Duct tape and baling wire

Oct 14th, 2011 3:27 pm | By

An interview with Valerie Tarico.

How and why she left evangelicalism:

I would say that from adolescence on I struggled to fend off moral and rational contradictions in my faith, evolving  more and more idiosyncratic ways of holding the pieces together.  In particular, I couldn’t understand how I was going to be blissfully, perfectly happy - indifferent to the fact that other people were experiencing eternal anguish.

Bingo. That’s something that always troubles me (to put it as mildly as possible) about non-questioning evangelicals - that indifference to the fact that other people are experiencing eternal anguish. It’s a horrible, unspeakable thought, yet some people are apparently perfectly fine with it.

The final straw came while I was completing a doctoral internship at Children’s Hospital in Seattle.  My job was to provide psychological consultation to kids and families on the medical units.  I was working with kids who were dying of cancer or enduring horrible, frightening treatments in order to survive it.  As I listened to the explanations offered by people who believed in an all powerful, loving, perfectly good interventionist God, it seemed to me these “justifications” were comforting, but they didn’t make things just.  I re-read The Problem of Pain, and the resident rabbi offered Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.  Both rang hollow.  Finally I said to God, “I’m not making excuses for you anymore.” And suddenly it felt like I had been holding my God together for so long with duct tape and bailing wire that all I had left was tape and wire.  So I walked away.

She took the problem seriously, as so many people fail to do.

Morality doesn’t come from religion.  Healthy human children come into the world primed to become moral members of society, just like they come into the world primed to acquire language. Moral emotions like empathy, shame, guilt and disgust begin to emerge during the toddler years regardless of a child’s cultural or religious context. A toddler may pat an injured peer or offer a grubby toy to an adult who is distressed. A preschooler may hide behind a couch to cover a transgression. As a child’s brain develops, moral emotions are joined by moral reasoning. By age five or six, kids can argue long and loud about fairness.

Research is just starting to show how our moral emotions and reasoning are guided by powerful moral instincts.

Cf Patricia Churchland’s Braintrust – see here and here and here.

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Meanwhile, in Calabar

Oct 14th, 2011 1:52 pm | By

The Nigerian columnist and public intellectual Edwin Madunagu has written a piece about Leo Igwe and the Nigerian Humanist Movement.

I first  met Leo Igwe a couple of years ago when he came to the free library I oversee in Calabar to do some research.  From the type of books he consulted in the library and the books and papers he had with him, I guessed he was interested in philosophy, sociology and human rights.  Later, I learnt from him that he was working for a higher degree or diploma at the University of Calabar.  I also learnt that, simultaneously, he was active in a human rights organization called the Nigerian Humanist Movement…

…when Leo Igwe sought audience with me his request was promptly granted.  He told me he was organizing a number of seminars on child abuse in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states as well as a national conference on human rights.  I have forgotten the theme of the conference, but I think it was to take place in Ibadan.

I could not personally attend Leo Igwe’s events, but I encouraged the young persons around me to attend and participate actively.  Our interest in the seminars was strong on account of its specific subject, namely: rescuing, and defending the rights of, children accused of “witchcraft”.  Unrescued or undefended, these named “child witches” faced gruesome death or serious permanent disfigurement  carried out, of course, criminally or extra-judicially.  The victims of the anti-witchcraft “crusades” were mainly children from poor families and the campaigners were usually fundamentalist church groups, aided and abetted by the victims’ parents and older family members who, in almost all the cases, initially identified the “child witches” and then  invited churches to “deliver” their “evil” children.

The seminars were invariably subject to attack, and Leo was assaulted every time.

Edwin Madunagu seems to be my kind of guy.

In addition to the public library, I ran a programme aimed at developing anti-sexist, anti-patriarchal and critical consciousness in adolescent boys.  As we all should know, the prime victims of patriarchy or patriarchal system are women and children (of both sexes). Other victims include strangers, the poor, the “outcasts” and the minorities (ethnic and religious).  You will therefore appreciate why the adolescent participants in our conscientisation programme were interested in Igwe’s pro-child seminar and why I encouraged them to attend and participate actively.

Meanwhile, officials in Nigeria are throwing up stupid obstacles to keep the Nigerian Humanist Movement from registering as a corporation. Madunagu is trying to help.

