. In fact they hardly understand the deep history of these rights.

Those who do not recognize, to begin with, what a fundamental and sacred mystery human being really is, are not qualified to be the central defenders of human rights.

And neither is the neo-liberal elite, whose speedy co-opting of the massacre in Paris is regrettable. To see the leaders of European capitalism holding up JE SUIS CHARLIE placards, as I likely will at today’s Paris rally, leaves a bad taste in the mouth, if only because the neo-liberal religion, namely the Free Market (blessed be Its name) bears much of the responsibility for the desperation that has led so many young people toward extremism. Among world leaders the only one I see who’s directly addressing the serious problems is Pope Francis.

In conclusion I would like to say one final word about Islam. Above I write that contemporary Islam “has a problem”. I think this is obviously true. But I do not want to be misunderstood. To say that Islam has a problem is not at all to say that Islam is itself a problem or that Muslims as such are a problem. No. I’m hopeful that over time, and with sufficient effort, the majority of Muslims will find the wisdom to counterbalance this fanatical movement that is now harming them even more than it is harming the rest of us. I’ve had Muslim friends, I’ve read Muslim books, and know that the Muslim tradition, going back to Muhammad’s time, is rich enough to find both good and bad in it. Just as, of course, my own Christian tradition has at times been mined in order to bring about great good--in order to show the Spirit at work in humanity--but at other times been misinterpreted in order to commit terrible acts.

The tragedy in Paris must not be co-opted to bash Europe’s Muslims or any other religious group. It should force us rather to look at the real causes of the despair now wracking so many young people, pushing them to leave behind what is good in their traditions and to take up instead the nihilistic banner of hatred and revenge.

Eric Mader
Taipei

Who are the Yazidi?

Iconic image of Yazidi angel Melek Taus.
Sadly we can now add genocide to the crimes committed by the radical Sunni movement ISIS. The news out of northern Iraq over recent weeks is heartbreaking in almost every respect, but for those who value religious pluralism the evidence that ISIS is doing its best to exterminate Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi communities is especially depressing.

According to most reports, Christian Iraqis are given the choice to convert on the spot to Sunni Islam or die. Either that, or they are killed outright without being given the choice of apostasy. For Yazidis, at least in most reports I have read, no choice is offered. The men are killed and the women and children (those deemed worth using at least) are taken as slaves. Some witnesses who’ve managed to escape speak of groups of Yazidis buried alive; at least one report speaks of a pregnant Yazidi woman having being cut open, her womb and unborn child yanked out of her.

As one Yazidi man put it: “These ISIS fighters cry out ‘God is great’, and then do such things. What kind of human beings are they?”

Indeed. It it were me writing the battle cry for ISIS, it would go: “God is great, but our version of Islam is greater!”

The concept of God, and of how God relates to humanity, has clearly gone haywire in this branch of Sunni Islam. ISIS brings not a return to the Islam of the Prophet Mohammed, but yet another modern utopianism run amok. We can add it to the list: Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, Sunni Jihadism.

The crime of genocide against the Yazidi represents a special threat to our human religious inheritance because the Yazidi community is so small. Worldwide there are around 700,000 Yazidis, 93% of which live in the Iraqi province now under ISIS control.

The Yazidi religion is, according to most authorities, a syncretism of elements from Sufism and the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia. The creation story they subscribe to includes a first human named Adam, as with the other western monotheisms, but the importance they give angels, particularly the angel they call Melek Taus, puts them more in line with Zoroastrianism and even with ancient Gnosticism.

According to the Yazidi, God created the world and then put it under the command of seven angels, emanations from the Godhead, chief of which is Melek Taus, literally “the Peacock Angel”. That the Yazidi symbolize their chief angel with a peacock has led some to assert flippantly that the Yazidi “worship peacocks”--an explanation about as subtle as would be the assertion that Christians worship doves because the Holy Spirit is symbolized by that bird. The story of Melek Taus is a fascinating one; and, one would think, may have led the Yazidi to a uniquely nuanced understanding of authority.

When God created the first human, Adam, he asked the seven angels to bow down before the new creation. One of the seven, Melek Taus, refused.

“How can I bow to another being!” the angel said to God. “I am from your illumination [i.e., a direct emanation from the Godhead] while Adam is made of dust.”

God accepted this argument,and made Melek Taus leader of the other six angels.

The Yazidi, then, conceive of this highest angel as the power that rules directly over the world, their God being more removed, somewhat as in western Deism. What’s more, human good and ill fortune are meted out by Melek Taus according to his wisdom and will, and it is not proper for humans to question their lot. Good and evil are seen as inherent in every human heart, and individuals may choose one or the other. The Yazidi teach that we are to do as Melek Taus did, and choose the true and good.

Of course this is only a very rough sketch, but it gives some idea of the Yazidi belief system, how it is similar to yet different from what is found in the three Abrahamic religions.

Another striking difference is found in the Yazidi belief regarding their ancestral heritage. According to a tale in one of the two collections of Yazidi scripture, they are descended not from Adam and Eve, but from Adam alone. The story is told that a child was born of Adam from his seed stored in a jar, and when this child grew to adulthood he married an houri. The Yazidi are descendants of this “son of Jar” and the houri. It is presumably for this reason that the Yazidi forbid exogamy, i.e., marriage to someone who is not him- or herself a Yazidi. Likewise one cannot convert to Yazidism, as the religion is that of the people born in this lineage from Adam and the houri.

