Objectivity about religion An interesting article about lessons from "Mars" about religious faith follows this essay. What that article suggests most of all is a question about objectivity and religion: Why are so few people objective about their faith? If you do not believe this is the fact of the matter you have not been paying attention. Almost no-one is objective on the subject. Partly the explanation is due to the "my wife" effect. How many husbands are objective about their wives? And, of course, you could say about the same thing for wives apropos of their husbands. Yes, at least some measure of objectivity is possible, maybe a lot of objectivity, but that does not mean that you will actually be objective. This is because there is little to be gained and possibly a good deal to lose. In marriage one accepts imperfections because of the great good in a relationship, whether companionship or sexual gratification or the children or family connections, etc, including security, comfort, cuisine, status, and the like. And so, in religion, there are all those advantages: Strength in numbers when defending one's values, mutual help, socializing with people who comprise a 'second family,' reinforcement of cultural tastes, education in various areas like respectability and perseverance, maintenance of cherished traditions, and so forth. Hence Max Weber's hypothesis that evangelical Protestantism inspires those qualities that result in economic success in life, a concept that has since been expanded to say that each religion, or nearly each, -the great exception is Islam, which offers almost nothing except depravation- has some kind of overall value that it inculcates in its adherents, for example entrepreneurship in Judaism, social cohesion in Confucianism, artistic sensitivity in Catholicism and eastern religions like Hinduism, a spirit of innovation in Buddhism, etc., This leads to a related question: Isn't objectivity useful? Isn't objectivity valuable in its own right? And if so, why aren't more people objective about their faith? Objectivity is clearly useful in business, sports, finance, the military, medicine, science, engineering, agriculture, the construction trades, computer software, broadcast media, marketing, advertising, education, and still other pursuits. You would think that there would be a place for objectivity in religion also. Actually, there is. It is called "religious studies" in the universities. There is also a literature to this effect that caters to the general reading public with such titles as Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman of 1976, Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels of 1979, Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People of 1981, Arthur Hertzberg's 1998 tome, The Jews in America, Andrew Newberg and others, Why God Won't Go Away, Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, published in 2001, William Dean's 2002 The American Spiritual Culture -and the Invention of Jazz, Football and the Movies, Stephen Prothero's American Jesus of 2003, The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox, also a 2003 opus, Larry Witham's Marketplace of the Gods, How Economics Explains Religion, of 2010, and Ross Douthat's 2012, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. There is also a hybrid category, exemplified by Jonathan Haidt's 2014 The Righteous Mind, which, while it is half about political thought, the other half is a major contribution to religious scholarship and general understanding of religious thinking. Which is not to say that all is well in this genre. A good number of worthless books have appeared over the years, such as Lena Einhorn's 2007 example of fantasy in the guise of scholarship, The Jesus Mystery, and any of Karen Armstrong's paeans of praise for the head-in-the-clouds see-no-evil version of Leftist philosophy, for example, her 1993 fairy tale, A History of God. And there are all those books by Von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, which essentially misinterpret just about every historical fact presented in such volumes as Chariots of the Gods and The 12th Planet. Plus there is an "in-between" category, like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, filled with hard information and solid facts but including all sorts of dubious interpretations and unproven assertions as part of the bargain. Regardless, there is a market for objectivity about religion. But don't look for it in church nor in a traditional synagogue. To focus just on good books about religion, texts that are as objective as anyone can reasonably hope for, like those written by Elaine Pagels or Stephen Prothero, believers simply are not interested. Which is meant as a generalization that admits any number of exceptions, but the point is that this view of the situation is inescapable. How many Evangelicals that you know would have any interest at all in picking up a book like Marketplace of the Gods, which discusses economic motivation for religious commitment, or The American Spiritual Culture, which discusses the forms that religion can take in the wider culture? This is even true, from what I can tell, for a book like Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham's 1992 The Spirituality of Imperfection, Storytelling and the Search for Meaning, which you might suppose would be regarded as very relevant since, after all, Evangelical religion depends on telling stories, on