Dave Gardner is a long time reader of this blog. He is a retired public school math teacher, and he and I were in a writing group that helped polish my two novels, Cross Examined and A Modern Christmas Carol.

For the moment, let’s assume that God exists, the iconic Judeo-Christian God. He is an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, and omnipotent supernatural being who can do anything. Think about that for a moment: God can do anything. With the snap of his fingers (or whatever ritual he used) God created the heavens and the earth and everything in, on, above, and below it. He knows the past, present, and future of the universe, the galaxy, the planet, and every living thing. But this causes a problem.

If that’s the case, if God can do anything—anything!—then there’s nothing remarkable about anything he does. He didn’t have to practice 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of his talents. He didn’t have to sacrifice anything to achieve his level of mastery. God. Can. Simply. Do. Anything.

It reminds me of a short story I read many years ago. A baseball team has been dwelling in the standings basement for years and the manager is desperate to find a player who can help produce a winning season, and he finds him. This player has the amazing ability to hit a home run every time he comes to bat! Every time. The manager is ecstatic, the player’s teammates are elated, the fans go wild. Every game is SRO. Game after game he hits home runs and the team soars to the top of the standings.

Then something happens. The fans begin to tire of the sameness, the predictability of his at bats and the endless winning. They begin to lose interest. Hitting home runs is what the player does and it’s no longer remarkable. As a matter of fact, he’s become tedious and boring.

It’s much the same thing with God and all his omnis: if he can do anything, then his works inspire no awe, no wonder, no amazement. He simply hits home run after home run, and nothing he does is remarkable.

So, what is remarkable? That science can give us theories and explanations on the evolution of the universe, galaxies, planets, and life itself, all without reference to a supernatural being, and it does so clearly and scientifically. That takes enormous effort, brilliance, and resources, and it’s not at all inevitable.

And that, indeed, is remarkable!

The Burned-Over District was the name given to the western part of New York state. From this region in the early- to mid-1800s came much of the energy for the Second Great Awakening. From here came Mormonism; the Millerites and their descendants, the Adventists; the Fox sisters, key to the Spiritualism movement; the Shakers; and the Oneida utopian community. It was named the Burned-Over District to suggest that it had had so many revivals and religious movements that no fuel remained for any more.

One additional product of this region was the Cardiff Giant, which has a surprising religious connection.

A giant man discovered

In 1869, workmen digging a well in Cardiff, NY, near Syracuse, uncovered what appeared to be a petrified man. It was a giant over ten feet tall. William Newell the landowner charged visitors 25 cents to see the marvel. Two days later, with huge crowds, he doubled the fee. Some religious groups saw the man as archeological proof of the Genesis story of the giant Nephilim—“there were giants in the earth in those days,” as the King James Bible put it (Genesis 6:4).

With interest in the giant still strong, Newell sold the giant to a Syracuse group for the equivalent of half a million dollars today.

The story comes apart

Archeologists soon declared the giant a fake, and George Hull, cousin of the landowner, admitted he was behind the hoax. The giant had been carved from gypsum, stained to simulate age, and then shipped to Cardiff so that Newell could bury it and then, a year later, order the well dug so that workmen could stumble across the find.

Incredibly, even after this admission, the stone giant continued to be a moneymaker, and showman P.T. Barnum offered a fortune to buy it. When the Syracuse syndicate refused to sell, Barnum made a copy, displayed it in his New York City museum, and claimed that his was the real fake, while the Syracuse giant was a fake fake. In response to the idea of people paying to see a fake fake, one of the new owners of the Syracuse giant observed, “I guess there’s a sucker born every minute” (falsely attributed to Barnum).

Barnum’s observation was also penetrating: “The American people love to be humbugged.”

Another humbug

L. Frank Baum was 13 years old and living in a suburb of Syracuse as the Cardiff giant hoax unfolded. He learned of Barnum’s observation and, decades later, merged it into his The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. At the end of that book, Dorothy and her friends discover that the wizard is a humbug but that the citizens of Oz had participated in the deception. Evan Schwartz in Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story said:

In telling the story of the real fake and the fake fake, Frank Baum would never forget this powerful lesson: Americans not only don’t mind being fooled, or humbugged, but they desperately want to be taken for a ride—and the greater the number of people who are strung along by a great humbug, the more others want to be in on it, too.

The real story

While cashing in on Americans’ gullibility (or delight at being duped) might have been a motivation, George Hull’s real drive was to prove how easy religious Americans were to fool. Hull was an atheist, and the idea for the hoax came from an argument with a preacher who took the Genesis giant story as history. (Clearly, frustration at Christianity’s hold on Americans dates to long before blogging.)

As with the Cardiff giant, American Christians easily accept remarkable and unsubstantiated religious claims. In a couple of recent posts (here and here), I’ve explored the surprisingly frank admission of how, for Christian apologist William Lane Craig, reason takes a back seat to faith. How can his flock keep following him when he admits that reason isn’t what supports the edifice?

Perhaps Americans’ gullible acceptance of the Cardiff giant hoax gives some insight.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/23/14.)

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