How Religion’s Demand for Obedience Keeps Us in the Dark Ages
For the vast majority of human history, the only form of government was the few ruling over the many. As human societies became settled and stratified, tribal chiefs and conquering warlords rose to become kings, pharaohs, and emperors, all ruling with absolute power and passing on their thrones to their children. To justify this obvious inequality and explain why they should reign over everyone else, most of these ancient rulers claimed that the gods had chosen them, and priesthoods and holy books obligingly came on the scene to promote and defend the theory of divine right.
It’s true that religion has often served to unite people against tyranny, as well as to justify it. But in many cases, when a religious rebellion overcame a tyrant, it was only to install a different tyrant whose beliefs matched those of the revolutionaries. Christians were at first ruthlessly persecuted by the Roman Empire, but when they ascended to power, they in turn banned all the pagan religions that had previously persecuted them. Protestant reformers like John Calvin broke away from the decrees of the Pope, but then created their own theocratic city-states where their will would reign supreme. Similarly, when King Henry VIII split England away from the Catholic church, it wasn’t so he could create a utopia of religious liberty; it was so he could create a theocracy where his preferred beliefs, rather than the Vatican’s, would be the law of the land. And in just the same way, when the Puritans fled England and migrated to the New World, it wasn’t to uphold religious tolerance; it was to impose their beliefs, rather than the Church of England’s.
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Texas’s war on history
Christian-nationalist zealots are trying to rewrite US history, airbrush slavery and enshrine creationism in Texas schools.
Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education from 2007 to 2009, is a “young earth” creationist. He believes the earth is 6,000 years old, that human beings walked with dinosaurs, and that Noah’s Ark had a unique, multi-level construction that allowed it to house every species of animal, including the dinosaurs.
He has a right to his beliefs, but it’s his views on history that are problematic. McLeroy is part of a large and powerful movement determined to impose a thoroughly distorted, ultra-partisan, Christian nationalist version of US history on America’s public school students. And he has scored stunning successes.
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Once they begin to circulate, falsehoods—like counterfeit currency—are surprisingly tenacious. It doesn’t matter that there’s no backing for them. The only thing that counts is that people believe they have backing. Then, like bad coins, they turn up again and again.
One counterfeit idea that circulates with frustrating stubbornness is the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. It’s one of the Christian Right’s mantras and a favorite talking point for televangelists, religious bloggers, born-again authors and lobbyists, and pulpit preachers. Take, for example, the Reverend Peter Marshall. Before his death in 2010, he strove mightily (and loudly) to “restore America to its traditional moral and spiritual foundations,” as his still-active website says, by telling the truth about “America’s Christian heritage.” Or consider WallBuilders, a “national pro-family organization” founded by David Barton, whose mission is “educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country.” Called “America’s historian” by his admirers, Barton is a prolific writer of popular books that spin his Christian version of American history. And then there’s Cynthia Dunbar, an attorney and one-time professor at Liberty University School of Law. She’s another big pusher of the Christian America currency. Her 2008 polemic One Nation Under God proclaims that the Christian “foundational truths” on which the nation rests are being “eroded” by a “socialistic, secularistic, humanistic mindset” from which Christians need to take back the country.
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atheosthoughts:
That’s why science is so universal. Religions have been changing all throughout their lifetimes. But, science, that cannot be changed. Facts and evidence are facts and evidence. Saying things, such as atheism is a religion, freewill exists, and all that stuff, shows a lack of understanding. If he’ll present those sorts of things as facts, then, you’re right, he’ll believe what he wants despite evidence. But yes, I agree, to say Christians created science is completely ignorant. Jews, Muslims, all religions have contributed to our modern scientific knowledge. But science is science. It has always been there, but only until recently have we been able to grasp some of its wonders. As for our understanding of science, we owe everything to Galileo and all those scientists of all sorts of different beliefs. They didn’t research and experiment because they were Christian, but because they had the thirst for knowledge and understanding.
Exactly my point. Rational people come to the same conclusions via rational deduction. Religious people come to the same conclusions via faith. I love being a part of the former. Your last sentence echoes what I told Niko; in like manner, Richard Dawkins isn’t committed to science because he’s an Atheist, but rather, he is committed to science because he seeks understanding. He has spoken to that effect:
“One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.”
— Richard Dawkins
I agree with most of the sentence. I simply don’t agree with generalizing religion. The quote can be applied to some, perhaps most, religions. However, such a quote cannot apply to modern Buddhism and Taoism — though it is arguable whether they can be considered religions; some people, if not many, consider them philosophies.
Rehabilitating the Inquisition
These days, one of the blogs where I spend the most time commenting is Leah Libresco’s Unequally Yoked on Patheos. This isn’t just because its author has a unique and interesting perspective unlike any I’ve seen elsewhere, but also because there’s a lot more give-and-take between atheists and theists (mostly Catholics) than you find in the comments section of many atheist blogs.
