“Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.” (Bob Dylan)
The latest propaganda missile in the current political and theocratic Right’s Christian Crusade aimed at followers of Islam worldwide was detonated by Fox News commentator and radio host Todd Starnes who asserted that Jesus would love the film “American Sniper” and would graciously thank all the American snipers who assassinate “godless” Muslims and transport them to the “lake of fire.”
On his “American Dispatch” YouTube Broadcast, January 26, Starnes announced:
“I’m no theologian, but I suspect Jesus would tell that God-fearing, red-blooded American sniper, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant for dispatching another Godless jihadist to the lake of fire.‘”
“Oh the history books tell it
They tell is so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.” (Bob Dylan)
From Belief to Certainty:
Religion is a human response in our attempt to answer the mysteries of life: How did we get here and what is our purpose within the cosmos? From belief in faith and mystery, many religions have taken to an arrogant certainty that they and only they have “the Truth” with a capital “T.”
Today we term the ancients’ and indigenous peoples’ explanations to the mysteries of life as “mythology” or “superstition.” The reality is that all religious doctrine stems from conjecture, from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to the Burning Bush, to the Covenant and the parting of the Red Sea, to the Immaculate Conception and Resurrection, to Muhammad’s rising to heaven from the Rock, to the Mormon Golden Tablets, all beginning with the human invention of God(s).
“But now we got weapons,
Of the chemical dust.
If fire them we’re forced to,
Then fire them we must.
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide,
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.”(Bob Dylan)
Many of the more conservative religious denominations demonize free thinkers and critical thinkers because they cannot and will not allow themselves to be herded into pens of social conformity and convention as readily.
Though the enforcement tactics differ, this arrogant sense of certainty remains virtually the same from extreme fanatical religious-based political groups, to orthodox religious denominations within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
“But now we got weapons,
Of the chemical dust.
If fire them we’re forced to,
Then fire them we must.
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide,
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.”(Bob Dylan)
I gave a lecture on the topic of homophobia (fear and hatred of LGBT people) at Pace University in New York City approximately six years ago. I talked about my own experiences as the target of harassment and abuse growing up gay and differently-gendered, and I addressed my book, Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price. In the book I argue that everyone, regardless of their actual sexuality and gender expression is hurt by homophobia and, therefore, it is in everyone’s self-interest to work to reduce and ultimately eliminate this very real and insidious form of oppression.
Following my presentation, two students came up to me – one young woman and one young man – to continue the discussion. The young woman began by telling me: “I’m really sad to hear about the abuse that you and others have received because you are gay or lesbian.
“I am here to tell you that I have a way to prevent that from ever happening to you again. I believe that Jesus Christ can help you. If you ask Jesus and pray hard, Jesus will save you from your homosexual feelings and help you to achieve the life that is meant for you, in his service, as a happy and healthy heterosexual person. This will save you from the abuse you have suffered.”
My response: “So, let me see if I understand you: If I accept Jesus in my life and ask him to help me become heterosexual, then I won’t suffer from homophobia any longer? So, to be supported in society, I have to change who I am and conform to the dominant standards of society? So, for people like yourself to truly support me, I have to becomelikeyou? While I understand that you are offering me, in your mind, a gift, do you not understand how this in itself is a form of homophobia, a form of oppression? Do you not understand how this type of statement perpetuates oppression?”
She responded with surprise and claimed that she knew the “Truth,” and that if I accepted this, it could grant me salvation and happiness, but if rejected, it would result in continued earthly and eventual eternal torment.
We continued our dialogue for more than one hour, and we ended cordially. All the while, the young man had been closely looking on and listening to the young woman and my discussion. Then the young man spoke to me. He asked: “Professor Blumenfeld, you stated that you are a writer, that you had published a number of articles and books. Is this correct?”
“Yes,” I responded.
“Okay, then,” he continued. “You know that in the writing process, the first draft is never really complete or isn’t any good.”
“Yes, that’s often the case,” I agreed.
“Okay, then after you have had some time for reflection and you write your second draft, this is an improvement over the first draft, but still, it can be improved. So after further reflection and writing, your third version is great. Now you can send it to your publisher.”
I said to him, “Oh no, please don’t tell me that this is a metaphor for religious texts.”
“Yes, indeed,” he uttered. “The first draft is the Jewish Bible – not so good. The second draft is the Christian scriptures – somewhat better, but not much. But the best version, the third, is the Quran. The real Truth. The ultimate Truth. The only Truth.”