communicating core ideas by way of stories, and analyzing the stories in the Bible. And what is true for Evangelicals is approximately just as true for Orthodox Jews, eastern Orthodox Christians, tradition-centered Catholics and, doubtless, similarly, for populations of Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Zoroastrians, and others. What believers do read -not counting sacred scriptures- is, by my way of reckoning, mostly religious pabulum: Simplistic moralizing, Potemkin Village mentality in which nothing has any depth, and, speaking of religious reading, complete separation from all faiths and cultures other than one's own. Because, you see, all other faiths are fundamentally wrong, or if not entirely benighted, perceived as essentially irrelevant. Historically there have been some major exceptions to this kind of rule. This can be said for T'ang Dynasty China, 17th century Holland, and early 19th century New England, the center of Protestant foreign missionary efforts at the time. And in some parts of the contemporary United States the generalization is "weak," such as in Hawaii, where even the most staunch Christians come in contact with Buddhists on a daily basis in a culture in which Christian faith is a minority religion. Various cities also share this kind of religious diversity, Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago, Boston, etc., and a significant number of college towns. But the rule nonetheless prevails: Other faiths are inconsequential, there is little to learn from them, and basically it would be nice if they all faded away. Which is a view that, personally, I find indefensible. Nothing said here is intended to disparage a new generation of Evangelicals now coming of age after years of absorbing lessons learned by way of Francis Schaeffer. His son, of course, is best known for taking a dim view of his father's religious life, which he found filled with unresolved issues, inexplicable closed-mindedness on various questions, and a certain amount of hypocrisy. Still, the new Evangelicals -to call them that- don't demand perfection, they seek guidance even when it necessarily is flawed. And they seek some way to make sense of the flood of non-Christian ideas that dominate culture everywhere they turn. In the past, until very recently -and this still is true in many locations- if you were a Christian there was no way to make sense at all of Hegel or Hume, let alone Nietzsche, and critiques of religion, like that of Feuerbach -or even Kierkegaard from within Christian tradition. As for Freud and other psychologists, his ideas were dismissed as anathema on moral grounds despite his agreement with religious believers about the fact that homosexuality is a pathology and does no-one any good. But otherwise Freud was seen as an advocate of a type of heterosexual morality that ran counter to Christian values as they were understood in the first half of the 20th century, not all that different than they had been in the 19th century. Freud was simply out of bounds. As for social scientists like Durkheim, his Elementary Forms of the Religious Life of 1912, translated into English by Joseph Swain in 1961, has had no impact whatsoever despite how central it is in the study of religion as a social phenomenon. And forget about Nicholas Wade's 2009 The Faith Instinct. As far as Evangelicals are concerned -and also Orthodox Jews and Orthodox Christians- religious origins are exactly as recounted in the Bible, pure primordial monotheism followed by an era of corruption into polytheism, a view for which no hard supporting evidence exists; indeed, the evolution of religion seems to have followed exactly the opposite course, with no sign of monotheism until maybe 850 BC unless you include Ahknaton's unique religious reforms of ca. 1340 BC which apparently vanished with him at his death. Today's college educated youthful Evangelicals can hardly ignore such things. This is more-or-less unlike the experience of their elders, who, even if they attended college, did so in an environment that was still more Christian than not and in which questions of religious origins or the relationship of faith to psychology were only rarely part of one's schooling. It should also be noted that many or most contemporary Evangelicals seldom major in the Liberal Arts. They are most likely to enroll in professional programs, engineering, business, computer science, medicine, and the like, fields where questions of truth claims of religion simply are not in the picture. But, as true as this may be, more and more this is less and less the case. Added to the fact that society is far different than it was as recently as the Reagan era, younger Evangelicals often are not convinced by doctrines that were mostly unarguable until the early 2000s. For some Churches nothing has changed, of course. This is the case for Seventh Day Adventists, large numbers of Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists, and others, and for many Pentecostals and Charismatics, but everywhere else a ferment is brewing. Not that this is necessarily for the good; sometimes it is the exact opposite as is the case for -so far- growing acceptance of homosexuality among this population, but in other respects we can welcome the transition. Finally there is a groundswell of genuine interest in religious truth claims in some other context than faith "first, last, and always." But how do you address such claims