Tag religion
The Abiding Faith Of Americans
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BRAAAIIINNNSSS!!
Seems like it was only a few months ago that the media had latched on to a story in New Scientist Magazine about a little study which suggested that our brains may be “hard-wired” for religious belief, and there was the expected round of resultant crowing from the Creationists and other looney religious types who saw this as legitimization, as well as some deft sociobiological rationalizations like this classroom lecture from Stanford anthropology professor Robert Sapolsky (the video in this link is quite long, so save it for some point where you have the time to watch), who offers a very good evolutionary rationale.
Now, however, comes the counter-argument that “hard-wired” is not necessarily the same as “deterministic”. A study by a different psychologist that was published last month considered the disparity in social dysfunction between the less-religious and more-religious countries in Europe and found that the more secular a society is, the less likely it is to suffer from various social ills such as high rates of homicide, teen pregnancy, and even unemployment. The argument thus made is the old nature-vs-nurture conundrum: we might be born with a predisposition to believe in religion, but we aren’t compelled to do so, particularly when acculturated otherwise.
On a slightly different, but thematically related, topic, the latest ish of Scientific American features a story about an emerging understanding of depression as an evolutionary adaptation. Depression and other mental illnesses are more clearly understood now in their physiological dimensions than they were years ago, but now are being looked at from an evolutionary perspective: i.e., what evolutionary value is there in the physical changes that occur in the brains of people with depression? The latest suggestion, according to this article, is that the state of depression acts as a counter-balance to our normally imaginative minds — in fact, the very sort of “normal” human mind that likes to believe in religion and other supernatural phenomena. People who are mildly depressed tend to have a more objective, analytical and realistic outlook on the world than either people with severe depression or “normal” affect. So, say the researchers involved in this study, mild occasional depression is almost like a mechanism for improved analytical ability or for a sort of “breather” for the brain to assimilate and assess the input it has received.
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Disturbing Factoid Of The Day
Just in case you can’t read that, it says:
57% – Percentage of the general public who believe that divine intervention can save a person when doctors deem treatment to be futile.
19% – Percentage of physicians who believe this to be true.
Frankly, I’m not surprised in the least to know that a majority of Americans believe this (after all, they voted for George Bush TWICE), but I am scared shitless to discover that nearly 20% of doctors do.
Problem is, by the time they’ve got me hooked up to life support, I won’t be able to ask them which group they belong to. That’s why I designated a health care proxy when I had my bypass operation several years ago, and why you should, too. Don’t leave your life up to The Imaginary Grandpa and ZombieBoy.
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You Know How Those Jews Are
I don’t know if you caught wind of this news story a couple of weeks ago, but a Florida state legislator wants to add this license plate design to the 109 specialty plates already available to Florida drivers. (No, really, I counted them) He also has several other similarly religious-themed choices he’d like to add.
As you would expect, there’s some opposition from some obvious parties, like the ACLU. They argue that a plate design like this means that the state might be compelled to make the same offer available to virtually any group, including hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and that might be a slippery slope they don’t want to find themselves on.
A similar agrument is being made by State Rep. Kelly Skidmore of Boca Raton, who says that as a Catholic she doesn’t want to see these plates approved because then the Jews might want them, too. How charming. This is the second time in just a few weeks where some Democratic state legislator has put her foot firmly in her mouth in the name of religious bigotry. Just goes to show that the Republicans don’t have a lock on stupidity and hate, I guess.
P.Z. Myers weighed in on this yesterday, pointing out that not only is this a case of the Christians expecting special treatment as “THE Only Religion”, but also asking how much flak do we think this would have caused if an atheist group had petitioned for an “I DON’T Believe” plate.
When enough people share a delusion, it loses its status as a psychosis and gets a religious tax exemption instead. – Ronald de Sousa
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Papa Ratzi Must Be Busy
I suppose Ash Wednesday and Lent and all that has been keeping the Pope occupied, so it has been up to the Church of England to fill in with the assorted dumbass remarks this week.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has put everybody’s panties in a wad with his statement that it will be "unavoidable" that Sharia law will have to be accepted in the U.K. As is the case throughout Europe, there are more and more Muslims emigrating to Britain. The Archbishop, Dr. Rowan Williams, told a BBC reporter that he thinks incorporating elements of Sharia into the legal system would help Muslims feel more a part of British society by not forcing them to choose between religion and state.
Well, didn’t THAT set off a shitstorm! I can see where Williams was trying to go with this — he was trying to suggest that private courts using some parts of Sharia law become available to settle business disputes and other intra-community arguments. Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in the U.K. and in the U.S., for example, operate their own rabbinical courts that adjudicate divorces, personal disputes, and matters of religious doctrine. But in the process of talking about the idea, what he managed to say was that one should not have to choose between one’s religious beliefs and a "universal" law, and that’s what has everybody pissed off. That he said it in the context of Sharia law, which grants few legal rights to women and is notorious for harsh corporal punishments and death sentences only makes things worse. Oh, and then there’s that whole "multiculturalism" and "PC" argument. AND that he’s talking about freedom-hating bomb-throwing A-rabs. Any way you look at it, he should have kept mum about the whole thing, because he’s got liberals, conservatives, Christians and Muslims all up in arms. His Holiness would be proud.
