Yearly Archives: 2011

Word of the Day: Opiate of the Masses

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A woman lies comatose in an opium denKarl Marx said, “[Religion] is the opium of the people” in 1843.  This is often assumed to mean that religion is like a drug, dulling the intellect of those under its influence.
But this isn’t correct.  Here is the quote in context:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.  It is the opium of the people.

Marx is saying that religion is a coping mechanism, like a security blanket or a crutch.  It’s a symptom of a broken society.  In the same way that opium is valuable medicine for someone who is hurting, religion provides valuable relief to those hurting within society.
His larger point is that treating the symptom isn’t a bad start, but it’s only a start, and we must address society’s root problems.  Opium reduces the pain of cancer, but don’t fool yourself that it’s treating the cancer.  Similarly, religion reduces the pain caused by a dysfunctional society, but don’t fool yourself that you’re treating the underlying problem.
If someone needs crutches, don’t kick them away.  Acknowledge that they serve a purpose.  But don’t think that that person is whole!  Find the problem and solve it.  You don’t take away someone’s crutch; you let that person discard it himself when it is no longer needed.
Christianity has faded in Europe, but that’s not because it was outlawed; people have discarded that crutch by themselves.  What mechanisms have they adopted to reduce society’s problems so that Christianity’s pain-soothing properties aren’t necessary?  Adopt those, and religion withers away by itself.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
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On 11/11/11, Let’s Crank it to 11!

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An amplifier dial has volume numbers from 0 to 10 but it goes beyond to 11 (Spinal Tap)You only get one 11/11/11 each century, and today is it.  And if today is all about 11, it must be Spin̈al Tap Day!
The 1984 film This is Spinal Tap, a mocumentary of Britain’s loudest heavy metal band, has a scene where the lead guitarist explains why they’re so loud—the dials on their amplifiers don’t stop at 10 but go up to 11.  When the interviewer asks why they don’t just recalibrate the numbers so that 10 is the loudest, there’s a confused pause, after which Nigel repeats, “These go to 11.”
And isn’t every day Spin̈al Tap Day within Christianity?  Let’s look at a few areas where Christianity stares blankly into space and then repeats, “These go to 11.”
The Catholic Church is a great source of 11-isms.  To see immutable religion changing, look at the position of Jesus’s mother Mary within the Catholic Church.  By 1854 it concluded, without scriptural evidence, that she must have been born of a virgin herself and in 1950 that she couldn’t have died but must have risen to heaven.
Or consider Limbo, the place that’s neither heaven nor hell, where unbaptized babies go when they die.  The idea was discarded by the church in 2007.
The Trinity is always a fun topic.  The Jews in the Old Testament saw the move from polytheism to monotheism as foundational, but then Christianity (Judaism 2.0) invented the Trinity.  They had a have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too problem in that they wanted to keep monotheism except that their “single” deity would be formed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  First off, we have a problem with language—can’t Christianity think of a better name for its god than “God”?
And if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the persons, what do you call the union of these into one god?  That is, Father + Son + Holy Spirit = who?  You need a fourth name.  Do you call it “God”?  But “God” is the one who created everything, and that’s supposed to be the Father.  The Father can’t both be the first person of the Trinity and the overall god at the same time.  You can use “the Trinity” as the umbrella name, but that’s an odd name for a monotheistic god.
There’s another way to see the problem.  Consider this passage:

I will gird you, though you have not known Me; that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me.  I am the LORD [that is, Jehovah], and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:5-6)

There’s nothing confusing here from a Jewish viewpoint, which was the intended audience.  Let’s ignore for now that the Old Testament uses several names, possibly for different gods (Jehovah, Yahweh, Elohim), that are conflated when convenient.
The verse says that there is no other besides Jehovah.  If Jehovah is a synonym for “the Father,” this means that he reigns alone and the Trinity is no more.  But if Jehovah is a synonym for the Trinity, then it makes nonsense of the singular pronouns (Me and I) in these verses and confuses passages such as “Then [Jehovah] spoke to Moses” (Ex. 40:1) or “After [Jehovah] had spoken these things to Job” (Job 42:7).  The problem, of course, is demanding a Christian interpretation of a Jewish text.
Here are a few more 11-isms.