My response to this young man: “As we speak here, we are standing literally a few short blocks from the former World Trade Center towers. Utterances and understandings like yours and like the young woman I just spoke with, and by people of any faith, that there is one and only one ultimate religious Truth results in people taking it upon themselves, for example, to crash airplanes into buildings, or to invade others’ territories. Utterances like yours of people of any faith give people justification to kill in the name of their interpretation of ‘God.’
“Why,” I argued, “cannot the young woman I just spoke with realize that her understanding of God, while valid and reliable for her, may simply not be valid and reliable for me or for you, too? And why cannot you realize that your understanding may be great for you, but not necessarily for me or for the Christian woman. How many deaths have to occur before we realize that there are many ways toward the truth, not one way for everyone when it comes to religion and spirituality?”
“Truth”:
That was then. Though it transpired a number of years ago, this discussion comes back to my memory giving me an insight I previously had not known: That “truth” is what the dominant group declares to be “true.” “Knowledge” is anything the dominant group defines as “knowledge,” though “knowledge” itself is socially constructed and produced.
Throughout history, Jews and Muslims have killed each other, Christians and Muslims have killed each other, Christians and Jews have killed each other, Hindus and Muslims have killed each other, Catholics and Protestants have killed each other, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims have killed each other, many faith communities have killed Atheists and Agnostics, and on it goes.
Einstein said that insanity is doing something over and over again while expecting different results. The insanity of the world continues because human beings do not know their history, do not understand that we are doing something over and over again while expecting different results, namely, we are expecting peace to break out.
Individuals and entire nations continue to believe that their reality fits all, and that it is proper and right to force their beliefs onto others “with God on our side.”How many wars are we going to justify in the name of “God”: our “God” versus their so-called “false gods”? Someone said to me once that throughout the ages, more people have been killed in the name of religion than all the people who have ever died of all diseases combined. I don’t know whether this is actually the case, but I do think it highlights a vital point: we continually kill others and are killed by others over concepts we can never prove.
Religious texts — between disparate religions and between denominations within the same religion, as well as within a single text — on close examination, are paradoxical and even contradictory. Moreover, individuals and entire denominations often interpret identical scriptural passages very differently, and they also emphasize and adhere to some readings while disregarding and even dismissing others.
One particular passage seems to stand out in the Christian Testaments when we attempt to answer the question, “Where do we go from here to ensure a just and equitable worldview?” I suggest the following:
James 2: 8-9:“If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.”
–
Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld is author of Warren’s Words: Smart Commentary on Social Justice (Purple Press); editor of Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price (Beacon Press), co-editor of Readings for Diversity and Social Justice ( Routledge) and Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States (Sense), and co-author of Looking at Gay and Lesbian Life (Beacon Press).
Although I agree with your essay in general, I take issue with some of the semantics.
You state that “Religion is a human response in our attempt to answer the mysteries of life: How did we get here and what is our purpose within the cosmos?”
You’re lumping together science and religion.
Science is an attempt to answer “How?” (cause and effect). Religion is an attempt to answer “Why?” (meaning and purpose). Theology, philosophy and spirituality are also attempts to answer “Why?”, but to keep things simple I’ll only address your comments on religion.
You state that “The reality is that all religious doctrine stems from conjecture…” I agree completely. But I disagree with your wording of the end of that sentence, “… all beginning with the human invention of God(s).”
There is a big difference between “God” and “gods.”
It is easy to dismiss “gods” as human inventions. (It is not necessarily always correct to do so, but that is a deeper philosophical and semantic discussion that is beyond the scope of the points I want to make here.) “Gods” with a small “g” refers to anthropomorphized conceptions of specific principles and aspects of reality, and (notwithstanding any deeper analysis) are obviously human inventions.
“Gods,” capitalized other than at the beginning of a sentence, is not a meaningful word. “God” with a capital “G” refers to what is infinite and ultimate – infinite reality, ultimate purpose, the big picture, one overall “thing.” Though God is most often thought of as having “human” attributes, anthropomorphism is not inherent in the definition of “God” – at least, not in my definition! Even using words such as “thing,” “being” or “reality” is an attempt to contain infinity in a box. What is limitless cannot be directly or properly described, and therein lies the problem. The word “God” is a human invention, but what it refers to is not. Similarly, words such as “beauty,” “truth,” “music,” “kindness,” “evil,” “fear,” “love” and so on are human inventions, but the “things” they describe are undeniably real.
Which brings me to my second objection. You wrote “That “truth” is what the dominant group declares to be “true.””
Again, this confuses the “thing” being described with its subjective perceptions. Truth is, by definition, absolute. What is true for me, now, was, is and always will be true for everyone everywhere, no matter how differently we perceive the facts. The difficulties in discerning the truth are in personal understandings of what the facts are. This is exactly the same problem as the one behind the definition of “God.”