It is the Yazidi’s worship of Melek Taus, and the story of this angel’s refusal to bow to Adam, that has led their Muslim neighbors to characterize them as “worshippers of Satan”. In both the Christian story and in Islam, the angel Lucifer (or, in Islam, Iblis) refused to submit to God through pride, and was cast down from God’s presence--thus our image of Satan as fallen angel. The Yazidi story however is different, as Melek Taus does not refuse through pride, but through respect for the element of God in himself: in other words, through wisdom. In fact the Yazidi consider that the command to bow down to Adam was God’s way of testing the angels, and that Melek Taus is the only one to have passed the test.

Yazidi beliefs are known to outsiders largely through two texts compiled in the early 20th century: the Book of Revelation and the Black Book. These texts, which most scholars agree were not actually written by Yazidis, contain internal contradictions but have been judged to be generally accurate regarding main beliefs and customs.

Since the first appearance of the sect sometime in the Middle Ages, the Yazidi have been persecuted by their Muslim overlords. The current genocide being practiced by ISIS fanatics however poses a special threat to this faith community. Small Yazidi communities exist in Germany, Russia, Georgia, and Armenia, there is a community of several hundred in Lincoln, Nebraska in the US, but the vast majority of Yazidis are now being massacred and enslaved by the barbarians now overrunning northern Iraq.

President Obama’s decision to call for bombing raids in support of the Kurds, Christians and Yazidis against ISIS was overdue. Like many others, I believe our 2003 invasion of Iraq was a grave miscalculation, and that much of the mayhem that has ensued there is a direct result of this initial major blunder. We should not have troops on the ground in Iraq forever, but we should do what we can to beat back the Sunni extremists who are now and always have been our real enemy. The Obama administration shouldn’t have let ISIS get as far as Mosul, much less to within striking reach of the Kurdish capital Erbil.

Eric Mader

FIVE LINKS (and how to help)
1. Check this article at CNN. In the upper left (at least at present) is a link to the full video report from CNN’s Ivan Watson, who accompanied a helicopter supply and rescue operation to Yazidis trapped atop Mt. Sinjar. One of the most striking pieces of video journalism I’ve seen in years.

2. Yazidis in America, thankful for the support they’ve gotten, nonetheless fear their Iraqi community has been left to fall through the cracks of US insistence on a “unified Iraq”. Voice of America reports.

3. Faced with news of what's happening to their family members in Iraq, Yazidis in Nebraska are paralyzed by guilt, reports the LA Times.

4. Son of Yazidi leader calls for British aid.

5. The Catholic organization Caritas: one of the legitimate and reliable ways to help Iraq’s persecuted religious minorities. I would offer more possibilities, but this is the only one I've been able to find that is already up and running in Kurdish territory.

Yazidi man with child in flight from ISIS genocide.

Atheist Fundamentalism on the Rise: Don’t let your friends turn newther

Most people of faith will agree: there’s a huge difference between the secular person who isn’t convinced of God’s existence and the atheist who thinks religious people should shut up and that only secularists have anything to say on ethical issues.

A good friend of mine from high school made the following Facebook post recently. I was disheartened to see it. Not that I hadn’t seen plenty such memes in recent years, but coming from him it seemed to be a declaration of sorts.

In recent months I’d engaged in edgy online debates with Steve and several others over the role of religion in America. If Steve’s post especially depressed me, it was because he’d graduated from one of America’s best universities and had always shown himself to be open-minded on the various tribes that battle in the cultural arena. That he’d put this up for his thousand-and-more friends showed he’d grown closer to the militant atheist line. Here he was echoing some of their most tired tropes.

Atheist fundamentalists have gotten the traction they have in recent years in part because they offer such a simple narrative. To agnostics too busy to think through the complexity of the issues, it becomes seductively easy to see the world as neatly divided between those who believe in science and those who believe in Christ.

As it turned out, Steve wasn’t toeing the line I thought. At least he finally explained, pointedly, that his post didn’t quite mean what it seemed to mean. But still, I’ve seen my friend various times on this edge, once averring that the world would be better if Christianity were done away with, other times echoing this or that New Atheist sound bite.

What can one do to keep moderate, secular friends from turning newther [a term I’ve adopted for those who subscribe to or ape the New Atheist mode of discussing religion: explanation here]?

This particular FB discussion covers a lot of ground and raises points some Christians won’t like, but still I think nearly all will find parts of it worthwhile. Exactly what my friend Steve intends by “magic”, I can’t quite grasp, and he has yet to make it clearer.

Eric Mader

STEVE JOHNSON: I'm a believer in efficacy. If magic works, I'd roll with that. Just give me something that works. And I don't mean, after massive interpretations that try to reframe something that didn't work as something that did.