and the many honest doubts that are part of the process of discovery that many go through in their late teens and their twenties? Especially if these same people start families there is reasonable fear of compromise and the loss of all the good that comes with being part of a Christian community. We are back at the beginning; it is generally understood that membership and the religious commitment that precedes it are not welcoming to serious questioning. In a marriage constant questioning of a partner's shortcomings would be a sure invitation to estrangement and maybe divorce. In the context of a spiritual group questioning could very easily be interpreted as rejection of the group's moral consensus and of not accepting any authority that is normal in a church community; there are certain behaviors you do not indulge in, certain things you do not say, and certain things that are expected of you. "Are you one of us or aren't you?" This is one reason for this essay, the observation that religious believers do not like to be questioned about their faith. Indeed, and this may apply to nearly all religions, the only way to react to questions is defensively or, at best, evasively. A church does not exist as a philosophical debating society, it exists to minister to the "real life" needs of the people who are part of the community. However, what happens when those real life needs consist of serious doubts about a religion's truth claims? What modern people may want, and some people feel passionately about this, is a faith experience that not only features a caring community but a community dedicated to learning the truth even about embarrassing questions. What is not much of an issue in ethnic or other tradition-defined religions are issues about objective truth. Doctrine says that all beliefs that are accepted are true by definition and in case there are any doubts, one can always read apologists of the faith, in the case of Christianity thinkers who go back to the very beginnings of the faith, such figures as Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria. If you want a comprehensive view it is impossible to do better than Thomas Aquinas of the high Middles Ages; more recent historically were Blaise Pascal of the 17th century, or G.K. Chesterton of the early 20th century. And there are any number of moderns, Charles Colson is a noted example, or Andrew Greeley or Martin Marty, The trouble is that contemporary Evangelicals do not live in the Christian dominated worlds of most apologists of the past, hence there are assumptions they cannot make, and the world of the Roman Empire in which early Christian thinkers lived is utterly alien; you need a serious grounding in Classical era history to fathom what they really were saying More to the point, what galls many young Evangelicals, and which is a major criticism on the part of educated non-Christians, is the absence of intellectual curiosity in all too many churches. It just isn't there. Doctrine dominates, belief trumps all considerations, and the case to make is self-evidently true anyway -even when it isn't self-evident at all except to those already within the faith. Moreover, some of the standard arguments made by defenders of the faith are unconvincing. Like the so-called "trilemma" devised by C.S. Lewis. The Wikipedia article on the subject is instructive. Essentially this is the view that either Jesus was who he said he was, God's son and a divine incarnation on Earth, or else he was "evil or deluded." Also known as the "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" argument, it maintains that the probability that Jesus was a liar or was crazy are vanishingly small and that, therefore, he was God revealed to mankind. This argument may be persuasive to Evangelicals but it doesn't take much looking to find others who regard the argument as totally unconvincing. This includes former Evangelical, Bart Ehrman, who noted that another answer to the question is obvious, namely that claims about what Jesus said about his divinity really are legendary, that he never said them even though they were ascribed to him after the fact. This view is supported by the fact that the oldest Gospel, Mark, does not discuss a divinized Christ while only with the Gospel of John, which most scholars think was the last written of the four in the New Testament, is the only one that requires such a belief. That is, educated people, at least if they have background in history or religious studies, make distinctions between the Gospels to the effect that the earliest are the most reliable in terms of what Jesus actually said and did, while the last to be written, especially John since it does not share synoptic tradition, is the most unreliable. Evangelicals make no such distinctions; for them each Gospel has equal weight and all are true even if we need to reconcile a few discrepancies, viz, did Jesus throw the money changers out of the Temple at the start of his ministry as John says, or at the very end as the other three gospels tell us? There are still other perspectives on Lewis' argument that Evangelicals don't seem to know exist. For instance, maybe Jesus did say what John ascribes to him but maybe he understood his own words rather differently than his contemporaries. Perhaps he was speaking like a mystic or eastern guru and "believed himself to be God in the sense that everything is divine." This view is even more unconvincing than