Religious texts are only paradoxical and contradictory if one insists on believing that they are all written or dictated by God. When read with the realization that they were all written by fallible human beings, the absolute, true reality that inspired their writing becomes at least slightly discernible behind all the unavoidably inadequate words and phrases.
One of these days it would be beneficial to our species to realized that physically all force creates an equal counter force which accomplishes nothing except wasted energy. All effective change in the universe occurs by attraction and the sooner we recognize that the better off every one of us will be.
I just wanted to add. to the early part of the article, that,also, atheists and agnostics have been known to
kill people of faith .I guess that goes without saying.
Dear Prof. Blumenfeld,
To my opinion, the worsts behaviors in hystory, come from people which believe in Truth. Truth is a western postulate proposed by Hellenism. Modern Western culture shares this mith, that is the concept of (epistemological) truth, with Islam because Western philosopy recovered Hellenism on Islamic texts. Religous “truth” is not to be confused with epistemological truth.
Epistemological Truth must be logically referred to a serie (or at lest one) Postulate that is, anInvention.
Truth (and quality) are human invention that stay at the base of our values system, but are, at last ,themselves idefinables.
Umberto Eco, (author of “The Name of The Rose”) states that ” every book (such as the Bible or the Quran) are living things BECAUSE they are generators of interpretations, and so, outside epistemological truth.
Another problem is that”mith” (of which religions and philosopies are part, as interpretation of reality) in our cultures is synonim of “not true” and so acquires a negative connotation among the worshipper of Truth. One must think that, antropologically speaking, there is no Human Specie without (any) mith, being “mith” exacly what inspire an characterize human behavior. Animals, are driven by Istinct.
think these arguments culd have halped to “burst” the concepual “bloks” of your students.
Thank you for very interesting article
Religious beliefs are engendered by similar mechanisms as other beliefs, as Michael Shermer describes in his book “The Believing Brain.” Human beings perceive patterns in events, and ascribe agenticity to those events. We bolster our perceptions by finding “evidence” which fits the patterns and agenticity and discard “evidence” that doesn’t fit. Our sense of reality is therefore “belief dependent”, and always needs to be tested scientifically by weighing evidence from all pertinent sources and coming to a probable rather than a certain conclusion. Unwarranted certainty can have disastrous results,producing armed religious clashes.
Below, I have pasted an article I wrote describing Shermer’s book, “The Believing Brain” (Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2011). The book itself has an enormous amount to offer.
Sometimes a book can not only be educational and informational but transformational as well. This is such a book.
Michael Shermer, who holds a PhD in the history of science, has written a densely documented, inter-disciplinary history and exploration of belief systems in many areas of life. He starts by describing several people trying to deal with their delusional or their religious beliefs, as an introduction to how our brains perceive and process data. This grappling with belief, is often poignant, and includes his own remarkable journey from a born again Evangelist to a scientist who created and edits Skeptic Magazine, has authored many books dealing with psychology and science and contributes regularly to Scientific American.
Shermer thinks that our unconscious beliefs mold all the data we perceive and our concepts of reality are belief-dependent rather than objective. The book unfolds into multiple sections, each cutting a broad swath through different fields of inquiry.
To begin with, Shermer criticizes some aspects of the usual scientific narrative as being too neat and tidy- perhaps teleological would describe such presentations well. Instead, he prefers a kind of integrative narrative, in which a blending of data, theory and story is told informally, and centers on the scientific process itself. That is the style he uses in the book—to advantage, in my opinion.
His description of the biology of belief centers on the human propensity to associate patterns in our conscious and unconscious perceptions and to control things through discerning this “patternicity.” We also tend to attribute meaning to these patterns, which he calls “agenticity.”
“We are natural-born supernaturalists, driven by our tendency to find meaningful patterns and impart to them intentional agency.”
Shermer describes so-called paranormal experiences as illusions created by changes in neurochemical brain activity. He describes neurologic brain function in considerable detail, relating it to imaging and recording measurements during behavioral experiments. He clearly thinks that the Cartesian dualistic splitting of mind and body does not exist in reality, and what we call the mind consists of brain activity. In this section, he also hypothesizes that creativity is the ability to discriminate meaningful patterns in stimuli and that madness is the indiscriminate selection of meaningless patterns in stimuli.
