Parsing Original Sin P. II

In part I of this essay, I concluded that I couldn't bring myself to believe the doctrine of original sin.  It is contradictory to hold that man is inherently evil, expect that he will be good by accepting the grace of God that his 'evilness' prevents him from receiving, and then consider him condemned for his inability to do the very thing he was predisposed not to be able to do.

From this it is argued that such a contradiction is resolved by God's enabling a person to receive his grace, for such is the nature of grace that it brings about what cannot be accomplished by a person's will.  To begin with then, a person is created predisposed against God's grace, but then by God's grace is favourably inclined to God again.  It should strike the reader as suspicious that God's initial activity toward his highest creation -- people -- is, as original sin shows, lowly and capricious: he sets the conditions by which to manipulate a person's will while declaring the most extreme results for the outcomes of his own manipulations.  That is if a person's original state of separation -- the one that he creates people in -- is not reconciled, that person is condemned eternally to hell.  If that same person is enabled by God's grace to reconcile to God, that person is eternally saved.

What is interesting to realise in this scenario is that despite the efforts of apologists to place a person's "eternal address" (Victor Hugo) on their own shoulders, people never had free choice to begin with.  For if it is true that people are born in original sin (that is, they have inherited an inclination to sin and evil), the their moral tendencies have already been weighted in a certain direction.  So saying, people are not so much freely choosing as they are struggling to beat the odds of a choice already made from them.  Thus the reason for Ayn Rand's words:

"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality... Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil.  A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice.  It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear the responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he has no power to escape.  If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, he is not free."

People are either free or they are not.  A is A, and not ~A.  If people are free-willing creatures, then original sin is a damnable doctrine because it is unapologetically damaging to a sense of human wholeness.  If people are not free-willing creatures, the original sin makes God responsible for, and accountable to humanity's depredations; God would, in effect, be a devil.

All this talk about free will, however, begs definition.  In short, free will is the capacity of a conscious creature to choose between alternatives.  In a negative sense, if there are no alternatives, then no choice exists.  Add to that , that the notion of original sin implies the alternatives are morally laden; they are between the "knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2:17).

Since the alternatives within the doctrine of original sin are between those things we understand or perceive as 'good' and 'evil,' we are forced to conclude that having a knowledge of good and evil (i.e., having a moral awareness) is the essential sin in original sin.  Apologists would take umbrage with that assertion, citing instead that the original sin was the choice to do what God commanded them not to do: eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17).  But this does not advance their opposition at all because it fails to recognise that by making an alternative choice available (eat from the tree vs. do not eat from the tree), God had initiated the process of knowing good from evil, of having a moral choice.  So to command a prohibition from action, God had first to initiate a knowledge of good and evil in order to prohibit a knowledge of good and evil, which apparently eating from a forbidden tree would bring about.

Such a contradictory premise is hardly worthwhile to any thinking person: bring about an awareness of good and evil in order to prohibit an awareness of good and evil.  Not put too fine a point on it, but such utter and nonsensical (un)thinking is beneath human dignity and reasonableness.

One further point should serve to finish digging the grave for original sin: though man is guilty of making a choice to become morally aware, even though God's prohibition brought about that awareness (not the forbidden tree), the questioned doctrine ascribes the full weight of man's guilt to man.  It is worth asking the question at this point, "what is the nature of man's guilt?  That is, what is man guilty of?"  For the answer to that question, I quote Ayn Rand again:

"What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin?  What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection?  Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge--he acquired a mind and became a rational being.  It was the knowledge of good and evil--he became a moral being.  He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor--he became a productive being.  He was sentenced to experience desire--he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment.  The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy--all the cardinal values of this existence."

Because man became morally aware, a rational being; because man became a creative and productive creature; because man learned of desire and sexual fulfilment, man was therefore damnable.  In other words, an understanding of the human condition and how to fulfil it is what made man worthy of hellfire.  Now, I ask you, does this doctrine sound like the inspirations of an ominpotent, omniscient, and all-good God?  Or does it sound like the evil and controlling manipulations of demented leaders who needed some way to enforce their religious headship over the masses?

Clearly the guilt man experience for his existence has nothing to do with an all-good God, and everything to do with a malicious psychological manipulation perpetrated on otherwise rational, good people in an effort to control their lives, and make them somehow obligated to a tyrranical system of bigoted piety.  To date, that doctrine has served its purpose well, but it is a doctrine that deserves a special place in the fictional hell it condemns people to.

The Art of Choice P. I

What choice will you make?

It occurs to me that everybody is an anarchist. There isn't a person alive who doesn't freely exercise choice between alternatives. Even those within the most oppressive political climates make choices every day, choices that compel them toward whatever is in their best interest in the moment. And those of us who live in freer political situations have no more freedom than the oppressed: we simply have less to fear from the consequences of our choices.

Anarchy, when distilled to its most sedimentary concept, simply means "rulerless," or "leaderless." This is a way of being that all of us accept in our day-to-day, mundane lives. You don't have to go to work: you choose to go to work. You don't have to research your paper for university; you choose to. You don't have to scoop your dog's droppings from the lawn; you choose to. You rule your own life on your own terms. You, as an agent of action, choose between the alternatives available to you. Even when things are chosen for you, you compel yourself to accept or reject the choice made for you.

So why do people feel so beholden to have their choices made for them? I'm thinking specifically of churches now. The religious person, it seems, accepts the choices of her predecessors--no! she chooses the choices of her predecessors when she chooses the particular brand of Christianity she will participate in. The Catholic convert can only be accepted by her socio-ecclesial circle if, like the rest of them, she chooses to accept the doctrinal choices chosen (often) 1600+ before her existence.

She may choose trinitarianism, but quietly nod at Arianism. Yet to air her innermost, her truest choice, she would be summarily forced to decide between alternative punishments for her free-thinking assent: recant or be excommunicated. So while she thinks she may be making a choice for Catholicism, by choosing a certain expression of Christianity, her mind has been decided for her long before she arrived at confirmation class. She is anarchist essentially, and Catholic positionally.