July 21 at 4:25am

ERIC MADER: Steve, the whole of history is and always has been a matter of interpretation and reinterpretation. And the borderline between what you think of as magic and what you think of as science isn't as clear as you take it to be. The fact you believe there is an identifiable object--religion--you can point to as "something that didn't work" in the past is just more proof of the degree to which your thinking it tied to the logic of one particular reinterpretation--that of the 18th and 19th centuries. And yes, for all of us, to one degree or another, our thinking is trammeled to Enlightenment models, because we were all educated in the modern West. But the point is to learn to be conscious of it as a questionable bunch of assumptions that has deviously set our discourse and thought to repeat the same tracks over and over. For us it is an overarching structure, taken for granted, where Science is the bedfellow of Technology, who in turn is the bedfellow of Progress, and where all three keep loving it up to the rocking tunes of the Free Market.

I find this structure, as I say, deeply questionable. Because, hey, that we keep singing this same song with such lame confidence may finally do us in. (And note: Part of this song has always been those few catchy verses where Science and Religion are posited as opposites. And here your meme is singing that same old refrain again, as if, again, we had to choose one or the other. It is a false choice.)

Your meme reverences the man in a lab coat as a potential savior. “If only we’d let him do his work we’d be on track.” That's the implicit message, no? But this reverence for the man in the lab coat is part of our problem. After just a couple hundred years of the Enlightenment culture he represents, here we are literally on the verge of collective suicide. Think about it, Steve. Homo sapiens has been around for 200,000 years, living according to a wide variety of religious codes ("magic") and social structures, but once modern science and the culture of scientism arrive on the scene--here we are at the brink of mass extinction.

All of which is not to say that I’m against science education. Only that I don't see anything in our Enlightenment culture that will get us out of the mess we're now in. I don't see anything there, and I have yet to hear anything from you, Mr. Johnson, that "will work".

Furthermore, when scientism (i.e. science as promoted by the New Atheists) thinks it can offer our culture a more meaningful philosophical ground than religion or theology--in those cases I'll do my damnedest to kick it over. Because then it is trying to replace things it cannot replace. It is being as dumb as Fundamentalist religion, and in fact is a Fundamentalist religion. And it poses a greater threat than the Biblical Fundamentalists.

In short: We cannot escape reinterpretation, which is what culture does. To the extent we think we can throw out things that have been deeply rooted in humanity for eons--to that extent we don't understand humanity. We only put ourselves in deeper peril--prey to utopian pipe dreams like those offered by Bolsheviks or Maoists, themselves children of the Enlightenment who got too excited about science, who got too eager to rid their societies of religion and "backward" cultural norms. July 21 at 11:15pm

STEVE JOHNSON: Actually Eric, I gotta hand it to you. I didn't really think about the dude in the lab coat, nor did I notice there was a cross on the 'chalkboard'. And although I am in technology, I see technology as nothing short of magic in many ways. So considering what my comment was, based on the fact that I only saw the words cognitively, and then posted... here is what I was hoping to convey: Frankly, I don't care what 'thing' we use as a species, as long as it works. If Wands and Spells do the trick, and we can fix what was made wrong, then I am all for it. If prayers to deities of all manners and ilks works, then lets get on our knees, or sit in the lotus position. I couldn't care less. But, lets let efficacy be the guide. Not wishful thinking. There are myriad proofs that science doesn't answer many things. There are myriad proofs that none of our "theories" or "world views" are an answer to any larger or specific question in particular. Why are the bees dying? I want a definitive answer, and I want it to stop. If religion, or magic, or science, or ass wiping gets the answer, so be it. But if you are huge believer in ass wiping (and I presume you are not except in the same way it is effective to you) then let ass wiping rule the day on finding and answering the problems we face. But if it turns out that ass wiping isn't the way, please don't tell me that it did work, but I don't have enough faith, or that I need to run more tests, or that in lab environments it works, just not today. Or that the outrageous side effects of ass wiping although worse than the original problem, did in fact solve the original problem. So, I think, believe it or not, we are exactly on the same page. What you said above is in fact what I believe. The difference is, I have no sacred cows. The markets? Pffft. Epic Failure. Only the those who have the undying faith of a religionist can still believe in them. Science? Pfftt. Its good, maybe our best tool, but it cannot explain so many things its sad. Religions? Ha. Nearly all the concrete facts that Science was able to prove came by fighting off religions. So, Magic? I think I am a buyer. And I don't think Religion qualifies as magic. But pushing a button and something happening might just qualify. Either way, I should get back to my original thought. Efficacy is my 'god' of choosing. If it works, I'm in. And that goes for religion too. If it works, I'm a buyer. If not, I'm out. And the evidence that it works, whichever form of thought you are going to deploy needs to be provable, at some level, without constant reengineering the situation to make the proof be there. July 22 at 6:04am

DEBRA SERBANIC: Bottom line.....it's a comic and each is entitled to their own opinion not trying to fuel the fire. I thought the comic was funny. Like the bible, didn't take it literally. I believe in ass wiping. July 22 at 6:08am

STEVE JOHNSON: I have always believed in the efficacy of ass wiping. July 22 at 6:19am

ERIC MADER: Steve, your argument simply reduces all aspects of culture (and ultimately human being itself) to material efficacy.

