| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Dan Clore" |
| Date: |
03 Apr 2005 07:41:58 AM |
| Object: |
The End of Reason |
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
The End of Reason
By David Morris
AlterNet
March 31, 2005.
Organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new
level, so let's call its institutions by their proper name:
superstition-based institutions.
For Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, until 2003 the deputy head of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the
Vatican's most powerful office, seeing The DaVinci Code in a
Vatican bookstore was the last straw. In early March he
lashed out at Catholic bookstores for carrying the book, and
directed Catholics not to read it. Why? "There is a very
real risk that many people who read it will believe that the
fables it contains are true."
Fables?
Dan Brown's phenomenal bestseller suggests that Jesus was an
immensely popular and prophetic leader who married one of
his closest associates and had a family. Archbishop Bertone
and the Church maintain that Jesus was at the same time a
man, the son of God, and God himself, that a virgin woman
gave birth to him and remained a virgin, that a few days
after he was killed he came back to life and shortly
thereafter was taken up to heaven to spend an eternity
directing the destinies of billions of people.
In a rational world the burden of proof as to which is fable
would fall on the Church. But there's the rub. For when it
comes to organized religion, no burden of proof is required.
On the contrary, by definition, religion requires faith and
faith renounces evidence. Taking a proposition "on faith"
means to consciously and willfully refuse to examine the facts.
There is a word for this type of thinking: Superstition.
Many dictionaries define superstition as "belief which is
not based on human reason or scientific knowledge." The
American Heritage Dictionary defines superstition as "a
belief, practice or rite irrationally maintained by
ignorance of the laws of nature" and "a fearful or abject
state resulting from such ignorance or irrationality."
Of course, we all have our superstitions. I may refrain from
walking under a ladder, or throw salt over my shoulder after
a salt spill to avoid bad things from happening to me. But
organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new
level. It demands that we govern our lives with
superstition, promises us eternal salvation and bliss if we
do, and threatens us with eternal damnation and pain if we
do not.
It is long past time we stopped giving a free pass to
organizations that refuse to be guided by reason and would
force their unreason on the entire society. A first step
would be to stop calling these "faith-based institutions"
and start calling them by the synonymous and much more
instructive term, "superstition-based institutions."
No Other Superstition But This One
Organized superstitions might be more socially supportable
if their creed included a provision accepting the organized
superstitions of others. Unfortunately, modern religions do
not practice tolerance. For example Alabama Chief Justice
Roy Moore gained widespread fame and even adulation when he
refused to obey court orders to remove from the Alabama
Courthouse a huge stone tablet on which was inscribed the
Ten Commandments. When he was asked how he would react to
the suggestion that a monument to the Koran or the Torah
also be placed in the Courthouse he brusquely declared he
would prohibit such an installation.
A few months later, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the
new deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence
explained why he knew he would win his battle against
Muslims in Somalia. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I
knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."
The creationism vs. evolution debate also illuminates this
intolerance. Christians insist that their creation myth
represent the creationist side. But there are many
creationist myths, many of which predated both Christianity
and Judaism. If evidence is not needed, why exclude any
superstitions? As Sam Harris notes in The End of Faith,
"there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the
literal existence of Yahweh and Satan than there was to keep
Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning
the seas."
The impact of moving towards "superstition-based
institutions" would be highly controversial, quite
educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary. Consider
the impact on the audience if we switched the
interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's
following statement, posted on a federal web site:
"I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives.
Our government should not fear programs that exist because a
church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one.
We should not discriminate against programs based upon
superstition in America. We should enable them to access
federal money, because superstition-based programs can
change people's lives, and America will be better off for it."
Fanatics and Zealots Destroying the Liberty of Thought
In her magnificent book, Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby
describes the 230-year-old battle in the United States
between reason and superstition. She discusses the
post-Civil War period in which the battle may have been most
evenly matched.
Robert Green Ingersoll, possibly the best known American in
the post Civil War era and the nation's foremost orator,
traveled around the country arguing about the harm that
comes from self-congratulatory, aggressive and assertive
organized religions.
He explained why the word God does not appear in the U.S.
Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the
recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and
zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought.
They knew the terrible history of the church too well to
place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the
sacred rights of man."
Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should
be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not
Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a
result of 'inspiration,'" he insisted. "It is the child of
invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to
say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to
admit that all have equal rights; when thought is
untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful
things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to
our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be
civilized."