This is the juggernaut we are all (in a bitter irony) forced to face when we consider our participation in society and social infrastructure: to get along, we must go along. In order to be, we must be ordered. But we are not to order ourselves; we are not to freely compel ourselves. In religion, as in politics, we are late on the scene; we are to content ourselves in the same pasture, not choose the pasture we know we will feel most content in. Doing so, naturally, makes one anarchistic (leaderless) and heretical (literally, "able to choose").

And since we freely choose between alternatives in mundane ways all day (every day), we must certainly be incapable of choosing in extraordinary ways on any day, yes? The logic doesn't follow, I know. But before I explore this topic any further, ask yourself this question: are you choosing the life you want, or wanting to choose a life that is you?

I'm interested in thinking through this with you, if you're willing.

Review: The Atheist's Way

Since I can't seem to stop saturating myself in books to do with religion, irreligion and philosophy, I have found myself racing through a wonderful little tome by Eric Maisel. It is called, The Atheist's Way: Living Well Without Gods (pictured left).  Maisel also has a blog -- though it seems a little inactive -- dedicated to the subject matter in the book.

Where Maisel's book differs from the spate of recent atheist literature (e.g., Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, et al) is in his focus: where a thick brace of literature has been dedicated to showing the poverty of the religious life, Maisel has written to draw attention to the richness, beauty, and meaningfulness of the non-religious life.  Hitchens writes to highlight the toxicity of religious thinking; Maisel writes to encourage meaning-making in the atheist's approach.  Dennett writes to convince the reader that religion is a mental spell, a collective notion that gods influence nature therefore we worship them; Maisel writes to spur the religious into letting go of their assumptions of beneficient gods and face an indifferent universe open to innumerable possibilities for self-actualisation.  Dawkins writes to dispell delusions and rationalisations about the supernatural; Maisel writes to reassure the disbelieving that making your meaning is better than adopting an already prescribed religious meaning.  Harris writes to discourage adherence to any religious systems, and to shun the moderates for their cowardly, yet inadvertant support of extremists; Maisel writes to enliven a sense of life in the irreligious, and to move on bravely toward a whole sense of selfhood--a quality he suggests cannot be had in the religious life.

I'm sure you already see that Maisel is taking a positive approach to an often overly negative subject: disbelief.  And by negative, I don't mean to say that authors like Hitchens and Dawkins are a bad influence, or inappropriately dark and cynical.  They're not.  Still, Maisel has gone in a direction the so-called New Atheists have not: rather than tearing down gods, God, and the religions that attest to gods and God, he has taken the opportunity to outline the positive side of disbelief.

Super-Christian

So, what are the positive net gains (if I can word it that way) of disbelief?  In a nutshell, Maisel argues that the disbeliever makes his own meaning.  He does not adopt, or super-impose over his own life the meaning that religious traditions have on offer, as if fitting himself into a body-suit with the symbol for a religion splashed across his chest.

Instead, the disbeliever chooses what he values, recognises the ultimate subjectivity of participation in life, and makes his own meaning.  This bears some similarity to Ayn Rand's stance on selfishness: people always act in such a way as to keep what they value; they are therefore "selfish" or self-interested.  The man who values personal freedom acts in such a way as to keep his freedom; he develops the virtue of productivity.  He does not allow others to hand him the value of freedom because it was never anyone else's to give to him in the first place.  And the mentality that suggests meaning needs to be earned by other's approval or permissions is the very same mentality that is on display in religion: your values, your meaning, your personal actualisation is imposed on you by an already established system, and that system gives approval or not to your worth.

The evidence for this is ample.  Consider, for example, the Catholic teaching that the use of condoms is immoral.  This article suggests that the Catholic laity is in disagreement with the current pope about the immorality of condoms; but does that change anything?  It might in private practice, but in public religious life, a lot of these same Catholics who disagree with their pope will still buckle under his imposed ruling: condoms should not be used (spare, of course, if your are interested in the propositions of male prostitutes infected with AIDS).  More, those Catholics who do sheathe their swords, as it were, will struggle uselessly (and infuriatingly, if you ask me) with guilt and shame for their choice to shag in latex.  They may even go so far as to confess their wicked deed, feel better, then repeat their "sin" and be told, after multiple confessions that their values are disorderly, not in line with the teachings of the church, or that their salvation is in danger because of habitual mortal sin.

The example above illustrates rather graphically that the struggling Catholic condomite is deriving his value from the teachings and constructed meanings of his chosen church.  Maisel, if I have understood him right, would suggest that that Catholic individual is allowing some of his meaning to be chosen for him, instead of making his own meaning.  Sadly, billions of people allow themselves to be bullied by clergy that tells them they have to seek their meaning in the teachings of the church, rather than make their meaning by the act of choosing and self-actualising on their own terms, and with their own resources.

And that, it seems, is Maisel's chief point: meaning is not something you need to seek.  It is not beneficial to you simply because it is prepackaged in the guise of religion.  It is not helpful because it can be easily accessed by the ministrations of clergy who tell you what to believe and how to believe it.  That is the structure those religious people choose, and in return, because of the structure they choose, their meaning is determined for them.  They are part of the overall meaning of that religion; they do not have a self-actualised meaning of their own.

You don't have to "find" meaning.  You have to make meaning.  In other words, you have to invest yourself into your own passions, your own interests, your own wants, and then you have to do what only you can do--because you're the only one who is you--to achieve your passions, maintain your interests, and gain what you want.  You have to choose your values, not piggy-back the values of others or use stand-in values such as those enforced by religions.  Maisel, in fact, goes so far as to state that religion itself is a stand-in for meaning; that is, religion takes the rightful place of personal meaning by imposing itself as over above self-chosen meaning.