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Did a wolf howl?

Oct 14th, 2011 1:20 pm | By

What’s going on, has ERV blown a new whistle or what? Suddenly Teh Menz are popping up on an old thread to display their vocabularies.

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Fallows on anti-Mormon “bigotry”

Oct 13th, 2011 5:42 pm | By

James Fallows is irritating in a different way from Andrew Sullivan. He’s reliably…middle. Safe; predictable; good at thinking what Everyone thinks.

Sometimes what Everyone thinks is just wrong. Fallows as Everyone thinks anti-Mormonism is simply another bigotry, like racism.

Groan.

I do understand the political handicapping aspect of stories about the “Mormon angle.” It’s like asking three years ago whether America was “ready” for a black president. Or whether we’re “ready” for a Hispanic, female, Jewish, Asian, Muslim, atheist, gay, unmarried, overweight, etc President.

Not quite. Some of those items are based on ideas or beliefs, while others aren’t. It’s not sensible to treat them all as the same kind of thing for this purpose.

To be against Mitt Romney (or Jon Huntsman or Harry Reid or Orrin Hatch) because of his religion is just plain bigotry. Exactly as it would have been to oppose Barack Obama because of his race or Joe Lieberman because of his faith or Hillary Clinton or Michele Bachmann because of their gender or Mario Rubio or Nikki Haley because of their ethnicity.

No, no, no, no, no. Not “exactly as” - differently from. Religion is not the same kind of thing as race or gender or ethnicity (it is however the same kind of thing as “faith” – does he really think Lieberman has a “faith” as opposed to a “religion”?).

It’s very very simple. Race and gender aren’t systems of ideas; religions are. It really is necessary to know what candidates think and believe, because what they think and believe will (obviously) influence what they do in office, even if all they think and believe is “I will do whatever it takes to stay in office.” It really is necessary to know, for instance, whether or not a given candidate can separate her religion from her work. Some people can, but it’s no good just assuming that everyone can. It’s also no good just assuming that Mormon beliefs couldn’t possibly inspire or motivate any whacked actions in office. “Mormon” isn’t just a label or an identity and we can’t treat it as such. Imagine if a Dominionist were a candidate for president – we would really have to discuss that!

 I do understand that voters assess a whole suite of traits, including race and gender and class background and religion and family status, in deciding whether or not they are comfortable with a candidate.

See what I mean about Fallows? That’s so…what is it, it’s so normal and so clueless. He’s not a clueless guy but he has this instinct for the wrong-by-banality. It’s not about being “comfortable” with a candidate, it’s about doing our best to get a sense of what the candidate will do in the job.

But for people to come out and say that they won’t back a candidate because he’s Mormon and therefore a “cult” member is no better than saying “I’d never trust a Jew” or “a black could never do the job” or “women should stay in their place” or “Latinos? Let ‘em go back home.”

Not the same thing. Mormon beliefs and political beliefs are the same kind of thing; being black and political beliefs are not.

 I disagree with most of the LDS church’s political stances, and I hated the role it played in the California Prop 8 struggle last year. But to be against candidates because of their religion? That should be seen as bigot talk — yes, even when applied to Mormons.

So there he just comes right out and says it (yet apparently still doesn’t realize he’s said it). “I disagree with the candidate’s politics, but to be against candidates because of their politics? That’s bigot talk.”

Really? So does this also apply to libertarians, socialists, communists, anarchists, centrists, reactionaries, fascists? You disagree with their politics but to be against candidates because of their politics is bigotry?

It’s nuts.

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Jackpot

Oct 13th, 2011 4:23 pm | By

Three long-term holds at the library all just turned up at once (long-term as in there are a lot of people on the list ahead of you).

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.

Rubs hands with glee.

(I know, very horse-and-buggy. But I still like books.)

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Higher bullshitting

Oct 13th, 2011 1:02 pm | By

Andrew Sullivan thinks “militant atheists” have an excessively crude epistemology. (Via WEIT)

First he tells us how his works.

As to Coyne’s challenge to present a criterion of what is real in the Bible and what is true, I’d argue that empirical claims -   like, say, a census around the time of Christ’s birth, or the rule of Pontius Pilate in Palestine at the time – can be tested empirically. But the Gospels themselves have factually contradictory Nativity and Crucifixion stories…and so scream that these are ways to express something inexpressible – God’s entrance into human history as a human being.