In 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton explained how organized and
assertive religions around the world have restricted women's
rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that
every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth
has degraded woman . . . I have been traveling over the old
world during the last few years and have found new food for
thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn
herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion.
What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By
what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of
polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do
this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord', of course
he can do it."
Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not
Authority for Truth."
During the era when Ingersoll and Stanton spread their own
form of the gospel, the Church was making ever-more explicit
its own hostility to reason as a guide to human behavior. In
1869, Pope Pius IX convinced the First Vatican Council to
proclaim, "let him be anathema . . . (w)ho shall say that
human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of
freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their
assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine."
His successor, Pope Leo XIII, in one of his best known
encyclicals maintained, it "has even been contended that
public authority with its dignity and power of ruling,
originates not from God but from the mass of the people,
which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanctions,
refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its
own free will."
Other churches agreed. In 1878, geologist Alexander Winchell
was dismissed from the faculty of Vanderbilt University in
Nashville for publishing his opinion that human life had
existed on earth long before the biblical time frame for the
creation of Adam. Most Methodists supported the dismissal,
arguing that Vanderbilt was founded by Methodists and
dedicated to the goals of the church.
Some 45 years later, the famous Scopes trial opened. Most of
us know that William Jennings Bryan was the lawyer for the
prosecution of Scopes, a biology teacher who in his
classroom violated Tennessee law forbidding the mention of
evolution. What we may not know is that William Jennings
Bryan was a three-time democratic presidential candidate and
Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. After the Wilson
administration Bryan devoted himself to campaigning around
the nation on behalf of state laws banning the teaching of
evolution. For Bryan faith always trumped science. "(I)t is
better to trust in the Rock of Ages than to know the ages of
rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the
Heavenly Father than to know how far the stars in the heaven
are apart."
That was then. This is now. A few months ago, a dozen
science centers, mostly in the South, refused to show
Volcanoes, a science film funded in part by the National
Science Foundation. The film was turned down because it very
briefly raises the possibility that life on Earth may have
originated at undersea steam vents.
Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth
Museum of Science and History, said that many people said
the film was "blasphemous." Lisa Buzzelli, director of the
Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, told The New York
Times, "We have definitely a lot more creation public than
evolution public."
Buzzelli's probably right. And that cannot bode well for
America's future economic and technological leadership. A
1988 survey by researchers from the University of Texas
found that one of four public school biology teachers
thought that humans and dinosaurs might have inhabited the
earth simultaneously. A recent survey by Gallup found that
35 percent of Americans believe the Bible is the literal and
inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48
percent believe it is the "inspired" word of the same. Some
46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation;
another 40 percent believe God has guided creation over the
course of millions of years.
The Politicizing of Religion
I know most people who are reading this are asking, "Would
you ban organized religion?" Of course not. Religion is an
integral part of human existence. For tens of thousands of
years humans have sought to explain the unknowable and have
found comfort in believing that the death of a loved one may
simply be the transition of that loved one to another, more
sublime state.
But today organized religion has declared its intention to
use its influence far beyond its congregation. The
politicization of religion and the rise of a
superstition-driven state may be the most important
development in this country in many, many decades.
Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and arguably the third most
powerful person in Washington told an audience just a few
weeks ago that the problems in America began when "they
stopped churches from getting into politics . . . Lyndon
Johnson . . . passed a law that said you couldn't get in
politics or you're going to lose your tax-exempt status . .
.. It forces Christians back into the church. That's what's
going on in America . . . That's not what Christ asked us to
do."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading candidate to
become chief justice, has declared in oral hearings "the
fact that government derives its authority from God." In
January 2002, in a major speech revealingly titled "God's
Justice and Ours," delivered to the University of Chicago
Divinity School, Scalia favorably cited Paul's announcement,
"For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are
ordained of God." And Scalia declared that the death penalty
is God's will. "The more Christian a country is the less
likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral," he
observed. "I attribute that to the fact that, for the
believing Christian, death is no big deal."
One of President Bush's first acts in office was to create
an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Today 10
federal agencies have a Center for the Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives. The White House web site gives
churches Do's and Don'ts for applying for federal
assistance. It has funded 30 organizations to provide
training and technical assistance for religious
organizations desiring federal grants. And it guarantees
that any religious organization in need of help will find a
ready and willing person on the other end of the phone.
After failing to persuade Congress to change the law,
President Bush, by Executive Order, rewrote the rules to
allow federal agencies to directly fund churches and other
religious groups. In 2003 such groups received an
astonishing $1.17 billion in grants from federal agencies.