This Sunday at Mass I stood with the other congregants and prayed for peace in the Ukraine, Palestine and Iraq. If you think that myself and the other people there believed that we were delivering a "to-do list" to a deity who would then, because of our prayer, immediately go and effect peace in these regions by divine fiat, then you simply don't understand religion (as usual, I might add). Because part of the efficacy of our prayer is in our own witness in standing there, in our togetherness, in our meditating for a moment on the crises in the world and how our actions (in voting, volunteering, etc.) might improve or worsen things; part of the efficacy is in our coming together there and then, and that because of the truth we celebrate some of us will be moved, beyond our Sunday participation, to work for and push for settlements of the terrible conflicts now raging. Because we believe in peace as a goal in itself, regardless of strategic interests. Because we strongly believe that this is God's will, as conveyed through Christ.

I submit that if we are on the same page, as you say, then you need to broaden your perspective regarding the complexity of how culture(s) find meaning, assert meaning, and apply it to the world. And you can do this regardless of whether or not you believe God exists or what you think of claims of miracles, etc.

Again: If the individual human being is a particular organization of carbon-based molecules (which is all science can ultimately tell us about human being) then the reasons to respect individual human lives are no more compelling than the reasons to respect the life of a snail or a gnat. When the next totalitarian movements begin to sweep over the planet, I believe those who have faith in a soul, in a God, rather than those who depend only on what can be empirically demonstrated by science, will be better prepared to resist and more courageous in resisting. In other words, their faith will be EFFICACIOUS in defending our liberty. As it is currently efficacious is running schools and orphanages, caring for the homeless, giving voice to the oppressed. July 22 at 10:11am

DENNIS LOWELL: OK - We've gotta smoke a big fat joint together this weekend..... July 22 at 10:41am

ERIC MADER: Dennis knows efficacy when he sees it. July 22 at 11:05am

STEVE JOHNSON: Eric, my argument DOES NOT reduce all aspects of culture and the human being itself to material efficacy. Let's take the case of Magic. Or Prayer. I read a study that confirmed that something like 50 Buddhist Monks prayed for peace for the city of Washington DC. During the experiment, violent crime and rape fell an astonishing 75% (or something like that). So is this efficacious? In my view, if it is in fact true, then yes, it is. IF Voldemort, the head of the new-found Republican Party, were to stand up at the Republican convention, and wave his wand, thus making all the "attendees" understand the plight of the poor, I would say that was efficacious. It worked. How it worked is a mystery. Why it worked is a mystery. But that it did in fact work, is all that I want to base my belief structure on. If you and the congregation of praying Catholics are able to bring peace to the Ukraine and the Israel/Palestine conflict, than I will stand with you all, and demand that we all practice this because it worked. How? Why? Again, a mystery. However, if 6 years from now, a nuke goes off and everyone in either region is killed, and then peace comes because of it...And the Priest who lead the congregation of prayers that your group did last night, claims that the prayer of last night, done 6 years prior IS THE REASON that peace is now there, I will not support that is a causative link. As that would require so many lenses of 'so called' truth to be lacquered onto the facts that it makes anything true. My view is fairly simple. It does not deny reality, nor does it deny that reality may not be knowable or understandable. It does however put front and center 'the effectiveness' of whatever approach is utilized. There will clearly be some forms of action that will be amoral, and so, it might be effective, but it is not moral. So, effectiveness may not be the only guide post, and it may not be the preeminent one in any given situation. But, effectiveness being absent usually leaves so much room for interpretation that we are left without any real truth. I am not saying that a person who may find a prayer effective for 'whatever' it is they utilize prayer to fix/heal/change/express, and if it is effective for them individually and in groups, by all means...please practice it. Because for them, it is effective. And I honor that. But if two parties are attempt to resolve an issue, than effectiveness is a great guide, and for me, most often, the only real arbiter of what is and what isn't. Excuse typos, words missing, just had to get this out, despite errors. July 23 at 1:24am

ERIC MADER: I see I may have misinterpreted your meaning here, Steve, and that my assumption as to what you were getting at led me into attack mode. Let me explain. I read the photo and remarks in the context of our long-term debate/dialogue on religion in America. One of the lengthiest FB threads you've ever hosted was a couple months back where you, myself and several others debated the New Atheism, religious education, evolution, etc. In that debate one of the main topics taken up was the importance of interpretation--namely, the fact that Christianity, like all religions, has gone through many stages of development, change of stress, literalism vs. figurative thinking, etc. It’s pretty clear that the New Atheists do their best to suppress this complex history. Which is significant because very much of the debate online has been influenced by their prefab reduction. What the New Atheists have tried to do is reduce Western religion to a caricature they can then knock down in favor of the narrowly positivist materialism they support. It's a classic strawman. And so: To listen to them, religion = magical thinking = a naive literalism like that of the small child who believes there is a literal Tooth Fairy. Thus, as these folks argue, religion should be extirpated, should be laughed out of the public arena, etc. To me and to most people educated in the humanities (poli sci, anthropology, philosophy) this view of religion is an idiotic reduction of a multifaceted human phenomenon. In fact many atheists are deeply embarrassed by the likes of Dawkins and Harris--embarrassed by the epistemological shallowness. Whether you like it or not, your post echoes this whole prefab reductionism we then debated. Consider: Your post offers a meme showing a guy in a lab coat equating Christianity with "magic" and lamenting that science is being "cancelled" because of such magical thinking. And you, in your comment, criticize people who use "interpretation" to try to validate a "magic" that “never worked” in the first place. In the context of our debates and other things you've posted in recent years, this seemed to me to be saying: "A lot of modern folks have newfangled interpretations of what religion means, but hey, we all know that religion is just a kind of naive magic, so don't try to make it anything else. Science is what can give us answers, because magic doesn't work!” That's how I understood your meaning, in the context of our previous debates and in the context of the meme itself. If that's indeed what you meant, it’s not simply something I disagree with, but you are basically declaring yourself not just a guy I can debate differences with, but my ideological enemy. Because you are subscribing to the New Atheist soundbite that “one must choose” between religion and science--and since religion "didn't work", then science is the answer.