If you are treating these texts as if they were just published as news stories in the New York Times, you are missing the forest for the trees. You are just guilty of a category error – or rather of forcing all experience into the category of science.

No, not science. News stories in the New York Times are not science (apart from the few that are). That’s a false dichotomy. Science is not the only alternative to fiction or myth. News stories in the New York Times are not science, but they are supposed to be, and expected to be, accurate. They are expected to get things right. They are not expected to make things up. (If you don’t believe me, Google Jayson Blair.) They are expected, in short, to tell the truth.

Sullivan apparently doesn’t agree with this (which is disconcerting, given that he is a journalist).

The rub is the miracles, as Hume noted. Here we have clear empirical accounts of things that we cannot account for in nature, indeed stories that are told precisely because they defy the laws of nature. And when the real and the true seem to conflict, I think we need to rely on the true, and leave the real to one side. The point of curing a blind man is the lesson of faith: “I once was blind and now I see.” I remain agnostic about the miracles as real; I have no doubt that they were true, that those who experienced Jesus’ touch and message were transformed in ways perhaps only expressible in terms of physical miracles. That goes for Lazarus as well. When we are talking about coming back from the dead, we are entering non-real truths. And the most profound unreal truth is, of course, the Resurrection.

He’s saying stories about miracles can be true even if they’re not real. Try that with the New York Times then. Try it with the Atlantic. Try it with the Daily Beast. If Sullivan reports something, as opposed to commenting on it or interpreting it, does he give himself permission to report it as true even if he knows it’s not real? Does he actually make truth claims in print in journalistic outlets that he knows are not “real” (by which the rest of us mean “true”)? I doubt it, and if he does, he risks getting in the kind of trouble that Jayson Blair did – but with a much bigger reputation to lose.

In other words, I think he’s bullshitting. I think he’s bullshitting rather shamelessly, since he probably wouldn’t act on that (bogus-seeming) distinction in his professional life. He wouldn’t call a fiction “true” to his editors or his readers (at least I don’t think he would, because as far as I know he’s a reputable journalist).

It’s interesting that this kind of special rule doesn’t apply in other areas. There’s no such thing as “true but not real” in the courtroom, or psychology, or history, or engineering. It might be a way of talking about fiction and story-telling, but that of course is the opposite of what Sullivan means – he is not saying that the Resurrection and the New Testament are fiction.

At the end he quotes a reader

Notice that the  fundamentalist and the militant Atheist both confuse truth with fact,  the fundamentalist by insisting that truth overwhelm fact, and the  militant Atheist by insisting that fact overwhelm truth. Neither, usually, have [sic] solid epistemological grasp of truth or fact.

And adds

Because their epistemology is too crude, in my opinion.

No. Thanks, but no.

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That kind of ruckus

Oct 13th, 2011 11:42 am | By

Separation of church and state? That’s terrorism!

The mayor of Whiteville, Tennessee said his community is  under attack from a national atheist organization that is threatening to sue  unless they remove a cross atop the town’s water tower.

“They are terrorists as far as I’m concerned,” said  Mayor James Bellar about the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “They are alleging that some Whiteville resident feels very, very intimidated by this  cross.”

And that makes them terrorists. Saying a minority feels intimidated by a majoritarian religious display is terrorism, which is why the United States has never had any truck with pestilential terrorist ideas about the protection of minority rights. Thank god for loyal patriotic majoritarian anti-terrorism public officials like the mayor of Whiteville, Tennessee.

[T]he Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation said the cross is a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They’ve given the mayor until the end of October to remove the cross. If he refuses, they have threatened to sue.

“The law is very clear on this,” Freedom From  Religion Foundation co-president Dan Barker told Fox News Radio. “A secular city  may not promote or hinder religion. We don’t have a problem with believers putting up crosses wherever they want, but this is a cross put up by the city on the city water tower.”

Terrorist bastard. Terrorist communist Muslim socialist anarchist godhating bastard.

Barker said they’ve been sending letters to the city  since last year demanding that the cross be taken down, acting on behalf of an  unnamed resident who complained.