"That's not enough," H. James Towey, director of the White
House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
recently told the Associated Press. He notes that another
$40 billion in federal money is given out by state
governments and "many states do not realize that federal
rules now allow them to fund these organizations."
In 2003, an independent study found little activity or
interest by states in contracting with religious groups. But
federal intervention has persuaded them that future funding
depended on their having these groups provide services. By
Towey's count, 21 governors have established their own
faith-based offices.
The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
maintains, "There is no general federal law that prohibits
faith-based organizations that receive federal funds from
hiring on a religious basis." It further explains that "for
a religious organization to define or carry out its mission,
it is important that it be able to take religion into
account in hiring staff. Just as a college or university can
take the academic credentials of an applicant for a
professorship into consideration in order to maintain high
standards, or an environmental organization can consider the
views of potential employees on conservation, so too should
a faith-based organization be able to take into account an
applicant's religious belief when making a hiring decision."
One major program funded by the White House is Charles
Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. It runs the
InnerChange Freedom Initiative in prisons in Minnesota,
Kansas, Iowa and Texas. The Christ-centered program offers
prisoners privileges that include access to a big TV,
computers, and private bathrooms in return for a hefty dose
of Bible study and Christian counseling. As a condition of
being hired, the program's employees are required to sign a
statement affirming their belief in a literal interpretation
of the Bible.
Superstition as a Lethal Force
Organized superstition in this country has begun to drive
and guide social policy. The clearest example of this is the
recent enactment by several states of laws that allow
pharmacists and doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat
patients whose behavior conflicts with their superstitions.
The central problem with organized, assertive religion, of
course, is that it endows superstition with a moral and
messianic fervor. God-directed superstition can be a lethal
force. Indeed, one might argue that this type of force is
behind much of the violence around the world. The conflicts
in Palestine (Jews v. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox
Serbians v. Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v.
Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v. Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims
v. Timorese Christians) and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians
v. Chechen Muslims) constitute only a few of the places
where religion has been the explicit cause of million of
deaths in the last ten years.
Sam Harris discusses "the burden of paradise." Why are there
suicide bombers? "Because they actually believe what they
say they believe. They believe in the literal truth of the
Koran . . . Why did 19 well-educated, middle class men trade
their lives in this world for the privilege of killing
thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed that they
would go straight to paradise for doing so."
To Harris, condoning the use of superstition as an important
social force enables and encourages extremism. "The
concessions we have made to religious faith," he maintains,
"to the idea that belief can be sanctified by something
other than evidence -- have rendered us unable to name, much
less address, one of the most pervasive causes of conflict
in our world."
In 1784, Patrick Henry introduced a bill in the Virginia
General Assembly that would have assessed taxes on all
citizens for the support of "teachers of the Christian
religion." The bill's passage seemed certain. But then James
Madison issued his Memorial and Remonstrance against
Religious Assessments, eventually signed by some 2,000
Virginians.
"What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments
had on Civil Society?" Madison asked. "In some instances
they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the
ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen
the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no
instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of
the people."
The two-year debate over the assessment bill ended in its
overwhelming defeat. Instead the Virginia legislature in
1786 passed an Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. The
preamble to the original bill, written by Thomas Jefferson,
declared, "Well aware that the opinions and belief of men
depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the
evidence proposed to their mind; that Almighty God hath
created the mind free . . ."
The final law contained only the last few words of
Jefferson's preamble, "Whereas, Almighty God hath created
the mind free . . ."
After the passage of the legislation, Jefferson wrote
Madison to express his pride in Virginia's leadership on
this crucial issue. "(I)t is comfortable to see the standard
of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during
which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings,
priests and nobles, and it is honorable for us, to have
produced the first legislature who had the courage to
declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the
formation of his own opinions."
In early February 2005, the Virginia House of Delegates
easily approved (69-27) an amendment to the state's
constitution that would allow the practice of religion in
public schools and other public buildings. A few weeks later
the amendment was killed in a Senate committee (10-5).
It was a lonely victory for reason in this increasingly
unreasonable time. The battle between rationality and
superstition continues.
David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the
Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn. and
director of its New Rules project.
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
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As the Government of the United States of America is not, in
any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in
itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or
tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never
entered into any war, or act of hostility against any
Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no
pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce
an interruption of the harmony existing between the two
countries.
-- The Treaty of Tripoli, entered into by the USA under
George Washington
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