Lewis' contention, however, and can be set aside. Far more relevant is the argument made by the late Christopher Hitchens, a noted Atheist of our time. According to Hitchens it is necessary, if we are to be honest about our real values, to look clinically at this whole issue. Maybe Jesus said those things but keep in mind that in the process he claimed a "monopoly on access to heaven," he threatened the doubtful "with everlasting fire," and was reputed to have done such things as condemning fig trees and commanding demons to take over the bodies of pigs. What does that make him? Not a liar, not at all. "Such a person if not divine would be a sorcerer and a fanatic." My own view is that we simply cannot take each "Jesus quote" in the Gospels as legitimate. Some clearly have the 'signature' of agrapha, oral "sayings" of Jesus in circulation in the first century AD and then borrowed by one or more of the gospel writers even though their authenticity was open to doubt. Unlike the deconstructionists it also seems to me that most of the quotes attributed to Jesus are accurate or come close to what he said, and it is only a relative few that don't pass a test of consistency, that do not square with too many other statements to be accepted as genuine. Did Jesus really say that a believer must hate his mother and father to be a true follower of him? To the extent that this was something he said, the least that seems to be true here is that we don't have the full quotation, or that the writer misunderstood what Jesus really intended and garbled his words. But it seems more likely that this started as an agrapha created by a wandering believer who had his own problems with family members and who then justified himself by attributing his personal rationalizations to Christ. We can never know but this kind of supposition, it seems obvious, is a far better approach to take than unquestioning faith. Further, maybe Jesus believed what he said, presuming accuracy of the quotes in the Gospels, but sometimes simply was mistaken. He wasn't lying, he wasn't insane, he simply was inaccurate now and then. But did Jesus really say everything attributed to him? The "I am" material in John clearly was influenced by Thunder Perfect Mind in which the Goddess Isis describes herself with a list of "I am" statements. In John the most famous of these quotes occurs in chapter 8: “Truly, Truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am”, which is so similar to statements in Thunder that there can be no doubt about its origin. There are seven similar quotes in the text, viz, Jesus is the good shepherd, the light of the world, the true vine, the way, and the truth, and the life, etc, each claim preceded by "I am." The formula comes right out of Isis tradition. Here are several verbatim quotes from Thunder Perfect Mind. The translation is found online at _www.stoa.org/diotima_ (http://www.stoa.org/diotima) and follows the Coptic text from the Nag Hammadi Codices as prepared by G. W. MacRae. No-one knows the exact date of the original but from stylistic considerations and other internal evidence scholars generally give it a date some time before 350 BC, although possibly a Ptolemaic origin somewhat later cannot be ruled out. This was also an influence on Koheleth of Ecclesiastes and he wrote in Ptolemaic times. In any case, this is wisdom literature at its very best.
For I am the first and the last. I am the honored and the scorned, I am the harlot and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter... I am the incomprehensible silence and the much-remembered thought. I am the voice of many sounds and the utterance (logos) of many forms. I am the utterance of my name For I am the Wisdom of Greeks And the Gnosis of non-Greeks. I am judgment for Greeks and non-Greeks. I am the one whose image is multiple in Egypt. And the one who has no image among non-Greeks. For I am the one who alone exists, And I have no one who will judge me. For many are the sweet forms that exist in numerous sins And unrestrained acts and disgraceful passions, and temporal pleasures, Which are restrained until they become sober And run up to their place of rest. And they will find me there, And they will live and they will not die again To understate the matter, here we have a case of literary borrowing. Personally I think this was all for the good, what was borrowed was golden, inspirational, and well worth thinking about. But this surely was a borrowing, just as several passages in the Sermon on the Mount were borrowed from the Aramaic language Sayings of Ahiqar which originated as Assyrian wisdom literature. How would you know anything of the kind if your only frame of reference was Evangelical religion -or eastern Orthodoxy or standard Catholicism? For Evangelicals the only acceptable way to interpret the Bible is in terms of the Bible, that is, comparing one passage of the book with other passages that deal with the same subject. But going outside the Bible to look for ideas or -perish the thought- new truths, is strictly verboten. Take a classic example of Evangelical writing, Edith Deen's 1955 opus, All of the Women of the Bible, certainly a topic worth exploring. But to my great chagrin, when starting to read the book, all that was there to be found were summaries of various passages in the Bible presented as if there was nothing else that could possibly be said of any value. Which is preposterous and utterly naive. You cannot possibly