“It offends many residents,” Barker said of the  cross. “Many of them think the cross symbol is an offensive symbol – that it’s  an insult to humanity.”

But Mayor Bellar said he doesn’t believe that’s  true.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t even think it’s a Whiteville resident,” he said. “We don’t have people of that belief here and if we do they’re not going to raise that kind of ruckus for the rest of the town.”

He said menacingly.

H/t Ed Brayton.

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Finders keepers

Oct 12th, 2011 4:21 pm | By

Dear old tradition.

Bride kidnapping, or “bridenapping”, happens in at least 17 countries around the world, from China to Mexico to Russia to southern Africa. In each of these lands, there are communities where it is routine for young women and girls to be plucked from their families, raped and forced into marriage. Few continents are not blighted by the practice, yet there is little awareness of these crimes, and few police investigations.

Well, you see, it’s something that happens to women and girls, and it doesn’t matter what happens to them. They aren’t really people you know. They look like people, sort of, but that’s deceptive – it’s just an outer thing, like the skin on a mango. They’re not really real people who feel things and think about things, the way you and I do. They’re hollow inside. It doesn’t matter what happens to them.

Up to a third of all ethnic Kyrgyz women in Kyrgyzstan are kidnapped brides, and some studies suggest that, in certain regions, the rates of bride kidnapping account for up to 80 per cent of marriages. In six villages scrutinised for a recent survey, almost half of the 1,322 marriages registered were from bride kidnapping, and up to two-thirds were non-consensual. Earlier this year, two 20-year-old students committed suicide after falling victim to bridenapping. The deaths of Venera Kasymalieva and Nurzat Kalykova prompted demonstrations in their home province of Issyk-Kul, but little has changed.

Don’t worry. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a reflex. It’s like lobsters trying to get out of the boiling water.

Aminata Touré, chief of the Gender, Human Rights and Culture branch of the UN Population Fund, said: “What we really need is more research to come up with the level of the problem. For something to be registered as a crime, it has to be reported; that’s the problem, because it’s often seen as a cultural practice and not a crime. When it’s not perceived as a crime, it becomes even harder for this practice to be registered as one.

“These are issues that sometimes it is problematic even to talk about. The bottom line is that women are considered as commodities – both by the husband who takes them and their own families who accept a deal.”

It’s a beautiful romantic traditional way to get possession of a commodity.

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Ferocious extrapolation

Oct 12th, 2011 9:37 am | By

The new bandwagon (or meme): moan a deep moan about the persecution of Christians in places like the UK and the US. A guy called (inelegantly) Tom J Wilson does a particularly maudlin version for the Huffington Pest.

The fact that British police would consider the displaying of Christian scripture an illegal offence is a concerning indication of the mentality that British society has come to adopt towards all things Christian.

For anyone who follows the British media’s reporting of American politics, the continuous attempt to run down certain American politicians on account of their faith rather than engaging with their politics has now become a rather boring familiarity.

Bush and Palin are crazed evangelical fundamentalists we are forever being told, oh yawn, is this kind of cheap and lazy defamation really what we have to make do with for journalism?

Is it any more cheap and lazy than what he’s saying? And, is it not the truth? (And are we really forever being told that about Bush now?) And, is it not relevant and important? Do their evangelical beliefs not influence their policies? Is evangelical belief simply and safely inert?

Yet what is far more concerning is what is happening to Christians here in our own country.  It is only when one steps back and takes an overview of the litany of cases where Christians have been discriminated against for their religious convictions, that it is possible to appreciate what resembles a sustained assault against the Christian communities in Britain.

He then proceeds to offer a list of apocryphal stories, exaggerated stories, and “yes; so?” stories, which do not add up to anything that resembles a sustained assault against the Christian communities in Britain.

It is as if there is a systematic effort to extrapolate British society from its Christian heritage and the values that have for centuries served as a basis for British culture and identity.

Ah, the poor guy – he doesn’t know what “extrapolate” means, and he went and used it in a published article. So embarrassing.

As much as I am not a Christian, it still seems clear that all of us who value the rights and freedoms afforded by a liberal democracy should ensure that there is fair treatment for Christians in Britain.