Maisel's writing is clear, gentle, and inviting.  That last qualifier, however, sometimes serves to be a detractor from his efforts, as if by writing in an inviting style he is luring or tempting the reader to try on the religionless life.  I don't think I'd mind that so much if it weren't for the fact that I appreciate much more the blunt approach of Harris or Hitchens when it comes to addressing the moral necessity for atheism.  I'm not appreciative of saccharine, or glad-handed tones regarding major life decisions.  As minor a criticism as that is, I think Maisel's book adds a much needed, and excellent view of the areligious life, and how to self-actualise even after the experience of deconversion and the confusions such a switch can make.

Senecca and Religion

Senecca the Younger

Seneca the Younger penned these famous and portentous words:

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

Being a contemporary of Christ, it seems significant to me that he would have such a perspective.  

What are your thoughts?

Defending Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais, comedian extrodinaire.

I haven't written an interactive snark-piece in quite a while.  I suppose I lost my enthusiasm for it and tried my hand at new forms of literary scrutiny.  Tonight I find myself somewhat riled and inspired to lay a curmudgeonly type-lashing to a one Josephine Vivaldo of the Christian Post.

Aside from being exceptionally poorly written, Vivaldo's comatic awareness of her subject material reads as an insult to her own intelligence.  But to spare you from my own nitpicky appraisals of Vivaldo's technical abilities, let's just jump right into the slaughter, shall we?

In her piece, Vivaldo has singled-out Ricky Gervais, a public atheist, brilliant comic, and first-class actor (see: Ghost Town, The Invention of Lying) who, during the Golden Globe Awards, made a playful remark:  "Thank you to God for making me an atheist."

Vivaldo's ignorant little scribble can't even be bothered to quote Gervais properly, let alone take the comedian's jibe in context:

"During the Golden Globe Awards, host and professed atheist Ricky Gervais said, “Thanks to God for making me an atheist,” but in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, he says he was not mocking Christians."

The conspicuous absence of the personal pronoun "you" in Gervais's joke let's us know that Vivaldo's reporting is lackadaisical at best.  I wouldn't usually take interest in such a triffling detail, but let's face it: Gervais's comment wasn't so long as to make missing words a strong possibility.  But then to cite Gervais's rebuttal to the ridiculous allegation that he was mocking Christians only shows that Vivaldo is pedaling mealy-mouthed tripe fed to her by other jaded, evangelical alarmists.

Half a second of thought would illuminate to Vivaldo and any of her like-minded and equally addled co-conspirators that Gervais was taking a playful poke at the untold scores of actors who, year after year, curry favour with the wider public by tossing out superficial homages to 'God'.  This fact is made startlingly clear when Vivaldo goes on to report that CNN reporter Piers Morgan challenged Gervais with a note on the American Christian population:

Morgan began by pointing out to the British comedian and actor that millions of Americans are in fact Christian and it seemed obvious that he was poking fun at that particular religion. In response Gervais negated the assumption of offending American Christians, especially when he personally doesn’t find it offensive when people say “thank God” all the time.

Notwithstanding the fact that the use of the word 'God' is not exclusive to Christians, it really doesn't help Morgan's case to make such blunders when Gervais openly admits that he doesn't find people's use of the phrase "thank God" in any way offensive.  This highlights a strange irony: the demand for religious tolerance is openly upheld as long as no-one is irreligious.

In North American countries, a Christian can careen headlong into a blowhard speech about evil, gay Teletubbies, or the insidious, creeping poison of condoms; and in doing so, write off a whole culture of people as godless, sinning, reprobates who will never be whole without their particular brand of Christianity, and the God they envision.  But because Ricky Gervais took a harmless poke at a customary exit quip made during celebrity galas ("thank God"), he must be mocking Christians, and should damn-well be dragged through the media's kangaroo court.

Having turned his pedestal upside-down so he can more assuredly stick to it, Morgan pressed the issue further by "rephrasing" his original question:

Morgan continued on by rephrasing his question and Gervais, 49, said “no no, I’m not mocking them, people’s beliefs aren’t my concern at all, I certainly don’t differentiate religions either, I look at all religions the same, unlike religious people I look at all religions equally.”

American Christian Jesus

Gervais's response further emphasizes my point that the amorphous title 'God' is not the exclusive property of Christians, much less "American Christians" (as if their nationality makes their spirituality somehow a purer pedigree).  The fact that Gervais considers all supernatural views as part of a homogenous batter called 'religion' rips the stuffing right out of Morgan's juvenile insistence, and any other puerile attempts at directing Gervais's remark to any specific religion at all.  And good for Gervais for pointing out that segregating between religions is the practice of religions, not the areligious.

Gervais also pointed out that the religious don't have a monopoly on what is 'good', and that,

“Some people say who says what good is but you know what I say ‘I do’ I’m good to people because it’s the way I want to be treated and I don’t believe I’ll be rewarded in heaven, I will be rewarded now.”

Despite the awkward wording of Gervais's remark, he brings up a good point: what is 'good' is not good because certain people, or religions say it is.  What is good is 'good' on its own, and if you practice those things that are evidentially good (e.g., treating people the way you'd like to be treated), then that goodness will be its own reward now.  If you're religious, you may also believe that you'll have some kind of reward for your present goodness when you're in heaven.  But the point remains that by practicing what is evidentially good now, that goodness will be rewarded or enjoyed now, in the present.

Not to be undone too easily, however, Morgan moved on to suggest that atheists, in their dotage, must feel a sense of waste if this life is all they have.

Morgan expressed his sentiment about how “the problem for atheist it must be doom and gloom when you get to like at 70 or 80, to think that’s it, that’s the end of everything, so you must fear death ten times more than Christians”.

Morgan's intensely ignorant segue, notwithstanding, Gervais responded eloquently by noting that there are many different conceptions of 'God' and that, by implication, if the aggregate number of gods in the world has still not reasonably assured people of their present and future states, why should anyone think atheism is on the deficient end of the spectrum?  Says Gervais:

“I can’t help what I believe anymore than you can, it’s up to you what you believe in. This thing about not believing in God, there are 2,780-odd gods, and if you’re a Christian you believe in one of them and you don't believe in all the others.”