understand the story of Esther, for instance, unless you study the history of Ishtar religion in Mesopotamia (Esther is a variant of Ishtar, that name firmly attested in the Diyala region of today's Iraq), and references to Naomi in the book of Ruth come very close, indeed, to descriptions of Inanna, the Sumerian version of Ishtar, elsewhere in Mesopotamia. Which should hardly be surprising since the Bible itself, as in Genesis 27 and Joshua 24, is clear that the ancestors of the Hebrews were Mesopotamians themselves. All of which is merely the beginning of such observations. You can almost go so far as to say that you cannot understand anything of the Bible without serious knowledge of the ancient Mid East and ancient Rome, but that would be pushing things to overstate a point. Regardless, there is much in the Bible that cannot be understood without such knowledge and far more than 99% of Christians (or Jews) realize. Exactly why should intellectual curiosity be devalued among Evangelicals and their spiritual kin of other faiths? And please do not reply with an appeal to the appearance of intellectual curiosity that is, in reality, no such thing. It is not an example of intellectual curiosity to memorize large swaths of the Bible and then be able to cite "proof texts" in answering questions as if the Judeo-Christian scriptures consisted of little more than a collection of laws to look up whenever some kind of question arises, with the answer already decided eons ago. Hence the observation that, yes, Evangelicals can be competent Bible scholars. If, that is, you want to drill down into the meaning of particular words in Hebrew or Greek, or establish specific details of fact like exactly where the well was located where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman or exactly what kind of coin Jesus was referring to when he commented that we should "render unto Caesar." But these are not the kinds of issues that matter to most people and certainly, while they reflect a certain kind of curiosity, are hardly intellectual in nature. In other words, Evangelicals -not all, but surely a large majority- are not intellectually curious and, as a result, they may be perceived as intellectually dishonest. They don't want to even think about the kinds of questions that mean the most to modern, educated men and women. The only replies they have are stock answers, "off the shelf," no thought required. And who needs that? Evangelicals make a valid point, though, in observing that those who are intellectually curious, as often as not, betray Christian faith. This is hardly a trivial issue; it is central to everything else. What good is intellectual curiosity if it destroys faith and all the useful products of faith? This is the core dilemma of religion in modern-day America. Perhaps the prime example of this is Bart Ehrman, a renowned Biblical scholar who makes no secret of this Evangelical roots. His books sometimes provide autobiographical vignettes of his true-believer Christian past. What he says in these soliloquies is entirely convincing, as they would be to anyone who has also lived through something similar. At some point literalistic-minded Evangelical faith becomes untenable if you have a genuine commitment to truthfulness, wherever it may lead. But is the only place to go, into the arms of Leftist nihilists? For that is the condition of most of the contemporary Left, it is nihilistic in character from the movies it prefers to the books it recommends, its heroes, and the causes it champions. Maybe none of this is presented as nihilism but what else do you call the values on which today's Left is based? This is not the Left of a generation or two ago, which was idealistic and not a little utopian. There is little resemblance between the moral Liberalism or Leftism of, say, John F. Kennedy or Erich Fromm, and what passes for Liberalism / Leftism in our day. Today's Leftists champion such causes as that of Trayvon Martin, a young black hoodlum of no accomplishment whatsoever, clearly a teen criminal, in contrast to Left-wing black heroes of another era who were respected community leaders and sometimes well educated college graduates. And there is gender feminism with its mindless male bashing and anti-intellectualism centered on opposition to evolution / sociobiology. There also is a penchant for Anarchism (ever hear of Noam Chomsky?), and there is ludicrous deference to Islam on the grounds that Muslims are an oppressed people, none of the crimes of jihadists regarded as cause enough to disavow Muhammad's proto-Fascist religion. Plus there is rising anti-Semitism on the Left along with growing hatred of the state of Israel, and there is a complete capitulation to one of the arch-enemies of the Left in the past, the homosexual movement and its leadership. Marx and Engels, as we learn from scholarship in the Journal of Homosexuality for 1995, were adamant in their condemnations of same sex activities which they characterized as disgusting and filthy. Similarly most early Socialist leaders, like August Bebel in Germany, regarded homosexuality as perverse and dangerous, and the Social Democrats were outspoken critics of the Nazis inasmuch as the leadership of the NSDAP consisted of a number of overt homosexuals like Ernst Rohm. Socialist opposition to homosexuality continued into the 1960s and 1970s, with SPUSA leader Erich Fromm clear that he considered homosexuality a mental illness. Indeed, until