More than that, we as a society need to recognise that Christianity has played a major and for the most part extremely positive role, in forming our nation’s history and national identity.

More “positive” than a secular worldview would have played? Doubtful.

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More godless groups in the world

Oct 11th, 2011 11:11 am | By

Leo Igwe sent me the link to a heartening article about the global energization of atheism.

At the World Humanist Congress in Oslo in August, delegates from India,
Uganda, Nigeria, Argentina and Brazil — all countries where belief in a supreme deity or deities has a strong hold — reported mounting interest in their philosophy.

Like their counterparts in Europe and North America, they argue that morality
is based in human nature and does not need a father-figure god to back it up
with punishment in an afterlife, in which they do not believe.

“There are more godless groups in the world than ever before,” Sonja
Eggerickx, a Belgian schools inspector who is president of the International
Humanist and Ethical Union, told the Congress.

We can talk to each other more easily than ever before. (Of course, so can Dominionists…)

U.S. delegates, including a serving army major who has just established an
organisation for atheists in the military, spoke of a surge of rejection of
religion in all its forms among young Americans — a point some recent opinion
surveys back up.

In Manchester in May, British Humanists — one of the world’s oldest
groupings — were told of a sharp rise in humanist birth, marriage and death
ceremonies, and strong growth in their association’s four-year-old student
wing.

In Ireland, a country where the influence of the Catholic Church was for decades dominant in
all areas of life including politics and government decision-making, an optimistic national humanist association met in Carlingford in late August.

…

In Nigeria, where the openly non-religious face Christian preacher-inspired
public opprobrium as “immoral reprobates” or “Satanists” and in the Islamic
north are treated as apostates, the humanist movement held its Congress in Abuja
in September.

Leo’s talk at that Congress is at the ur-B&W.

 

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Apostles have been raised up by God

Oct 11th, 2011 10:06 am | By

Via Ed Brayton, Terry Gross talks to the apostle C Peter Wagner. Be afraid.

On demons

“As we talk, in Oklahoma City there is an annual meeting of a professional
society called the Apostolic — called the International Society of Deliverance
Ministers, which my wife and I founded many years ago. … This is a society of
a large number, a couple hundred, of Christian ministers who are in the ministry of deliverance. Their seven-day-a-week occupation is casting demons out of people. And they have professional expertise in this and they happen to meeting — to be meeting right now. My wife is one of them. She’s written a whole book called How to Cast Out Demons. And I don’t do that much. Once in a while when I get in a corner, I might. But that’s — that’s been her ministry.
And so I’ve been very, very close to that for years. We’ve been married for 60
years.”

On people in American politics being possessed by demons

“We don’t like to use the word possessed because that means they don’t have any power of their own. We like to use the word afflicted or, technical term, demonized. But there are people who — yes, who are — who are directly affected by demons, not only in politics, but also in the arts, in the media and religion in the Christian church.”

This guy is seriously terrifying. He’s not some sad Dennis Markuze, he’s got a lot of followers. When exactly will the witch-hunts start, one wonders.

On demon identification

“Sometimes they know. Sometimes the demon has identified itself to the person. Sometimes you can tell by manifestations of superhuman, unhuman behavior. Sometimes you can tell by skilled deliverance ministers. My wife has a five-page questionnaire that she has people fill out before she ministers to them. So she asks the kind of questions that a medical doctor would ask to find out, to diagnose an illness. So she actually does diagnostic work on people to discover not only if they have demons, but what those demons might be.”

She actually does diagnostic work, and demons are as real as bacteria, and her diagnostic work can detect them and say what kind they are, just like a medical doctor…Yet these people aren’t some hicks who live 4o miles up Cowshit Road and can’t do much damage.

On whether other religions and nonbelieving Christians are
demonic

“Well, it means they’re not part of the kingdom of heaven. It means they’re
part of the kingdom of darkness. An apostle, a friend of mine in Nepal, once
told me that every Christian believer in Nepal that he knows of has been
delivered from demons. That their former Hindu religion had implanted, or the
demons had gained access, and that in order to become Christian believers, the
demons had to be cast out. Of course, we have many examples in the Bible of the same thing.”

Ah well if a friend of his told him that – there’s no more to be said.