  • Why blame Adam and Eve for disobeying God when they didn’t know that that was wrong?  Remember that they hadn’t yet eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
  • Why does the Bible contain nutty superstitions like the one about how you can change the appearance of animals’ young by changing what they see when mating (Gen. 30:37–9)?
  • Why does God give no new science, even information as simple and life saving as germ theory or the recipe for soap?
  • Why was slavery in Egypt that big a deal when the Israelites promptly enslaved a tribe once they returned to Canaan (Josh. 9)?
  • How can those in heaven enjoy the experience when they know of the suffering of billions in hell?
  • If God deeply wants us to make it into heaven and belief in Jesus is mandatory, why is he so hidden?
  • And why would he get furious because we’re imperfect when that’s precisely how he made us?

I’ve read more sensible things in Alice in Wonderland.  As Thomas Jefferson said, “Sweep away [the priests’] gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion, and they would catch no more flies.”
Let’s end with an 11-ism video.  This one weighs the profound love Jesus has for us against that whole hell thing.

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An Inept Attempt to Defang the Problem of Evil

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The pale figure of Death rides a pale horse and holds a scytheIn an article titled “Turn an Atheist Objection to an Opportunity,” apologist Greg Kokul attempts to turn the Problem of Evil, often admitted by Christians as their biggest challenge, into a selling point for Christianity.
The Problem of Evil is this: how can a good and loving God allow all the bad that happens in the world?  The simplistic answers fail to explain the woman who dies leaving young children motherless, the child that dies a lingering death from leukemia, or the Holocaust.
Kokul begins by saying that he’s found a debating technique that turns this problem into a benefit.  Instead of being solely a problem for the Christian, he turns the tables on the atheist.

Evidence of egregious evil abounds.  How do I account for such depravity?
But, I am quick to add—and here is the strategic move—I am not alone.  As a theist, I am not the only one saddled with this challenge.  Evil is a problem for everyone.  Every person, regardless of religion or worldview, must answer this objection.
Even the atheist.

Of course evil is a problem for everyone, but that’s not what we’re talking about.  Kokul made clear that we’re talking about the Problem of Evil.  We’re talking about how a good and loving God can allow all the bad that happens in the world.

What if someone is assaulted by personal tragedy, distressed by world events, victimized by religious corruption or abuse, and then responds by rejecting God and becoming an atheist (as many have done)?  Notice that he has not solved the problem of evil.

The atheist hasn’t solved the Problem of Evil; he’s eliminated it.  A God who loves us infinitely more than we love ourselves and who stands idly by as rapists or murderers do their work is no dilemma for the atheist.  But, of course, the problem still remains for the apologist.  Kokul can’t simply Continue reading →

Word of the Day: Deepity

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Dictionary openA deepity is basically the opposite of a profundity.  A deepity is a statement that, to the extent that it’s true, is trivial, and to the extent that it’s profound, is false.
Daniel Dennett, one of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse, invented the word, and he defined it this way:

A deepity is a proposition that seems to be profound because it is actually logically ill-formed.  It has (at least) two readings and balances precariously between them.  On one reading it is true but trivial.  And on another reading it is false, but would be earth-shattering if true.

Here’s an example: “Evolution is only a theory.”  Yes, evolution is a theory.  This statement is trivially true.  But to the extent that it’s profound (evolution has a long way to go before it becomes truly accepted, say), it’s false.
A New Age-y sort of deepity might be “God is the universe” or “God is nature.”  Sure, we can redefine God to have the same meaning as anything we want.  Trivial.  But the profound implication (we’ve now explained God or proven his existence) is meaningless.
Slogans on church signs are a great source of deepities.  “Good without God becomes 0.”  It’s trivially true that removing all the letters except the third one from the word good gives you just the letter o (or a zero, if you prefer), but the profound implication (you can’t be good without God) is nonsense.
A deepity can deceive if the truth of the first (trivial) interpretation is allowed to rub off on the second.
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Welcome the World’s 7 Billionth Citizen

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An old-fashioned car odometer rolls over to zeroHere’s a scary thought for Halloween: today marks the rollover to a world population of 7,000,000,000 people.  Some say: No problem; God will provide.
Not me.  This freaks me out.
I recently came across the television show 19 Kids and Counting (yeah, I know—where have I been?).  It’s the story of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 children.  No, they don’t adopt needy children, they make them the old-fashioned way.
Their web site is full of Christian talk, links to Creationist sites, and ads for Christian products.  Here they talk about birth control.