Like most educated religious people, I don’t see any need to choose between religion and science, because each addresses different levels of the reality we experience. When religious people clash clearly with scientists over matters of biology (for example, when biblical literalists claim the earth is 6,000 years old) I think it’s obvious the scientists are right. But that is not a big deal to educated religious people, it is not in any sense a “serious blow to Christianity”, because through the whole history of the faith, going back to ancient times, there have been thinkers in the Church who argue that the biblical account of creation is NOT literal, but figurative or symbolic. Which has also been my view from the beginning. So you can see my ire for contemporary atheists: they’re working overtime to misrepresent what religion is, to tell ME what I believe so that they can then refute me, all the while spending virtually no time going to actual Christian writers or theologians to check if their portrayal is right.

If I’ve written with some bitterness, it’s because all the evidence pointed to your post being a restatement of their general argument. I now see from your last long remark that this might not have been your original meaning. You’re apparently still among the sane people who see that religion, like science, is a mixed bag. Each is an immensely complex part of culture that brings both good and bad, and the essential is to support the good and lessen the bad. If you indeed still subscribe to this kind of basic wisdom, then I owe you an apology. But honestly: If my first understanding of your meaning was correct, if you think humanity “must choose” between religion and science, and that religion should be steadily but completely pushed from the public arena, then I’d have to conclude that you’re just shallow, because you don’t understand what you’re talking about, and what’s more, you’ve betrayed the basic American respect for pluralism. You’re becoming illiberal in the classic sense.

If you want to respond to this, please weigh my arguments carefully. If you don’t respond, fine and good. I’ll take it to mean you accept the apology and that my revised assessment, i.e., that you’re not becoming just another New Atheist loudmouth, is the right one. July 23 at 2:06pm

DENNIS LOWELL: Eric Mader - Your post is thought-provoking. Thanks! I like your point about religion evolving - if scientists have been wrong for centuries and are "allowed" to evolve, why shouldn't religion. I do, however, see a difference. I've always had more respect for people who listen and absorb the facts (which is why I enjoyed your thread) and I've valued their contributions over those who just echo a few "cherry picked" talking points. Along these lines, I believe that you should start with the facts and end with a conclusion - not the other way around. Maybe I'm wrong (it's happened before), but I've felt that religion starts with a conclusion (Jesus is God; the Bible is the word of God....) and works backwards to include/exclude facts that support/oppose their views. This has always been my rub with organized religion. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts. - Cheers July 25 at 9:01am

STEVE JOHNSON: Eric: I think I said in the thread that I never noticed the cross on the chalk board when I posted. When I read it, it seemed to me to be saying that Science had some kind of answer for everything, and frankly, it doesn't. I like the overall notional construct of science, but it is flawed too. I have had too many personal experiences that Science doesn't even deem an actual question worthy of finding an answer to. But, what I also fully comprehend is that you feel religion is under attack from the New Atheists. Candidly I am not an atheist. I believe in what religions call a god. I prefer to use words that come from our own modern 'stories'...like 'the force' or the 'all pervasive love'. I don't however subscribe to any literal translations of ancient works (or interpreted properly or otherwise), as I have found them PERSONALLY as lame as Science in answering the questions of the Spirit. If I were to have to join a team or religious brand (and yes, that is how I perceive them) I would join the Buddhists. Mainly because they don't appear to own property, or corporate 501c's nor do they appear to have followers who congregate in packs that then vote in blocks or attempt to enforce a code of ethics on others, where those codes are derived by their decree from a god head. Granted, the texts those followers cite may state exactly the opposite of the followers claims, but the followers themselves do not agree or understand the works they utilize to make their points often enough. So, I don't consider myself a new Atheist in any way, and I would most likely consider their arguments fairly mundane and trivializing of many of personal experiences I have had that are real, and could only fall into a category for science that would be labeled "unexplainable". Which leaves the term Magic. If you fully comprehend what is actually happening inside of a computer, it is as close to what one might call magic (even though it is explainable) as one can get. And it works. And so I add my call for efficacy. So, whether or not Science will answer all the questions that matter is still up for debate, and what I see from most of the religious folk is not what you say or believe but something vastly less sophisticated and nuanced...and so, I turn to a word that is still relatively clean. And I like it. Magic. So, yes, I believe in Magic, and yes, it is preferable to Science and Religions because it has at a level something that neither posses. It has efficacy and answers things that are relevant to the spirit and the soul. I hope at some level, I have redeemed myself in your eyes. July 25 at 11:09am

ERIC MADER: Dennis Lowell - Thanks for weighing in here. I think you hit on something that needs to be recognized by more Christians: namely that the arguments many of them give for their religion are merely circular, and they perhaps “believe” these arguments because they internalized them from their upbringing. And so, to hear some Christians tell it: The Christian God is real because the Bible says so; and the Bible is a trustworthy source because it was inspired by God.