In another section, Shermer turns to religious beliefs, finding genetically determined physiologic differences in how we perceive and interpret patternicity and agenticity. These account for some of the built-in genetic and physiologic differences in attitude between believers and non-believers. There is also a very interesting section devoted to Albert Einstein’s religious beliefs, which contrary to some impressions, clearly were agnostic.
Shermer also examines conspiracy beliefs and the factors that separate real conspiracies from conspiracy mongering. Again and again, he illustrates his main point- the beliefs come first and fitting the data into the belief pattern comes second.
When tackling political beliefs, he describes five genetically determined moral patterns, which all people share to some extent (except psychopaths). These evolved moral emotions helped us to survive and reproduce. Shermer indicates that most moral decisions are grounded in automatic feelings rather than deliberate rational calculations. We intuitively leap to a conclusion and then rationalize the decision.
1. Harm/care, related to attachment and empathy and underlying kindness, gentleness and nurturance.
2. Fairness/reciprocity, related to reciprocal altruism and a sense of right and wrong, and underlying justice, rights and autonomy.
3. In-group/loyalty, related to tribe and coalitions, and underlying patriotism and self-sacrifice.
4. Authority/respect, related to hierarchical social interactions, and underlying deference to leaders, authority and traditions.
5. Purity/sanctity, related to disgust and contamination, and underlying less carnal and more noble attitudes.
While all people seem to have some element of these moral emotions, liberals and conservatives diverge some in their adherence. Liberals are more concerned with the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity elements and conservatives with the in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity elements. Thus, to some extent, selection of liberal and conservative viewpoints is hard-wired.
Shermer describes how the development of democracy defeated the monarchial tyranny of the magistrate, but how democracy itself can lead to a tyranny of the majority, the tendency to which, in the USA, is obviated by the Bill of Rights. What constitutes infringement on other people’s rights is sometimes an issue.
However, the essentials of democratic freedom are usually agreed to be: the rule of law, property rights, economic stability through a secure banking and monetary system, freedom of movement in a reliable infrastructure, freedom of speech, press and association, mass education, protected civil liberties, a robust military and police force for self-defense, a viable legislative and judicial system to establish fair and just laws and enforce them. These agreed upon social constructs tend to bridge the liberal and the conservative points of view.
Shermer cites one author (Timothy Ferris, The Science of Liberty) who conceives of science, liberalism and conservatism as really being methods for testing hypotheses rather than being ideologies. Successful scientific method leads to knowledge, and successful liberal and conservative viewpoints, when politically (and religiously) applied, produce acceptable social order.
Although western democracies generally agree on desirable goals such as greater equality, liberty, freedom, wealth and prosperity, some societies, such as Islamic theocracies, believe that furtherance of these qualities leads to decadence and undesirable behavior. Shermer contrasts western societal viewpoints and those of Islamic extremism, which considers democracy and freedom to be a kind of malignancy and “…demands the whole universe (and) does not hesitate to utilize the means of war to implement its goal.”
Arguably however, most Islamists are not such extremists and when polled, show great interest in acquiring liberal democratic political systems. Hopefully, interaction with western viewpoints would eventually provide the Islamic world with the opportunity to be increasingly heard within and outside its borders. Such interaction would also generate greater prosperity for the masses of down-trodden and oppressed Moslems who have low living standards and no public forum to seek redress.
Turning to a more general idea, Shermer indicates that human beings have a built in need to ensure that they are always right. We have a huge slew of cognitive biases which condition our perceptions so as to confirm our beliefs, even at the expense of reality. The trick is instead, to recognize degrees of probability rather than to invoke certainty. Towards that end, an essential mechanism is applying scientific thinking to detect bias. Thus, understanding how our beliefs are formed produces less rigidity and more skepticism.
The book describes in some detail the origins of science and its development from the Enlightenment to the scientific applications of today. It is fascinating to see the dissolution of rigid, ancient concepts perpetuated by Scholastic copyists. Beliefs held over a 1500 year period gave way to new exploratory data about the earth’s geography. It is equally fascinating to see the concepts of astronomy change as new technologies and new data are acquired, breaking away from the rigidities and limitations of religious and observer bias. Shermer tackles the cosmologies of belief as well, reviewing concepts about time, space, matter, energy, the mystery of creation of the universe and the possibility of multiple universes.
This book is not an easy read. Shermer is relentless in his dogged determination to apply scientific principles to overcome the distortions of our built in belief-dependent realism. He does so by providing considerable detail that bears on each subject and its interpretation. That requires diligent attention from the reader, but is worth it because the book is so thoughtful, and often, entertaining as well. Shermer wants to get us closer to the truth and to appreciate the obstacles built into human nature. He has done an excellent job dealing with both.