Far from being a "dispute" as Vivaldo mislabelled it, the exchange was a simple exchange between two people with contrasting points of view.  Gervais, I think, came out on top of the intelligible end of things.  And as far as I'm concerned, reviewing Gervais as a tasteless air-pounder with a preachment up his sleeve is the kind of moronic ignorance Morgan and Vivaldo should be repenting of.  Gervias was who he is: a comedian with an observation and ironic comment to make, not to Christians in specific, but for the sole purpose of a joke.  Besides, if celebrities can rig galas for the singular focus of "roasting" each other, why should Gervais be harangued for telling a joke when that is what he was specifically employed to do?

Religion and Teapots

Bertrand Russell

It's certainly no secret that people do horrific and absolutely insane things as an expression of devotion to their particular religion.  Christians conjured up regrettable notions of witchcraft and slaughtered thousands, sometimes purely on suspicion and without a shred of evidence.  Muslims have had their historical share of swinging the sword and tossing rocks.  And there seems to be no end to the number of fringe-group religions and eccentric cults enacting wanton violence on others simply because they think they're under some mysterious, divine fiat that only they know about, and that only they can confirm comes from their god/gods.

Whatever the peculiars of the case, one underlying question, in particular, undergirds any helpful criticism of such fanatical religious stupidities: how can the God/gods purported be proven to be in any way real?

One philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), proposed that, in matters of the supernatural, the person who states there is a divine super-reality (including divine beings) has the responsibility to prove their statement(s) are evidentially true.

Russell used the analogy of a teapot in orbit around the moon:  anyone can say there is a teapot encircling the moon, but the person who states such a thing has the burden of proving that their statement is true by showing the evidence for their claim.  This responsibility for furnishing a positive position or proposition with accomodating evidence has become known as the "burden of proof."

In matters of religion, it is the person who states that God exists who has the burden of proof and give evidence for their claim.  The non-believer is under no such responsibility to give evidence for their non-position.  Or, to put it another way: person X claims God exists and offers evidence to prove their case; person Y makes no claim on the existence of God and therefore has no burden to prove a non-claim.

So where does this leave us?  Well, here is a clever little presentation (2 minutes) that illustrates not only the absurdity of some religious mindsets, but also incites the necessity for proving that the celestial teapot exists but only having the fanaticism of religious teapotists to point to.  Enjoy!

Thank you to Atheist Media Blog for this clever little video.

John Paul II: Saintish Update

This blood's for you!

Apparently a vial of the pope's blood drawn from him shortly before his death will be installed in the alter at a Polish church.  This "relic," as it is being described, will serve as a vampiric reminder of John Paul II's something-or-another.  I think it's really rather creepy, to be frank.  But I suppose Catholics will come up with all sorts of theologies surrounding veneration (of the dulia variety, mind), and defend their adoration of a dead man's blood come hell or high water.

Maybe the pope's second miracle will be that he prevents the blood from turning brown.  Or maybe the church will employ a bit of scientific know-how to prevent that from happening.  Personally, I think they should leave it alone and see if this pope is one of the necrotic superheroes, The Incorruptibles.

A History of God: Reflections & Review P. I

I've taken the plunge into Karen Armstrong's magnum opus A History of God (Knopf, 1993).  It is a book that any serious reader of religion and history would be well-advised to read.  The book aims to give an account of the development of the three major monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and their respective evolving ideas about God (e.g., who and what God is, how God has acted in history, and how God has -- interestingly -- taken on competing perspectives despite the same Abrahamic roots).  Finally, Armstrong examines some modern philosophies concerning God, such as the 'death of God movement' and post-modern conceptions of God.

Armstrong is no friend to ignorance, so anyone investigating the perrenial question of 'God' had better come to this volume with an open mind to learn, or an already firm grasp of the issues attending the monotheistic religions and their notions of God.  This is not to say that Armstrong has written a compendium of arcana, or some arid piece of abstracted academia.  It does mean, however, that she has taken an angle not popular to the usual considerations of religious history.

More specifically, Armstrong's work on the Judeo-Christian heritage draws from a particular source theory called the Wellhausen Hypothesis, or the Documentary Hypothesis.  Such a theory of biblical origins is minority opinion, absolutely, when contrasted with the classic circles of literal-historical method.  Though it isn't without merit, the literal-historical method takes too much advantage of the willingness and (sometimes) unintentional ignorance of the well-meaning believer. 

For example, it is clearly the case that there are two different creation accounts in Genesis, but the literal-historical method, while it may recognise this, eventually relies on the willingness of the believer to accept on faith the discrepancies in the biblical narrative.  The documentary hypothesis, while not unsympathetic to the demands of faith to believe the claims of the biblical narrative charts, dates, rearranges and makes a fair-minded attempt at explaining oddities in scripture by examining the historical-cultural events attendant to Christian holy writ.  Once that is done, the reader has a more thorough working knowledge of what the biblical authors were writing, and how they were communicating age-old stories in new symbols.  Granted, literal-historical method includes some of the same rigorous examinations of history and culture, but the difference is usually split between which hermeneutic is going to source evidence to support an already established outcome (literal-historical) and which explanation will review the evidence with an eye to assembling a scientific and irrespective account (documentary hypothesis).

Because Armstrong's account draws on the documentary hypothesis, she is bound to be discarded as 'confused' or 'godless' or what-have-you by the vast majority of Christians.  Despite this automatic anethema in the majority Christian world, Armstrong has still managed to pen one of the most dramatically successful historical theology texts in the Western world.  And the reason for this is not hard to see.

Certainly the boldly ambitious title A History of God claims people's attention right away.  But more, the gentle eloquence in Armstrong's recounting of the details of otherwise dead, dusty, and dilapidated eras gives the reader a personal sense of the events she relays.  Such an ability to suffuse historical academics with life, light, and occasional nostalgia enlivens the mind to the subject matter, and that is what I personally think owes to the massive success of Armstrong's book.