On what it means to be an apostle

“In terms of the role of the apostle, one of the biggest changes from traditional churches to the New Apostolic Reformation is the amount of spiritual authority delegated by the Holy Spirit to individuals. And the two key words are authority and individuals — and individuals as contrasted to groups. So now, apostles have been raised up by God who have a tremendous authority in the churches of the New Apostolic Reformation.”

He thinks he’s been raised up by God. He thinks he has spiritual authority. He’s apparently serious.

If only these people were just a tiny minority.

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A foxhole atheist speaks up

Oct 11th, 2011 9:28 am | By

A-News talks to Justin Griffith, FTB colleague, Military Director of American Atheists, and the guy behind Rock Beyond Belief.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhKKLhGijuQ

 

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United for separation of church and state

Oct 10th, 2011 5:36 pm | By

Another reply to Wallis and Pinsky. (I like it when the objects of theist bullying fight back. Sue me.) This one is by Rob Boston of Americans United.

There are people in this country who belong to fundamentalist Christian religious groups and who believe that they have the right (and perhaps the duty) to run your life.

That is a fact. These people exist. I’ll be spending some time with them this weekend at the Family Research Council’s “Values Voter Summit.”

It’s also a fact that some folks would like to pretend that these people don’t exist, or that they are a fringe group that can be easily dismissed. Some evangelicals are embarrassed by the antics of politically active, extreme fundamentalists, but instead of standing up to them, they’ve decided instead to criticize those of us who write about the Religious Right.

It’s a classic “kill the messenger” scenario.

…

Our open letter sets the record straight. Those of us who write about the Religious Right are not overreacting. Nor do we, as Wallis and Pinsky seem to think, believe that all evangelicals are theocrats. Indeed, we know that the theocratic wing is a minority – but we also know that a minority can have influence far beyond its numbers.

…

We write about these things because we believe there are people out there who support church-state separation and maybe they’ll get involved in stopping the Religious Right – if they have the facts they need. So be assured that we’re not going to let two naysayers who can’t grasp what’s going on shout us down or intimidate us into silence. (In a USA Todaycolumn, Pinsky says that David Barton, a man whose phony “Christian nation” claptrap is considered gospel in fundamentalist churches all over America and who helped dumb-down social studies standards in Texas, is a marginal figure. Talk about clueless!)

As long as I have the power to turn on a computer or pick up a pen, I’m going to keep writing about the threat the Religious Right poses to American values and freedoms. And yes, I intend to call out the theocrats when it’s necessary.

Very well said.

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Scenic interlude

Oct 10th, 2011 5:13 pm | By

I took a dog friend to the beach at Golden Gardens this afternoon. It was beautiful and stormy.

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Dude – Title II of the Federal Civil Rights Law of 1964

Oct 10th, 2011 5:08 pm | By

The Center for Inquiry reports:

Prejudice against atheists manifested itself again when The Wyndgate Country
Club in Rochester Hills, Michigan (outside of Detroit), cancelled an event with
scientist and author Richard Dawkins after learning of Dawkins’s views on
religion. The event had been arranged by the Center for Inquiry–Michigan (CFI), an advocacy group for secularism and science, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

The Wyndgate terminated the agreement after the owner saw an October 5th
interview with Dawkins on The O’Reilly Factor in which Dawkins
discussed his new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really
True.

In a phone call to CFI–Michigan Assistant Director Jennifer Beahan, The
Wyndgate’s representative explained that the owner did not wish to associate
with individuals such as Dawkins, or his philosophies.

Oh gee, that’s against the law. CFI has quite a few lawyers on the staff. The owner is in for a bumpy ride.

“It’s important to understand that discrimination based on a person’s
religion—or lack thereof—is legally equivalent to discriminating against a
person because of his or her race,” said Jeff Seaver, executive director of
CFI–Michigan. “This action by The Wyndgate illustrates the kind of bias and
bigotry that nonbelievers encounter all the time. It’s exactly why organizations
like CFI and the Richard Dawkins Foundation are needed: to help end the stigma attached to being a nonbeliever.”

Stigma? Stigma? STIGMA? What stigma? There is no stigma! Everybody knows that. It’s all just a big cry-baby fuss by gnu atheists. Joe Hoffmann said so last April, and Jacques Berlinerblau totes agreed with him.