My own experience of Christianity is very different from this. Though raised a Lutheran, even as an adolescent I found, when I questioned myself as to what truth there was in it, that I couldn’t believe. At 16 I declared myself an atheist. I began to study literature and philosophy, a bit in high school on my own, and seriously in university. Then, at the end of the 1980s, partly based on my study, and partly based on my own experiences, I came to believe there was a compelling truth, or at least a reflection of truth, in some of the basic assertions of the Christian faith: 1) the material universe is not all there is; 2) there is a God behind the universe; 3) we are endowed with a soul (we ourselves are not merely flesh and bone: there’s another level to us); 4) the man Jesus was in fact a privileged conveyor of how God relates to humanity and the world, how God intends to relate to us, and how we must respond by bringing ourselves into closer harmony with an emerging “kingdom of God” (however that term may be understood).

As I say, I came to be convinced of these few things at the end of the 1980s. It may seem to you that this would make me a Christian, a member of that two-billion-strong body of believers worldwide. But actually these elements I was convinced of didn’t really make me a Christian, because for most Christians the litmus test for the true faith is the Nicene Creed: a “real” Christian, according to most, is someone who can recite this creed as a series of propositions that are true. But there was much in the Creed that I didn’t believe true. Probably some of the things I didn’t accept were precisely those things that many Christians “believe” without actually examining them--things they’d been taught to accept and defend as true without first, as you put it, arriving at the truth of the statement after carefully considering all the facts.

Nonetheless, regardless of my eccentricity during those years, I insisted I was a Christian and argued that anyone who believed in a few basic tenets should also be considered one. Thus the Christian, to me, is someone who can say: 1) I believe there is a God; 2) Jesus is a privileged voice for God (the “anointed one”, or, in Hebrew, Messiah); 3) I believe there is a spiritual element in the universe and in each of us as individuals; 4) I will try to follow Jesus’ teachings as best I understand them.

And so, to anyone who finds Jesus a “great teacher”, to the extent he or she makes this finding more determinant in his or her life--i.e., to the extent he or she becomes an avowed follower of Jesus--to that extent the person may be called a Christian. Do you believe all the currently existing species were created by God in a brief period of time? Do you believe in the stories of virgin birth? Do believe Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead? Do you believe his first followers stood and watched as he was literally taken up into heaven? In my thinking, which I still hold to on this point, you can be a Christian without believing any of these things as literal happenings. Because the essentials of Christianity are in points 1-4 above.

In the 1990s and 2000s I worked to define more clearly both how I believed and how I came to understand the truth of Christianity. I coined a term for this particular way of believing: it was a “durationist” Christianity. A lot of that work ended up in my book HERETIC DAYS.

I go this roundabout way in answer to your comments because I feel too many people have been set up to take our religious traditions as either/or constructs. Either you subscribe to the whole program, including the belief in a relative literalism of biblical texts, or you reject the whole program. This is deeply wrong and deeply destructive to our cultural and spiritual possibilities. It is far better for contemporary people to approach Christianity as a tradition of which they might make what they want. (I say approach, as in: during the early stages of one's engagement with Christianity.) The individual, as in you yourself, can find whatever truth in the Gospel texts you deem valid. You are not asked to believe all these things literally happened or that the orthodox Christian reading is the only one. As happened with me, these texts and this tradition can then become the fascinating matter of a long-term work of spiritual and historical sleuthing. Do the texts represent what Jesus really taught? Are there not perhaps many hints in the texts of something different, something that was repressed by orthodox Christianity in the course of its development? Is not orthodox Christianity perhaps keeping us from making contact with something more essential in Jesus that Jesus would want us to find?

In any case, the story of Jesus of Nazareth and the God he meant to tell us about is one of the most contested and tantalizing historical mysteries we have. Especially given that the movement created from this man’s life work has shaped our world more than the work of any other individual. And this is true whether one is a believer or not. We live in a culture whose intellectual grounds are thoroughly Christian: our basic understanding of history (as a progressive process “going somewhere”), of justice, of how the individual relates to society--all these derive from our Christian background.

But I’ve gone on too long. You may want to check out the following few links, if you’d like to know more about my own route pursuing these questions.

The Durationist Gospel

Heretic Days: First Reactions

July 27 at 12:43pm

ERIC MADER: Steve Johnson: Yes, you’ve redeemed yourself. Of course. And I agree with you that far too many Christians (especially in America, where many have become living advertisements against the faith) have come to stand for things their own scriptures consider deeply wrong. In my view this sad situation is largely a result of the perilous linkage made between Protestants and the GOP back in the 1980s. Christians have been misled by this alliance to equate their religion with specific right-wing political goals. I think Pope Francis has offered some sorely needed, and truly Christian, answers to the sick nonsense we get from Fox News and friends.