the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, there was still Leftist opposition to toleration of homosexuality, the last significant group to switch its position apparently being the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. But this is all gone now, and the last Democrats to show any knowledge of the issue or show any spine, people like former Senator, Sam Nunn of Georgia, or Representative Dan Lipinski of Illinois, are in a small minority in the party. Which is absurd. All relevant research on the issue demonstrates that homosexuality is what it has always been, a grievous personality disorder, -a mental illness- and that the organization most responsible for 'normalizing' this sickness, the American Psychiatric Association, has been captive to homosexual interests since 1972. See Charles Socarides' 1995 Homosexuality, A Freedom Too Far, as a good place to start in gaining a meaningful knowledge base on the subject, and O.R. Adams' 2001 As We Sodomize America, which the author has regularly updated at his American Traditions website. But what can anyone expect in a climate of cultural nihilism? This has infected the Right, as well, where you don't find any Anarchists but do find numerous pro-homosexual Libertarians. But our concern in this context is the Left and the Left as a destination for disaffected thinkers like Ehrman. Is this "solution" any good at all? Does it even make sense given the decidedly anti-religious views of many of the leaders of the Democratic Party, not to mention almost universal Atheism among Left-wingers outside the party? The problem is compounded by the narrow focus of most "liberals." By the way, quotation makes are put around the world to distinguish modern-day Leftism from the authentic Liberalism of the New Deal and New Frontier eras, or from philosophical liberalism exemplified by people like John Stuart Mill or John Dewey or possibly (the jury is still out) Michael Sandel. It was Jonathan Haidt who observed the intense concentration on justice issues of today's (so-called) Liberals. But how advisable is such focus? Hopefully we can agree that there are times when the injunction in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) book of Amos is what is needed most in a given situation: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” There is terrible injustice in the world and this is a problem that never goes away, it always exists in some form. However, is justice really what is most important in most situations? Recently I exchanged e-mail letters with a friend, and we discussed this matter with some care. Here are some quotes, somewhat edited, from my part in the conversation -to keep this as simple as possible: "What the issue comes down to, I believe, is one's evaluation of what you think is the Number 1 problem in the world. Years ago I thought it was justice. Hence the great relevance of Amos, and not only him. For sure, justice -lack of justice- remains a serious problem. But starting in the late 80s, certainly by the early 90s, my view had shifted. It now seems to me that a far worse problem is ignorance and stupidity in association with choosing one's core values. What was the reason for my switch in emphasis? Several factors but near the top of the list was the realization that not only are the "lower socioeconomic classes" often less than noble beings, and that an ideology which praises the wretched of the Earth as intrinsically good and pure is completely unrealistic about who they really are. Moreover, the upper classes are just about as ignorant about what matters most in life and cultivate their ignorance -largely through unjust actions that screw everyone else. The lower classes can and do indulge in their own injustices, of course. But this leaves ignorance as the root cause, injustice, as important as it is, nonetheless secondary. There was a cartoon some years ago about a medfly infestation of farms in California. Left-wing enviros were making loud noises about how 'cruel' it was to seek to exterminate the medfly. The cartoonist portrayed a Leftist crying about the fate of the poor innocent medfly while crops were being destroyed throughout the San Fernando Valley. Which says that unless the object of one's ire about injustice deserves attention and mobilization it should not get it. The question is one of knowledge. Were some percentage of Cambodians oppressed by the monarchy in the Sihanouk era ? Maybe they were, but did that justify Pol Pot? What could possibly justify a butcher like him and a movement like the Khmer Rouge? The point is that there is no morality that matters under Communism. This has been the case for all Communist regimes everywhere on Earth even if some, like Tito's regime in the former Yugoslavia, were far better than others. And for all of the corruption that existed in South Viet Nam in the 1960s did the country deserve a Communist dictatorship that persecutes religious people as a matter of policy? Yet the also immoral Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Communists were lionized by people like Jane Fonda. In what way is that kind of thing justifiable? Yet Communist regimes and movements have been defended by the Left on "justice" grounds since at least the time of Frantz Fanon. And so it goes in America, with many of the issues championed by contemporary hard core feminists in that kind of category, by my lights not at all deserving consideration on