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More from “religion makes people good” dept

Oct 10th, 2011 10:59 am | By

Haredi protesters pitch a fit about a new girls’ school – a religious school! - next to “their” neighborhood.

Senior Beit Shemesh rabbis took part in the rally, in which participants called for “maintaining the purity of the haredi neighborhoods against strangers plotting to desecrate them, backed by the evil regime.”

Got it all, dunnit –  purity, strangers, plotting, desecrate, the evil regime. You can’t get much more viciously crazy and anti-human than that.

A female journalist was assaulted by a small group of young protestors, who
cursed and spat at her as well…

According to the students’ parents, groups of radical haredim arrive at the
school from time to time and swear at the girls.

Two haredi men were arrested this week on suspicion of throwing eggs and
tomatoes at students. About two weeks ago, stones were hurled at a boys’ school belonging to the same educational network, injuring a student in the leg.

…

The haredim are opposed to the girls’ school due to its location, facing the windows of a haredi neighborhood. Efforts to reach an understanding between the haredi residents and the national-religious parents before the start of the school year failed.

Religion makes people just wonderful.

 

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Some on the left

Oct 10th, 2011 9:45 am | By

Another intimidation piece directed at journalists and researchers who write about dominionism, back in August. It’s in the Washington Post, which is a nice gig if you’re trying to intimidate people.

Here we go again. The Republican primaries are six months away, and already news stories are raising fears on the left about “crazy Christians.”

One piece connects Texas Gov. Rick Perry with a previously unknown Christian group called “The New Apostolic Reformation,” whose main objective is to “infiltrate government.” Another highlights whacko-sounding Christian influences on Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. A third cautions readers to be afraid, very afraid, of “dominionists.”

The stories raise real concerns about the world views of two prospective Republican nominees. But their echo-chamber effect reignites old anxieties among liberals about evangelical Christians. Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world.

Maybe some on the left do, but the authors of the articles in question do not, so it’s bloody unfair to imply that they do. It’s an intimidation move.

This isn’t a defense of the religious beliefs of Bachmann or Perry, whatever they are. It’s a plea, given the acrimonious tone of our political discourse, for a certain amount of dispassionate care in the coverage of religion. Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they’re Christian. One-third of Americans call themselves “evangelical.” When millions of voters get lumped together and associated with the fringe views of a few, divisions will grow. Here, then, are some clarifying points.

But the writers in question took the requisite care. They didn’t lump all evangelicals with dominionists – on the contrary: they point out that to dominionists, plain old evangelicals are way too lukewarm. And dominionists, unfortunately, are not “a few.”

Evangelicals generally do not want to take over the world. “Dominionism” is the paranoid mot du jour. In its broadest sense, the term describes a Christian’s obligation to be active in the world, including in politics and government. More narrowly, some view it as Christian nationalism. You could argue that the 19th- and early 20th-century reformers – abolitionists, suffragists and temperance activists, for example – were dominionists, says Molly Worthen, who teaches religious history at the University of Toronto.

Well you could, but equally you could argue that anti-abolitionists and anti-suffragists were dominionists. Just as not all evangelicals are dominionists, so not all 19th century Christians were abolitionists…to put it mildly; in fact abolitionists, Christian and otherwise, were a tiny minority, despised by almost everyone. It’s endlessly irritating the way contemporary Christians claim credit for abolitionism when it would make vastly more sense for them to admit blame for pro-slavery.

Extremist dominionists do exist, as theocrats who hope to transform our democracy into something that looks like ancient Israel, complete with stoning as punishment. But “it’s a pretty small world,” says Worthen, who studies these groups.

Mark DeMoss, whose Atlanta-based public relations firm represents several Christian groups, put it this way: “You would be hard-pressed to find one in 1,000 Christians in America who could even wager a guess at what dominionism is.”

Seriously?! She quotes a PR guy on the subject as if his views were disinterested scholarship?

Washington Post, where are your editors?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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Talk2Action talks back

Oct 9th, 2011 6:10 pm | By

More on Jim Wallis and Mark Pinsky, at Talk2Action, which was the object of much of their criticism/bullying.