But as for what you call “magic”: In fact I like your conscious choice to adopt a term, to try to set it off from both science and religion. I do, however, think you need to formulate more clearly how you see “magic” relating to “the force” or whatever you prefer to call the guiding power in your universe. Especially: How can anything you might call magic--as it evidences itself in computer technology for example--be expected to help fulfill the goals of “the force”? How can we get any guidance as to whether “magic” is being employed to further or undermine “the force”? Also: If there is a “force” or “pervasive spirit of love”, as you say, why is the universe not already determined by it? Why, in other words, is there hate and violence and bigotry if indeed the spirit of love is “pervasive”?

You say you reject reverence for ancient scriptures, regardless of how they are interpreted. Does that mean that “magic” was not an active force in ancient times? Or that Jesus or the Buddha had no access to this power we now are starting to access?

I submit that the main thing behind your finding that ancient scriptures offer “lame” solutions is that you haven’t really studied the range of interpretations of ancient texts. Of course the predicaments ancient people found themselves in were both similar to and different from the predicaments we are in. And the genius or possibility of spiritual insight on the part of ancient people was, I would argue, equal to our own. But whatever.

I do know of a book, now written a while ago, that may turn you on if you’re thinking in these directions. Erik Davis: Techgnosis. Maybe you know of Davis already. The book is dated in some respects, but it is absolutely not dated in essentials.

And if you want to have a “double dose” of gnosis that might get your attention, order Davis’ book along with Ron Miller’s The Gospel of Thomas: A Guidebook for Spiritual Practice. In this second book you’ll get a surprisingly different version of Jesus, based on a long-lost ancient collection of his sayings, that will possibly show him more in line with your currently developing notion of “magic”.

But again: I’d be very interested to see how you explain the connection between “the force” and what you call “magic”, especially as this latter might manifest itself in or through technology. July 27 at 1:44pm

ERIC MADER: I’ve often taught Philip K. Dick's work here in Taipei. Here's a nice piece of Davis' writing on what made the master tick:

Philip K. Dick’s Divine Interference

July 27 at 1:47pm

DENNIS LOWELL: Eric Mader: Thanks, again, for your thoughtful reply. I enjoyed reading of your background and found that it has some parallels to mine. Though we may have ended with somewhat different conclusions, I think our thought processes are aligned. (By calling them conclusions, I don’t want to imply that we aren’t still both working through things.) I’ve been interested in (and struggled with) religion and spirituality my entire life. When I was younger, I traveled to see the Dalai Lama and identified pretty strongly with Buddhism. I enjoy reading the very approachable books that Bart Ehrman writes about historical Jesus, etc. I took my kids to church at the local Unitarian Church when they were younger. I enjoyed their approach to religion – the Dalai Lama called it the “fruit salad” approach. Take a little of the best of everything and mix it up (something that must churches would really frown on). However, even the UU church finally turned me off.

This was back around 2002, when the Iraq war was starting. Even though I was strongly opposed to the war at that time, I didn’t want to hear about it from a pastor on Sunday. I REALLY wanted the spiritual piece [peace], without the baggage. Therein lies my conundrum: Religion and Spirituality are separate. There is a relationship between the two, but they have very different goals and these have been at odds since the earliest days of Christianity. The goal of religion is to build a congregation with followers. I know that this could be argued, but for the biggest churches (including the Catholic church) this is true. In order to best build a congregation, churches use things like rituals, patternicity, and the discouragement of individualism. I’m not saying that EVERY church does this or everything in the church is designed to build a following, but in general, religion says “stop asking questions, we have the answer… God”. This is exactly the opposite of what spirituality calls for.

In a gross simplification, religion is supposed to facilitate finding “The Truth” (but still build a congregation). In order to find the truth, you have to spend real time thinking about it and probably have to go down many wrong paths. So religion has to do this crazy dance of letting you stray down those paths, but not so far that you don’t still land at “The RIGHT Truth”. Honestly, Eric, I think that this is how the more liberal churches view it. For the more conservative churches, they don’t do the dance at all - “it’s our way or good luck in hell." (OK – I know that hell could be interpreted as the eternal separation from God’s love, but still, does my love for a different God, or different understanding of God, mean that I end with separation?)

Anyway, that’s my struggle with religion in general. My struggle with Christianity is more complex and involves conflicting scriptures that were written 30+ years after Jesus’ death, their misinterpretation, and the conflicting goals of the church that I’ve outlined. I know this is being a little harsh on the churches and I don't mean to imply that the people within the congregation all share the same views. I’m looking forward to reading your book (you’ll have to put your next one on audible, as that’s how I get most of my reading in these days – long commute). Cheers! August 2 at 1:54a

ERIC MADER: Dennis Lowell: You're right that we have a lot in common in our general route. And so most of your considerations here are congenial to me, and of course I get the distinction between religion and spirituality you present. But personally, for a long time now, I don't see the two as being necessarily in conflict in the way you do. With some religious communities, yes, the conflict can be very real. Try to tell a Fundamentalist where you think he's wrong, and he'll tell you how he knows he's right and why are you "outside" real Christianity. But I don't think this kind of inside and outside divide is characteristic of many Christian communities now. And so it doesn't steer me away from Christianity as a whole.