Alongside Armstrong's easy but penetrating academics, she is not afraid to call a spade a spade.  So while she examines the topics at hand, she sees the relevance of addressing contemporary issues that arise out of the mindsets of the religious history being examined.  For example, there are very few people in the televised Western world unfamiliar with the cultural tactic of claiming God for partisan motives.  Presidents and Primeministers in times of war, call God out as if he were a super-soldier destined to ordain the victory of whoever has enough public pious pomp.  Or, as bequeathed to Jews and Christians everywhere, God has culled certain people to himself as a preferred group: the elect.  Such notions of holier-than-others, or pre-ordained preferential peoples wins no sympathy from Armstrong.  In a memorable quote, she highlights the dangers of such ugly and banal concepts as 'election theology':

The dangers of such theologies of election, which were not qualified by the transcendent perspective of an Isaiah, are clearly shown in the holy wars that have scarred the history of monotheism.  Instead of making God a symbol to challenge our prejudice and force us to contemplate our own shortcomings, it can be used to endorse our egotistic hatred and make it absolute.  It makes God behave exactly like us, as though he were simply another human being (p. 54-55).

Whose side is God on?

Believing yourself more special than everybody else certainly runs one adrift of reality and sets one up to be a potential danger.  Being unafraid to reach out for a moment of sagacity, Armstrong drives home a practical and helpful point to highlight the difference in thinking of some of the ancient peoples and a more morally advanced perspective on the inherent equality of all people.

Still, Armstrong is not preachy, even if she does drop a pearl of wisdom here-and-there throughout her book.  It befits someone of her unusual erudition to address some of the more troubling aspects of humanity's sickly dogmas.  And carefully coddled as those admontions are in a lucid recounting of historical religion, nothing is lost in Armstrong's collisions with cheap theologies.

Richard Lynn: Disbelief and IQ

The Telegraph, a newspaper out of the UK, has put out an article detailing the findings of emeritus psychology professor Richard Lynn.  Lynn teaches out of Ulster University and has recently suggested that people with better than average IQs are less likely to believe in God.

Lynn's critics have labelled the findings "simplistic", and based on what I've read so far, I'd have to agree.

According to Lynn, the decline in religious affliation and belief in God dropped dramatically in the 20th century because people have become more intelligent.  A quick glance at the basic evolution of the human being, however, suggests that we may not have been as smart as our neanderthalic ancestors.  If that is true, then Lynn's findings are not only "simplistic", as his critics have charged, but inevitably wrong.

Neaderthals were highly religious (though not in an organised sense), even superstitious people, yet their overall cranial capacity suggests a larger brain, and therefore a possible better overall cerebral capability.  Mind you, as the documentary Battle of the Brains indicates, the jury's still out on whether a bigger brain means more potential capacity.  For some, smaller regions of the brain are more efficient than others who have larger regions, and visa versa.

So, while it is that neanderthals may have been smarter and people with better-than-average IQs may be less inclined to believe in God, there is no clear-cut link between belief in a set of propositions and the overall intellectual horsepower of a person's brain. 

And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that the world's major educational institutions are anything shy of nonreligious to begin with.  Hence people who flourish in academic settings are going to be much more highly influenced by the philosophical climate of the institutes they attend.  In our youth, we usually call that kind of exemplification "peer pressure", but somehow, when we peer into the upper-eschelons of academia the notion of that same "peer pressure" is overlooked, and people start exculpating themselves with unfounded excuses such as 'people are just smarter now.'  Nonsense!  People are able to access much more information now and, consequently, they are better equipped to meet the demands of reality face-on.

In any case, being better informed and having more ready access to information doesn't make a person smarter, and really doesn't show a link into disbelief.  The familiar logician's addage "correlation is not causation" is instructive here: while there may be an argument to suggest that readily available information can persuade people not to believe in God, that accessibility is not definitively the cause of a person's unbelief.  And let's not forget that there are many sincere, highly intelligent religious folk who have access to the same information that most other people do -- and they keep believing.

Having Their Cake And Eating It, Too

I don't really know anymore if it is morally acceptable for me to pick on such unwitting targets.  However, the Catholic Church really does provide a limitless storehouse of stupidity to whittle away at.  For example, I just learned that the Catholic Church has listed the "attempted ordination of women" amongst their roster of horribly horrible crimes.

The Catholic News Service notes that,

the "attempted ordination of women" will be listed among those crimes, as a serious violation of the sacrament of holy orders, informed sources said. As such, it will be handled under the procedures set up for investigating "delicta graviora" under the control of the doctrinal congregation.

And let's not forget that the delicta graviora is also the same description pinned to such base crimes as "sexual abuse."  So, while it is that the Catholic Church and I can agree that there are a good many actions and states that are horribly immoral, we certainly must part ways when it comes to whether a woman can chant the mass and preach a sermon.  And just for those technically-minded Catholics out there, we can still part ways on whether it is immoral to give a spiritual appointment (ordination) that sets a woman up as an authority in the assemblies of God.  Because while I really see no problem with dashing the hopes of an oudated and repressive patriarchy, those technically-minded Catholic parrots who just put-up with whatever's tossed at them are just as immoral, in my mind, as those people who are actually committing crimes against humanity.

How?  They've decided to jettison their reason in favour of allowing someone else -- namely the pope and his posse of misogynistic cronies -- determine their morality in opposition to observable reality.  In general, this sort of misguided acceptance of a single ruler's decrees is understood as a dictatorship, which most of the world considers immoral and inhumane.  But as long as suppressing and oppressing women is considered acceptable because such actions are declared under the banner of a "religion", then it's fine.  Because once religion is appended to a dictatorship, what is instinctively understood to be really fucking evil, is suddenly moral.

To sum:

1. The Catholic Church and I agree that sexual abuse is wrong, even evil;
2. The Catholic Church and I strongly disagree that attempting to ordain women is just as evil as other crimes against humanity.