And while debating and attempting to persuade believers is a fun and worthwhile pursuit in and of itself, I also do it because, occasionally, something slips out that’s worth calling wider attention to. Hence, in case you missed it, I want to recount an illuminating exchange in the comments between me and a Catholic named Ted Seeber. He began with this:
“I think an athiest in a majority Catholic country would find himself surprisingly well treated- I’m sure Galileo never expected that his “punishment” from the Inquisition would be to be set up in a 47 room mansion with a fully equipped laboratory in exchange for his silence, but that’s what happened.” (source)
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Book Review: Letters From an Atheist Nation
Summary: A surprising, welcome reminder that atheism has a long and storied history in the U.S.
Letters from an Atheist Nation, edited by Thomas Lawson, is a compilation of reader letters printed by the Blue Grass Blade, a pro-atheist, pro-freethought newspaper published in, of all places, Kentucky in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Its editor, Charles Chilton Moore, was a strange and colorful character: an ex-minister turned atheist, abolitionist, prohibitionist, women’s rights advocate, and anti-gambling crusader who was repeatedly charged and occasionally imprisoned for libel, blasphemy, and obscenity (for printing ads for a pro-birth-control pamphlet). At its height, the Blade had several thousand subscribers from all around the country. Many old issues have been digitized and are available online from the Library of Congress.
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The Origin of Marriage (And the Evolution of Divorce)
A couple of weeks ago a Dollars and Sex commenter wrote that the “origin of marriage was to create a legal contract by which a man could acquire a female slave.” Interesting point. Is there an economic story that explains the origin of this most-debated-of-all-institutions?
The first humans, those who lived between 5 and 1.8 million years ago, had very little use for marriage. Using the behavior of bonobos as the basis for how early humans would have behaved, it is presumed that early males and females had sex with many partners. Food sharing was principally in exchange for sexual favors, including sexual favors between same-gender pairs. Because females could collect food (fruits, nuts and insects) while still carrying and protecting their babies, males were not needed as protectors or providers. That meant that in this period neither partner gained from being in a committed pair.
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A reader whose name escapes me recommended a paper that will interest those of us who have been following the Ehrman/Carrier debates about the historicity of Jesus. It’s by Stephen Law, a philosopher at the University of London, editor of the popular philosophy journal Think, issued by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and Provost of the Centre for Inquiry UK. He has his own eponymous website, has written eight books and looks a bit like Darryl Hall.
Last year he published a piece in the journal Faith and Philosophy (have any of you heard of this?) called”Evidence, miracles, and the existence of Jesus“, which he reprinted on his website (click the link, and see reference below). It doesn’t really deal with the actual evidence for and against the existence of Jesus—the kind of stuff Carrier and Ehrman are fighting about— but rather discusses what we would consider good evidence for the existence of a man who is now claimed to have performed many miracles. Law is an atheist, and dismisses the miracles right off the bat; what he wants to know is the same thing Ehrman and Carrier are discussing: how credible is the historical existence of the man Jesus around whom the miracles stories have coalesced?
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Like most arguments put forth by believers, this argument is futile. They undermine the ancient Greeks; they undermine the inquisitive curiosity of humans. They also ignore accurate history. Rather than getting into specifics, I’ll address the argument with a question: were they scientists because they were Catholics or were they scientists for other reasons? They definitely were not scientists because they were Catholics. Galileo was put on house arrest because he advocated heliocentrism. His fellow Catholics forgot his devotion the minute his knowledge endangered one of their beliefs.
Catholics didn’t establish modern science. Modern science was established by people who yielded to a natural inclination to question; however, they didn’t simply stop with questions, they followed up with experiments and observations. They weren’t seeking to bolster their faith; after all, their faith didn’t need any further support. The Church had enough power on its own. It didn’t need science to bolster its traditions; the Church wielded its sword regardless of how untrue its traditions actually were. Consider how many controversial findings were silenced by the Inquisition. Science was and is driven by curiosity and inquiry. Moreover, it was driven by a rebellious hunger for truth. Thankfully, today they are free to hunger for truth, but they do not need rebellion to fill that hunger.
Perhaps this type of argument is one of those childish arguments; you know, “I have more than you” kind of arguments. Yes, there were and perhaps are scientists who are also devout Catholics. So what? Most American scientists are Atheists. Both arguments don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Our issue is one: you believe god exists, one god in particular; we believe there are no gods and many of us are absolutely certain that your god doesn’t exist. How does such an argument prove his existence? It doesn’t. Therefore, this argument is a last ditch effort to say something meaningful in a debate you’re clearly losing. Perhaps the better thing to do is to see why people question or are opposed to your beliefs. Then again, if Catholics were truly the creators of science, I wouldn’t have to ask them to be unbiased; it would logically follow that the creators of science are unbiased since one of the principles of the scientific method is unbiased measurement, experimentation, and/or observation. That minor detail disproves the entire claim. Please abandon the desperate contortions; if there’s a god, give us the evidence. If Catholics created science, I wouldn’t need to ask for evidence because… Need I say more?