I'll offer a metaphor for religion vs. spirituality that may give some idea of how I see them. Think of the relationship as something like that between nation and individual. You, for instance, are part of the American population, an American citizen, and presumably you support many of the things America stands for. But you'll define these things that "America stands for" in your own way. In other words, you may support America's codification of civil rights, its history of progress in this area, and the value it places on a free press and free civil debate. While insisting these are what America is at heart, you may think its international role as "exceptional nation", its free-wheeling capitalism, its willingness to treat the world as its playground--who cares what other countries say--you may find all these things to be aberrations, not truly what is great about America. But at the same time, while you're reading this, there's another American down the block from you who emphatically supports the international hubris, who thinks the market is in fact way too regulated, and who wants the world to become culturally more and more like America, malls and all. In short: You and this guy both subscribe to “America”; you both hold the passport and feel patriotism. Yet your ideas of what is great in America and what is excess dribble are very different. But neither of you would like to renounce your citizenship based on these differences.

I don't see why it should not be the same with churches. I have gone a long route through atheism, through a kind of gnosticism, and now have converted to Catholicism. There are things in the Catholic tradition that I think make it great and true, other things that I think are wrongheaded and aberrant. Another Catholic down the block from me might stress a different set of elements. In other words: We each have our own spirituality; we don't quite agree; but those things in each other we disagree with are not enough to make us renounce our citizenship.

Just as the blanket phenomenon called America can foster different kinds of patriotism, so the phenomenon called Christianity can foster different kinds of spirituality. I will not leave a church just because I disagree with some of the things a pastor or priest says from the pulpit. Rather: I'll try through my own engagement to move the church in the direction I find true.

There's another point here I'd like to raise, having to do with the value of conditional acceptance of doctrine. A very important phrase in my own development is Credo ut intelligam: “I believe in order to understand." If one sees a religious tradition as a very complex symbolic system for conveying spiritual truth, it is necessary, if one ever wants to find that truth, to learn the system. And just as one learns a foreign language, or learns a new dance step, by doing it, so one learns a religion's understanding of reality by seriously entertaining its tenets. Part of my final decision to convert to Catholicism was that I saw in it the most complete repository of spiritual, theological, and experiential wisdom about the meaning of Jesus Christ as conveyed in the New Testament. And so I decided to enter this church, to begin to think and move according to its promptings; and moving in this slightly new way, positioned in this slightly new place, I would see a different spectrum of reality. Simple as that. If some parts of the tradition left me unconvinced, that didn't matter. I would understand more and more in terms of my own spirituality simply because the seriousness and depth of the tradition I was living with and studying was far greater than anything I could come up with on my own. Credo ut intelligam.

The problem with the fruit salad approach you mention is that, not really learning any one tradition, you risk missing certain depths. To make another analogy, I'd much rather learn to be a very good pianist than learn to be a dabbler in piano, a dabbler in guitar, and an amateur flautist. Immersed in piano, I'd learn more about music as such. Which is the point.

At one point you write: "Even though I was strongly opposed to the [Iraq] war at that time, I didn’t want to hear about it from a pastor on Sunday. I REALLY wanted the spiritual piece [peace], without the baggage." I'd say that one doesn't get spiritual piece or peace without struggle--whether that be struggle with the vagaries of one's own skewed perceptions and nagging worries and desires, or struggle with the injustices in the world. Quietism is a possible response to the world, and it may have some fundamental validity, but it's never been the kind of approach that has attracted me.

Also, regarding the historical Jesus, I've done a lot of study in these areas also, and I believe they are well worth the effort. The kinds of things Ehrman works on are seen as a threat by some believers, but they don't bother me in the least; in fact I relish the problems and contradictions of the textual and historical record. The crucial thing to me is not that the Gospels are second-hand accounts or were redacted by different hands, but that such an extraordinary figure as Jesus existed, that some core of this tradition we have about him, a core collection of parables and a core of historical events, are true. The vagaries of the Gospels are just what you'd expect from an ancient community of followers and believers who'd experienced such a figure as Jesus was. In short: We don't know exactly what he was and what he said, but we know roughly. We know as much or more about Jesus than we do about many important ancient figures: Socrates, the Roman emperors, Virgil.

Before I finish I want to make sure I'm not misunderstood in my remarks on Credo ut intellegam above. I used the analogy of learning a foreign language, but didn't really explain. If I say that I've chosen to "believe in order to understand", this is not to say that I'm pretending to believe, that I'm putting on an effort of belief in order, some day, to actually believe. No, it's rather that I'm learning a new language; I'm believing in the sense one believes when, learning German, one repeats a new sentence several times: one's grasp of the syntax may be a bit slippery, one doesn't quite feel how this series of sounds means what one knows it means (there's the English translation on the right-hand page) but one is confident even so that there's a compelling representation of the world in this series of sounds: that German is a real language and that this way of saying the world is as valid as one's native English way. Thus, learning a language, one must believe in order to understand. This is similar to the way I've begun to believe Catholicism, with one crucial difference. Since I'm convinced the Church has been guided by the Holy Spirit over the course of history, this "language" I'm now learning is more profound, and very likely offers a truer representation of reality, than any theological pidgin I could put together on my own (which I think is true regardless of whether or not said pidgin may itself be guided in places by the Spirit).

Still waiting for Steve Johnson to address my last remarks to him. And truly: Those two books I suggest, Steve, I really think you'd dig a whole spectrum of things in them. Take the plunge. August 3 at 7:58pm