Mind you, as an independent entity, Catholics can set up their own rules for self-governance and internal expectations, and women wanting to become priests really ought to look elsewhere.  But when the threat of damnation is extended to people who are not part of "the true Church", why would a sincere believing woman who has all the giftings of a priest not want to be a Catholic priest?  If by not being a Catholic you risk your salvation, then an intensely devout woman who wants to be a priest has to make the decision: forget her dreams and self-identified personhood, or risk her soul.  So, essentially, the priestly woman is damned if she does, and damned if she doesn't.  Looks like the Catholics can have their cake and eat it, too.

But don't worry: that same woman can just go home and have 12 babies, like a good little Catholic.  She can be "saved through childbearing" (1 Tim. 2:15).  You know, where she can find true fulfillment.

Here's another source on the same issue.

Muzzle the Man, Please

Darth Benedict, head of the Catholic Empire, has used his force to publish a book.  Again.  This time, in Light of the World, one of the topics he tackles is the subject of condom use -- something he and his other spindly-fingered, virgin Sith Lords know a lot about.  I suppose when we want advice, we're all be beholden to the experts, right?

Anyway, Catholicism's chief mouth-breather has announced it to the Empire, and to the scattered remnants of the Rebel Alliance (i.e., Protestants and Non-Catholics alike) that people can hereby use condoms in exceptional circumstances; e.g., if you're going to have sex with a male prostitute.  Or perhaps he should add "if you're going to have sex with a priest."

In any case, people are going to hit the sheets.  There's no exception to that reality.  So, just what kind of "exceptional circumstance" warrants capping one's John-Thomas?  Why, if one's John-Thomas is going to potentially threaten the life of another, of course!  But if you just want to have an hour well-spent with your partner, and not be given over 9 months later to an 18-20 year responsibility, well that's just wrong, evil, sinful, and damnably ungodly.

So are condoms valid in AIDS-riven Africa?

"The Pope made clear in his view condoms were no answer to the Aids pandemic."

So there you have it, commmoners, Darth Benedict has indicated that despite the exceptional circumstances of sexually transmitted diseases that will kill you, they are not the kind of exceptional circumstances that warrant a latex moment. But if you're an African male prostitute, perhaps with AIDS, well that's fine. Go ahead. It's exceptional only when it's exceptional, and not all exceptions are the same. Excepting exceptional circumstances, your circumstances are only exceptional if they're exceptionally exceptional. Then you can put a cap on it. But don't do it if you're just out for some fun. That would make you an evildoer.

Rational Warrant: A Critique, P. I

An argument for belief in God attempts to establish credible evidence for a divine overseer orchestrating, or being aback of, the universe.  The direction of all argumentation concerning God's existence is to start with what we do know and extrapolate outward to the best possible conclusion concerning things we don't know. 

For example, the Cosmological Argument proposes that from matter we can extrapolate that there must have been a designer because all of what is, is contingent (i.e., dependent on other material things).  That everything material is contingent necessitates that there must have been one non-contingent, or wholly independent beginning to everything else.  This wholly independent thing is often referred to as "God."

From the example of the Cosmological Argument, it can be seen that the argument progresses from what is known (the existence and characteristics of the material world) to what is unknown (God).  A note on that point: by 'God as an unknown', I simply mean that the argument itself does not prove the existence of a super-being so much as it illustrates a logical correlation; namely, that the material world seems to exist in such a way that it must have derived its existence from a point not dependent on it.  However, correlation is not causality, so the Cosmological Argument cannot be used as a proof proper for God's existence; it can, however, be used as a reduction to a possible conclusion; a "rational warrant", as it were.

Which brings us to the point of this article: I do not consider rational warrant to be anything more than begging the question (circular reasoning), or a cheap rhetorical trick that ends in relativism.

First, anyone reasoning along the lines of a classic proof such as the Cosmological Argument already has in mind the inevitable conclusion, which is fine if you are attempting to defend the cosmological proposition for God.  As a friend recently reminded me, all debate happens that way: the opposing sides know what their conclusions are, and they argue accordingly toward those conclusions.  But notice that the conclusions are already assumed.  Philosophically speaking then, arguments for and against the existence of God already assume the conclusion to the proofs they offer.  This is wholesale question-begging: X is true, this is how X is true, therefore X is true; or, God is real, the cosmological argument shows that, therefore God is real.

Now, as my friend stated, and I agreed, such reasoning is fine in a debate setting because it would be a little improper to go into a debate not knowing your position on the resolution.  However, for a philosophical proof and a didactic aide, such reasoning only gives a person logical permission to assume a plausible conclusion; that is, "rational warrant."  And rational warrant, is not proof.  Rational warrant cannot firm up the link between correlation and causality, therefore it is not conclusive proof.  Rational warrant is only a fancy way of giving yourself permission to believe a given plausibility clause when the hard work of reasoning through a syllogism is over.

That brings us to my second point: "rational warrant" is a cheap rhetorical trick.  Suppose I was to say to you, "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room," and you realised there was no door between you and the hungry tiger.  You would suddenly have a swell of emotions that correlate to your inward ideas of a hungry tiger, what that tiger is capable of doing to a person, and your own need for safety.  You would, in fact, have what Kant described as a noumenal experience.

Even before you encountered the hungry tiger, you would start experiencing that tiger as if it were real, and as if your life were in danger because of it.  Then you would take whatever measures you had to to ensure your personal safety.  All very logical, and all quite appreciable.  However, you still haven't received any proof of a hungry tiger in the next room, so you have effectively believed my proposition that "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room" because it was reasonable for you to believe me (at least for the purpose of this illustration!).  In effect, you had "rational warrant" to believe my claim.

Now let's say that two days later, you learned that I was just tricking you.  You would be right to be irritated, but you would also recognise the falsity of your "rationally warranted" beliefs concerning the 900 lbs. tiger.  And this is where the notion of "rational warrant" really breaks down: simply reasoning to a plausible conclusion is not proof, and that's all "rational warrant" is: reasoning to a plausible conclusion.  It is a stylised flash of rhetoric that gives a veneer of reason to a belief-claim.