MEANWHILE…N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham (the #4 guy in the CofE), is trying to bump up his GDI to 100,000,000 with his latest set of remarks about "heaven" Seems he’s more of a Rapture sort of fellow than the sort who think heaven is like those Philadelphia Cream Cheese ads, but sort of in reverse. It’s the "saved" people who will be up and running around when Jesus gets back, and he’ll be putting all of you to work. This hasn’t gone over too well with some of his parishioners, but, as always, what the guy with the collar says is right and they’re wrong…or so says the guy with the collar. The amount of mental energy that has to go in to thinking up all this bullshit is simply astonishing.
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Shut The Huck Up
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” — Gandhi
One of my ongoing complaints about “Christians” in general is that so few of them seem to be willing to step up and call out the egregious behavior of the fundamentalist crowd that has come to dominate the religio-political debate in this country. So it’s encouraging to read a piece like this one by Reverend Welton Gaddy, the president of the Interfaith Alliance. In it, he takes Mike Huckabee to task for something that fundies do all too often: claim the direct intervention of God on their behalf. In this case, he’s chastising Huckabee for claiming that God is putting him ahead in the polls, but fundies love to claim that God or Jesus does everything from score the winning touchdown to pick winning lottery numbers to give them driving directions. (Gaddy also put Mitt Romney on notice after his “JFK speech” a few weeks ago)
Of course, Huckabee is following in the steps of George W. Bush, who has claimed that God tells him what to do as President — the Iraq War, for example, was apparently a direct order from God. Hey, Nixon used to talk to Abraham Lincoln , so I suppose we’re pretty comfortable with having delusional men in the Oval Office.
Talking directly to God doesn’t always seem to work out. Ask Pat Robertson, who has been communicating directly with God for years and years and routinely sharing the gist of his conversations with his fundie followers via his TV show. Or the Rapture folks, who tell us every year that this is THE year for sure.
It’s encouraging to see even a little reaction from “progressive” Christians like Dr. Gaddy, but there really needs to be so much more.
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Freedom FROM Religion
“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” — Mitt Romney, December 6, 2007
Fifteen percent of the population of the United States self-identifies as atheist or agnostic. That’s more than any religious affiliation except Roman Catholics and Baptists, and almost ten times as many people as there are members of Romney’s own Mormon church. And yet, in the process of justifying his own sectarian beliefs, even as he used the words “no religious test” as they apply to running for public office, he still managed to verbally invalidate the inalienable rights of millions of Americans by implying the existence of just such a test to discriminate between believers and non-believers. This Washington Post editorial this morning quite rightly chastises Romney for the implication, all too commonly repeated, that non-believers are somehow less deserving of essential liberty.
It is hypocritical to assert that HIS religious faith is irrelevant to his ability to serve as President while simultaneously asserting that those without religion are not welcome in the halls of government or in the land of freedom itself. Religious affiliation should indeed be utterly irrelevant to the qualifications of any individual to serve at any level of government. The foundations of American governance make no provision for religion whatsoever and in fact go out of their way to PREVENT religion from playing a role in the practical business of democracy. The separation of church and state exists to protect each from one another.
I can only echo the words and thoughts of this blogger as he says:
Although he addressed the speech to all Americans, he was not talking to me when he gave this speech. Romney made it perfectly clear that as President he would represent non-believers like me with reluctance at best. We do not fit into his idea of Americans; we are an after-thought.
If the two political parties in this country are headed towards the conclusion that, as an atheist, I am not a true American, then my family and I will, in effect, be sent into political exile. For me (as for the ancient Athenians, who also valued political partipation as a part of the core of a person’s identity), exile robs life of its meaning.
Romney, unwittingly or not, for reasons of political expediency or not, threatened me with political — and therefore, for a non-believer, spiritual — exile in his speech today.
How dare Mitt Romney and others like him stand before the entire nation and disqualify me and millions more like me on the basis of the very sort of intolerance that the founders of this nation sought to banish? His “I’m not one of THEM, I’m one of YOU” speech smacks of cowardice and craven appeasement. He should be ashamed to present himself as a qualified candidate for the country’s highest office if he cannot wholeheartedly represent the interests of ALL the people rather than those he seeks to side with out of political expedience. And the same holds true for each and every candidate of both parties, indeed each and every candidate for any public office in the United States.
In 1960, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy rose to address the issue of his own religious belief as it related to his ability to perform the duties of president, he said these words:
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end – where all men and all churches are treated as equal – where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice [my emphasis] – where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind – and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe – a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the Nation or imposed by the Nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would, our system of checks and balances permit him to do so – and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test – even by indirection – for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.
I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none – who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him – and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.
This is the kind of America I believe in – and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we might have a “divided loyalty,” that we did “not believe in liberty” or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the “freedoms for which our forefathers died.”
To borrow from the late Lloyd Bentsen, you are no John Kennedy, Mr. Romney.
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This Pisses Me Off, Too
Maybe tomorrow there will be less ranting here. Maybe not.
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Mr. Pot, Meet Mr. Kettle
In today’s Slate, book critic Mark Oppenheimer has a piece about the relative validity of Scientology. His premise boils down to this: don’t look too closely at how wacko it is, because you’ll only invite people to look at just how wacko Christianity and Judaism are. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone to think that religions based on zombie worship, virgins giving birth, flaming bushes, and all those other assorted “miracles” were somehow not quite believable. Laugh all you want about Xenu, folks, YOUR worship of imaginary omnipotent grandfathers is TOTALLY legit. Riiiiight….