It was bad enough when Mark I. Pinsky recently took to the op-ed page of USA Today to smear four Jewish writers who have had the temerity to write critically and well about dominionism and related matters — comparingtheir work to historic anti-Semitic smears including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Then Jim Wallis chimed in last week, accusing unnamed liberal writers of engaging in thought crimes against evangelicals.  His charges were as unsubstantiated as Pinsky’s, whose essay he praised and linked to.

Some of us who figured to be among the unnamed decided it was time to speak, perchance to be heard.  So we wrote an Open Letter to Jim Wallis asking that he please stop mischaracterizing our work and that he rethink and renounce his endorsement of Pinsky’s outrageous smears.  I am pleased to report that our modest effort has helped spark some discussion in the greater blogosphere.

Pinsky comments.

 I stand by the point of the piece. The exigencies of politics/academics/journalism/fundraising notwithstanding, this is about a need for a boogeyman, particularly in an election year.  I maintain these theological doctrines are numerically marginal and their influence on any serious GOP presidential candidates tenuous. I seriously doubt that more than five percent of the suburban evangelicals who form the bedrock of the demographic would recognize the bizarre tenets of the New Apostolic Reformation; that figure might bump to the 10-15 percent range for Dominionism.

Glib, isn’t it – who cares what he “doubts,” even seriously? Maybe he should have found out before writing that article, instead of just going by his hunch.

Chip Berlet retorted:

Having just spent two days at the 2011 Values Voter Summit in DC I assure you that Christian Nationalism in the form of Dominionism is hardly marginal. Major Republican Presidential hopefuls pitched to the audience of over 2000 committed conservative activists. Jews are given revocable full citizenship in the Christian nation they envision. You still owe us an apology.

Stay tuned.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
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Opening the door

Oct 9th, 2011 11:35 am | By

It’s starting already.

Hundreds of people are expected to gather tonight on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard to declare themselves “without religion.” The move follows the recent District Court ruling granting author Yoram Kaniuk recognition as “without religion” by the Interior Ministry.

The meeting, to be held in the abandoned building on Rothschild Boulevard which has become an ad-hoc community center for protesters, is being organized on Facebook by Tel Aviv poet Oded Carmeli. So far, about 600 people have confirmed they will be attending.

Participants will be signing affidavits in the presence of attorneys, informing the Interior Ministry of their change of status to “without religion.”

Mazel tov!

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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There’s probably no bus

Oct 9th, 2011 10:47 am | By

Oxford Christians tell Dawkins where to get off.

In 2009, atheists in London paid for 200 adverts on the city’s buses, declaring: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Now Premier Christian Radio has paid for its own version on Oxford buses, after the distinguished evolutionary biologist turned down the chance to debate with Christian philosopher William Lane  Craig when he visits the city later in the month.

The new advert reads: “There’s probably no Dawkins. Now stop worrying and enjoy Oct 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre.”

The trouble with that as a witticism is that it isn’t true. It’s as if X taunts Y by saying “You flunked out of high school!” and Y returns the favor by saying the same thing, when in the first case it’s true and in the second case it isn’t. That’s one of the first things you learn as a child: when exchanging taunts with a sibling/cousin/friend/enemy you have to avoid that particular trap.

There are good reasons to think there is a Dawkins. I’ve seen him myself, I’ve exchanged a few words with him. I know other people who have talked to him. I’ve seen him on DVDs and YouTube, I’ve heard him on the radio and in podcasts, I have books he’s written. I don’t think Oxford University is deceived about his reality. That’s just a few of the good reasons to think there is a Dawkins.

God is very different in this respect. I’ve never seen God or exchanged words with it. I don’t know anyone who has. I don’t know of any reliable accounts of anyone who has – not one. All the purported information about God that I know of is in the form of stories or apologetics. I’ve never seen God on tv or You Tube or heard God on the radio or in podcasts. I have no books that God has written, though I have one it’s purported to have written (but is obviously written by a number of human beings). There are good reasons not to think God exists, and no good reasons to think God does exist. There are good reasons to think God doesn’t exist.

So the two ads are asymmetrical, you see. Because there are good reasons to think God doesn’t exist, the sentence ”There is probably no God” is not a daft sentence, while because there are good reasons to think Dawkins does exist, “There is probably no Dawkins” is a daft sentence.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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