the basis of justice because they are so utterly wrong about way too much. As is the case of Leftists who reflexively defend black rioters on principle regardless of the merits or total lack of merit of the case they may make." My e-mails went on to observe that Jonathan Haidt has wrestled with a similar problem. Haidt was a hard core 'liberal' in the modern sense of the word in the 1990s but then, as part of field work, he spent a good amount of time in India among traditionalist Hindus. At the end of his time there he could no longer maintain his previous ideological liberalism, it was simply too shallow, too 1-dimensional, and too unrealistic. It was a liberalism based on little more than considerations of justice. But is this either realistic or intellectually defensible? What about other important considerations like loyalty to one's family or community or nation? What about the need for respected authority essential to get things done? What about the need for freedom of conscience and free speech? What about feelings of sacredness, that some things in life deserve to be safeguarded and cherished because of the meanings they impart to our lives? And there are still other considerations like compassion, viz, care for others and concern that people are not harmed if they express themselves openly and honestly. The current Left fails these tests miserably and only passes the justice test and even then only with qualification, and has some standing on the issue of compassion. Libertarians are even worse, with their fixation on individual freedom as if that was the be-all and end-all of everything worth thinking about. There is also the Atheist factor to consider. As Haidt put it in his book, "the very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship” In other words, religion is the best glue for keeping communities together and providing help to its members even though human beings have a natural and sometimes overwhelming tendency to limit their altruism to blood relatives or kindred by reason of marriage. Yet the Left -and to some extent this has been true since the 18th century- prides itself on opposition to religion, as if religion was an evil or a disease that should be eradicated. Conservatives have their own limitations -such as excessive trust in the worth of tradition, or limited horizons, which is related to lack of intellectual curiosity- but what most characterizes the conservative outlook is the fairly equal weight it assigns to each of these areas. And shouldn't we seek balance in our philosophy of life? This realization was what convinced Haidt that he could no longer identify with the political Left. And it wasn't the result of bull sessions with drinking buddies or armchair reflection after reading a few books that he found provocative. He researched the issue over the course of several years as part of his work as a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, certainly a respected academic institution. His views represent thousands of hours of empirical research carried out not only by him but by teams of qualified social psychologists. Needless to say, this presented problems to a certified academic in a world where Left-wing views are considered normative and mostly unarguable. Haidt's eventual solution was a politics that, as I see it, comes very close to Radical Centrism. Haidt was far too familiar with the critiques of the Right by the Left to move into any kind of conservative camp; he could not possibly go there. And I know the feeling -for exactly the same reason. The Right is -to use vernacular- full of crap about way too much. Yet he could not remain in the liberal camp because he now saw its structural flaws for what they are. What is needed, in other words, is a new kind of politics that is neither Left nor Right but that tries to make whatever is objectively good about both the Right and Left its own, and to add useful new ideas to the mix as they can be identified or created. This is not a matter of half measure compromises but whole-hearted acceptance of ideas and values exactly in the form (or with few modifications) as they are known and cherished by liberals or conservatives. This is also based on truth seeking. About this subject Haidt says a great deal but here is a somewhat lengthy paragraph from his book that spells it all out, that explains why we need a new kind of "beyond Left and Right" political philosophy: “We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or [concerns about reputation]...are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).” We can take this insight even further. Here is where Rebekah Simon-Peter's essay is most germane. What if a hypothetical Martian was to visit our planet in the manner of the hero of The Day the Earth Stood Still ? What would a dispassionately objective extraterrestrial recommend by way of religion? Two of Rebekah's 'new commandments' strike me as absolutely vital: Thou shalt step into the unknown. Thou shalt give thy all. Her other commandments certainly have value, especially since they keep one's feet firmly on the ground, much of her advice is pragmatic, but there is a direction we can choose to go in that she did not consider. What is objectively best for a religion? This question does not make a claim on behalf of any faith but simply asks "what is for the best?" On what grounds? Two additional quotes from Haidt's book can be cited here: “Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.” "When