Because "rational warrant" is a catch-phrase or byword indicating the right of every person to believe whatever they'd like based on their subjective experience of a thing, or a proposition, it reduces even further to relativism.  That is, the notion that what I believe is just as true and valid as what you believe, even if we disagree.  Objective reality (A is A) is thrown out the window, so to speak, in favour of a solipsistic encounter with the world.  Which is fine if you're a solipsist, but for those of us who don't simply assimilate external realities into our self-projections on the world, the relativism of "rational warrant" simply doesn't supply a useful tool to interacting with the world.

The idea of "rational warrant", as I recently learned, can only apply to those beliefs which are actually true.  In effect, this means that a vast majority of beliefs held through history have not been rationally warranted.  But that can only be known in retrospect because once a belief is shown to be false, it is no longer rationally warranted, and it can only be shown to be false after people have already believed a certain belief and thought themselves rationally warranted in doing so -- that was a mouthful, I know.

So for a believing Christian, say, they would consider their beliefs "rationally warranted" because they are able to determine correlations between what they experience (mysticism),  the contingencies in nature, and what they already assume about supernatural realities (e.g., that God exists).  Oddly though, a believing Christian would disagree with the beliefs derived of a Muslim experience, and visa versa, even though they may agree on a good number of things, too.  And both the Christians and the Muslims would be "rationally warranted" for both their agreements and disagreements surrounding their particular metaphysic.

Given the clash between competing belief systems, how can "rational warrant" be rationally claimed?  Simple answer: it cannot.  As I stated before, it is a cheap rhetorical trick used to prop-up the arguments of one set of beliefs, sometimes in the face of a competing set of beliefs.  And if competing beliefs cannot both be true (see: law of non-contradiction), then anyone claiming rational warrant for their beliefs has also to claim a relativistic mindset concerning reality.

In part II, I will discuss how a relativistic mindset toward reality not only denies reality but also reduces belief-sets (e.g., Christianity, Islam, religion in general) to agnosticism.

***Thank-you to AgnosticInnocence for the picture.***

Pascal's Wager: Rejected

Pascal's Wager. The notion of wagering on God's existence occurs at note 233 of Pascal's Pensées (literally, 'Thoughts').

And as one reader noted last year, the idea is that "It is better to believe in God and find out that he doesn't exist, than to not believe and find out he does." That is not a direct quote from Pascal, but it is the best summation of his famous Wager that I have heard, to date.

I'm not a fan of the Wager, personally, for a number of reasons, one of which is that citing the options of polar opposites (belief and unbelief) is not a reasonable premise for me to choose either of those polarities. I already know as much.

On top of that, however, I question the relevance of determining whether this-or-that thing is 'better' than another without having any real content to demonstrate such a claim. For example, simply stating that cheese is better than non-cheese tells me nothing about cheese that I should consider it 'better'. Similarly, telling me belief is better than unbelief tells me nothing about the content of 'belief' or 'unbelief' that I would consider one or the other 'better'.

As a conclusion to a well defined argument, the Wager can have its place. Still, Pascal's Wager is wholly dependent on having a rational, well-placed argument to render any meaning or purpose to wagering at all. And, incidentally, Pascal was not attempting an argument when he penned his famous wager, nor did he consider his Wager to be a sufficient premise to bring about salvific understanding. Pascal simply intended the Wager as an observation of the fact that people ultimately make choices; and the existence of God is just another choice about which someone can be right or wrong. Thus it is a wager, and not an apologetic.

Unfortunately, the Wager has been used as an apologetic in and of itself to coerce people into making a decision for or against Christ. Sadly, the few times I've seen this tactic used one of two results occur:

1. The person feels anxious and afraid that they may choose wrong and suffer some terrible consequence -- hell, or some other uncertainty about death and after-death.
2. The person becomes riled and considers Christians to be a batch of noisy idiots.
   

So, as a tool for evangelism, I've yet to see Pascal's Wager have a postitive net effect. It's simply too confrontational on a deeply instinctual level, and people feel deeply insulted to find themselves in the position where they have to gamble on eternity without any real understanding of why they're gambling. As a finishing pen-stroke for a well-honed apologetic, it can be used, but it does beg certain philosophical questions that weaken its seeming strength.

Work, Pray, and Lager

On one of the chat-boards I participate on, a member was concerned that his job was in danger. The situation is simply that his two bosses -- one an evangelical Christian, the other an orthodox Jew -- were requiring that each work-day start in prayer. To add, the employees were informed that they would be required to lead prayer.

Being as the concerned board-member is an atheist, he wanted to seek out advice for how to handle the situation.

The most creative response so far has been the following:

Recite this prayer:

"Our lager, Which art in barrels, Hallowed be thy drink. Thy will be drunk, I will be drunk, At home as it is in the tavern. Give us this day our foamy head, And forgive us our spillages, As we forgive those who spill against us. And lead us not to incarceration, But deliver us from hangovers. For thine is the beer, The bitter, The lager.

Ramen."

My abdomen now hurts from laughing too hard.

What would you suggest this atheist do?

Martin Luther King Jr. on Science and Religion

"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."

Alright...

...I've put some of my philosophical readings on hold to concentrate on fictional literature. Admittedly, I'm feeling the pangs of withrawal. I absolutely love reading philosophy, social commentary, and religious history. But I also love reading fictional literature. In fact, I think that Christopher Hitchens is entirely right when he notes that philosophical themes, and morality are best meted out in fiction.

So, because I am a nerd, and because I don't want to stray from my healthier habits (philosophy) and immerse myself entirely in fiction (which can be a negative form of escapism for me), I have settled on some philosophical fiction. Specifically, I am going to embark on two modern classics by the wonderfully innovative and insightful philosopher, Ayn Rand.

To begin with, I will tackle the massive story (1070 pages), Atlas Shrugged.

From there, I will read The Fountainhead.

And finally, I will take on a much shorter novel by Rand, Anthem.


This should be quite a trip down Philosophy Lane, while at the same time being a purposeful break from heady academics. At the same time, I'll be learning about Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, and growing in my understanding and appreciation of how other's look at the world around them.