We prayed and studied the Bible and found a host of references that told us God considered children a gift, a blessing, and a reward. Yet we had considered having another child an inconvenience [by the wife taking birth control pills] during that busy time in our lives, and we had taken steps to prevent it from happening.
We weren’t sure if Michelle could have any more children after the miscarriage, but we were sure we were going to stop using the pill. In fact we agreed we would stop using any form of birth control and let God decide how many children we would have.

This is the thinking of the Quiverfull movement, whose name comes from Psalm 127: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth.  How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”  From Quiverfull.com:

We exalt Jesus Christ as Lord, and acknowledge His headship in all areas of our lives, including fertility.  We exist to serve those believers who trust the Lord for family size….

What kind of childish logic is this?  Maybe during the Bronze Age, people could say, “We’ll let God decide how many children we’ll have,” but today, we know very well where children come from and how to avoid them.
If you drink poison, you’re not letting God decide whether you live or not; you’re deciding.  If you wave a gun in a bank, you’re not letting God decide whether you get arrested or not; you’re deciding.  And if you have frequent unprotected sex, you’re not letting God decide how many children you have; you’re deciding to have as many as biologically possible.
Quiverfull aficionados reject all forms of birth control.  But if vaccines and antibiotics aren’t messing with God’s plan, why would contraception—not killing an embryo but simply preventing it from happening—be a problem?
Back to the Duggar family, someone might respond that they’re paying their way.  They’re not asking for handouts, so what’s the problem?
The problem is that the planet has a finite carrying capacity.  There’s only so much oil, fresh water regenerates only so fast, and so on.  To make it worse, Americans live a rich life compared to most other people.  For example, the resources that support these 19 kids, assuming they consume at the rate of average Americans, could support 600 average Kenyans.
“God will provide” might satisfy a child, but adults should know better.
In a discouraging article that concludes that religious believers will simply outbreed their competitors, author Tom Rees says:

In Israel and Palestine, both orthodox Jews and religious Muslims have astonishingly high birth rates, at least in part as a consequence of waging war “by other means.”  Throughout the Islamic world, those who have the most extreme beliefs are also the most likely to endorse the desirability of large families.

That other guy thinks he’ll win by having more children?  We’ll have even more than that—we’ll fight fire with fire!
We find similar thinking in the U.S.  Again, from Quiverfull.com:

Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they’re building for God.

But is that the way to play the game—we just descend to the other guy’s level?
Is there no role for reason here?  You don’t fight fire with fire, you fight it with water!
Related links:

  • No Longer Quivering is a site that provides education and support to those getting out of the Quiverfull movement.
  • Bryan Walsh, “The World at 7 Billion: Why the Real Victim of Overpopulation Will Be the Environment,” Time, 10/26/11.
  • Elizabeth Kolbert, “Billions and Billions,” The New Yorker, 10/24/11.
  • Tom Rees, “Shall the fundamentalists inherit the earth?” Epiphenom blog, 5/4/10.
  • “Overpopulation,” Wikipedia.

No Apologies or even Admission of Failure from Camping

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What happens when you make a bold public prediction—say, for the end of the world—and it doesn’t come true?  Don’t analyze it or even acknowledge it; just pretend it didn’t happen and get on with life.  Maybe no one will notice.
That’s what Harold Camping is hoping about his May 21 prediction of the Rapture and October 21 prediction of the end of the world.
For a stock broker or farmer or scientist—professions where evidence is important—repeatedly and reliably missing predictions would demand a change in profession.  But within Christianity, this kind of inept song and dance seems to work.  Indeed, Camping gets hubris points for claiming that the non-Rapture on May 21 only seemed to be a non-event and that God actually did judge the world.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened (Winston Churchill)

Camping’s Family Radio web site now has deleted all references to its embarrassing and awkward predictions.
Maybe that was part of the plan.  Maybe they served their purpose in getting recruits, donations, and PR, and the ministry can move on to whatever’s next.  Maybe Camping’s been ahead of us all the time, knowing exactly how this would play out and that the rules of evidence don’t apply with Christianity.
[Update 11/1/11: In an October 30 article “Family Radio Founder Harold Camping Repents, Apologizes for False Teachings“, The Christian Post reports that Camping has retracted his claims about the end times.  “Camping confessed, after decades of falsely misleading his followers, that he was wrong and regrets his misdeeds.”
Camping’s Family Radio site has a recording of him backpedaling from his predictions.
Now, if he would only give back the money he received due to those nonsensical teachings …]
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