I'll leave you with this penetrating quote from Ms. Rand.

"Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accepts his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.

It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some explicable claim upon him - it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man.

Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."

Thank you to Atheist Media Blog for bringing this to my attention.

Now off to reading...

Saturday Quote

"Only religion could suppose an unjustified certainty to be an improvement on ignorance." ~Victor Stenger, Philosophy Now, Issue 78, What's New About the New Atheism?

Religious Oppression

PZ Myers is usually a little too terse for my tastes, but I found myself really enjoying this particular article.

Caveat: If your religious beliefs are sensitive and delicate, read at your own risk. You have been warned.

Belting Ford In The Head

A little over a week ago, I picked up a copy of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) magazine called, Acts & Facts (v. 38, no. 5, May 2009). I was interested in finding out what is being said at the forefront of evangelical culture as regards evolution, that maniacally controversial hypothesis.

The opening article was a letter from the editor, Lawrence E. Ford, called “Time to Tighten Our Belt”. Ford's premise is that religion and politics have strayed from the conservatism of yesteryears. He disparages of the reality that in Texas, the 'buckle' of the Bible Belt, Christians have become more liberal. Ford identifies this drift away from religious and political conservatism as “battles raging against truth,” the antidote to which is to have a “commitment to truth – uncompromising biblical truth.”

And just what are these battles “raging against truth”? First, Ford states that Christians are accepting a diluted worldview that is a result of how scripture is read and interpreted. But that speculation stops with a deferal to Dr. Henry Morris III who has furnished Acts & Facts with an article dealing with the “Conflicts Between Text and Theology”. Morris's ½ page précis of classic Christian hermeneutics does nothing to validate Ford's deferal; it clarifies even less. What Morris's article does do, however, is admit that, “Interpretation places a filter on the words of Scripture so that one can 'rightly divide' (according to one's theology)” [italics mine].

So when Morris's article is taken alongside Ford's concern for the dilution of the biblical worldview in Christian culture today, we are left with two results: the interpretation of scripture is necessarily a free act done by individuals, which warrants liberalism in religion and politics; and, a justification to pick freely which side of the battle one will fight on. For if scriptural interpretation is a free act that every individual can do, then the interpretation that individual accepts may, or may not bolster the cause of evangelicals for or against evolution.

Second, Ford identifies the nature of 'science' as another battle. Says Ford, “'Science' is the critical word in this fight. Who has the right to define science and how it should be conducted and taught?” At this point, Ford unwittingly reinforces Sam Harris's crucial point that there is a “social disorder, a conversational disorder” between religionists and secularists. There will necessarily have to be disagreement on the scope and definition of certain fields of study like 'science' if the starting points of meaning are fundamentally opposed. Science does not start with religious assumptions; religion does not start with scientific assumptions. So saying, secularists are not beholden to religious definitions of science, nor are religionists bound to secularist definitions of science.

This really should come as no surprise to Ford, since he more than likely swears by a certain denominational creed. At the same time, he probably tips his hat in a warm and loving hypocritical nod to other Christian traditions not his own. Ford begins his religious definitions with the assumption that his current loyalties are correct and – in true missionary fashion – other's religious convictions are either incorrect, or somehow misguided. The point is that Ford has a different definition for his religion than others of the same faith. How much more the difference in definition between the religious and non-religious?

To see this as a battle, however, is really just blustering and propagandism. Ford has deliberately used the word 'battle' to muster the emotions of his religious cohorts and “spur [them] on to love and good deeds” (Heb. 10:24). By trumpetting out the battle-cry, as it were, Ford has bypassed the human intellect and relied solely on the reactionary emotionalism of others sympathetic to his cause. Ford does his readers a great disservice at this point by rendering conversation mute; who can levy definitions when they're too busy shouting to listen? How are secularists and religionists going to come to a place of agreement, even on such paltry items as definitions, if at least one of the two camps is stuffing the air with empty-headed emotionalism?

Nevertheless, Ford's blowhard rhetoric does put his point across, even if that point is blunt and ineffectual: Christians need to counter the claims of the non-religious scientists. There is no point of contact between creationists and evolutionists, and the sooner evolutionists admit their dunderheadedness the sooner we can get on with some real 'science'. You know, the kind of science that starts with a literal reading of Genesis, that doesn't blush at the notion of talking snakes, and willingly accepts that the earth only appears to be old, but it's actually young. The kind of science that betrays its own principles of verification by faithfully accepting a non-empirical god who currates the minutiae of the universe. The kind of science that disregards what is relentlessly provable (in this case, evolution) in favour of speculative gaps (i.e., intelligent design). The kind of science that is, in fact, religion.

Despite Ford's congenial triumphalism, his shameless plugs for ICR would read just as disingenuously if he were editing Skeptic Magazine. The fact of the matter is that Ford's whole premise rests on his presumption, nay, his faith that his religious perspectives are more science-minded than that of non-religious scientists. Because he can double-distill his scientific knowledge through his religion and his position as a spin-doctor/editor, he thinks he can afford the luxury of writing as though the irreligious are a pack of petulant bias-mongers out to stunt and stilt human growth. It does seem somewhat non compos mentus, however, to believe that evolutionists are out to harm or destroy the intellectual health of our species, when the whole point of their publications is to illuminate about the mechanisms of health and survival.

This point is lost on Ford, unfortunately. He's not interested in intellectual expansion, or socio-philosophical health and survival; he's interested in preserving his campy religious ideologies, receiving blind support from the emotionally volitile, and waging a war against evolutionists. He's interested in survival at any cost. Which is funny, overall, since that's exactly what the people he's fighting against are trying to teach, and what he's actively denying.

Karen Armstrong: What Is Religion?

Here is a presentation by Karen Armstrong -- perhaps the most respected historian on religion alive today -- on the topic of What Is Religion?

Shameless Plug: If you're still interested, I wrote on this topic not too long ago. I don't have the same level of erudition as Armstrong, but I'm working at it.