a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it." In so many words, it isn't easy to be objective unless you know what you are up against, including your own tendency to overvalue the ideas of the in-group you identify with and the tendency to devalue the ideas of all other groups on principle. Some theologies also are major impediments to objectivity. Another personal observation, the Baha'i Faith, in the years I was a member, opened my eyes to a world of ideas and beauty that I had no idea existed in the previous years when I was a Baptist. Regardless, after some time it became all too clear that there was a huge problem with the Baha'i outlook, its view that all religions -of those it regards as authentic, essentially the "great religions" of the world- should be considered as equals, each with the same value even if details differed from one faith to another. This view, the more I thought about it, starting in the late 1980s, is indefensible. There are major differences and some religions simply are incompatible with all others, as is the case of Islam, all hyper-zealous faiths like the Haredim and Nicheren, not to mention fringe groups like Satanists and cults like the Branch Davidians. It is essential to get this right, otherwise you are asking for more than headaches, you are asking others to overlook your commitment to an ideology that is based on idealism founded on willful denial of facts. This is not to ignore the good intentions of the Baha'i position, which is similar to the views of Theosophists, Unitarians, and many New Age groups, but it is to say that this outlook, if you maintain it after serious study of the reality of the religions of the world, is grossly dishonest. You need to make distinctions, and they need to be objective. The other lesson to learn from Haidt in this context is that once something has been identified as sacred, once you start to believe it is sacrosanct, it becomes subjective as part of your identity and only allows objective discussion under special circumstances. Hence, "of course, the Catholic Church is the one true faith, where would you like to start the discussion?" What discussion? There could not possibly be a discussion. However, what if your touchstone is Malachi 1: 11? "From the furthest East to the furthest West my name is great among the nations. Everywhere fragrant sacrifice and pure gifts are offered in my name, for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of Hosts." A date of something like 400 BC is reasonable for this passage, a time when the Persian Empire ruled a vast area that encompassed most of the known world as Jews (and others) knew it. The passage therefore refers by implication to the great religions of that Age, namely Judaism, Hinduism in an early form, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Jainism, and others, but especially the dominant faith of the empire itself, Zoroastrianism. You can certainly argue that it allows for the rise of Christian faith and maybe something along the lines of classic Manicheanism. We can add that this includes various forms of Ishtar worship then still extant, Orphism, the religion of the Goddess Isis, and the mystery religions. It can even be taken to include some versions of Shamanism. Yet there is only so far this can go. A number of later developments are completely outside the Pale, like Islam, a religion that demands a morality which is close to the exact opposite of all other religions on Earth. But think about what this suggests -and, please note, this verse is not translated in the present tense of Malachi's original Hebrew in either the King James Version or in the NIV, where everything is phrased in future tense as not having happened yet. But actual scholarship is unanimous to the effect that Malachi was talking about the world he knew as a Jew living in the (Zoroastrian) Persian Empire, of which Judea was a part. What this says is remarkable. It allow us a profound starting point for thinking about the religions of the world and from there we can ask questions about what, exactly, we can learn from other faiths and other traditions. At the same time it sets limits. Whatever is incompatible with the religions that Malachi alluded to, is out of bounds, to be rigorously questioned and rejected if essential tests of morality are not met. With this as our sacred "Ur text" questions of religious faith take on a whole new cast compared to all exclusivist religious doctrines. And this tells us that it should be entirely possible for a faith based on the Bible to be radically ecumenical -hence also radically objective. This, in turn, places a premium on judgement as most important as a lodestar to be guided by in matters of faith and, for that matter, everything else. Not at all incidentally, there are other passages in the Bible that are entirely congruent with Malachi 1: 11. For instance the material in Genesis about Melchizedek, who is not a Hebrew but who is favored by God to bless Abraham and the first covenant, the non-Hebrew prophet Balaam in the book of Numbers, and the material in second Isaiah where the Persian and Zoroastrian emperor, Cyrus, is proclaimed a messiah, but let us cite one example from the New Testament. We could refer to the book of Hebrews in which Christ is compared with Melchizedek, or to passages in the Gospel of John where Jesus says that in his Father's house are many mansions, viz, many faiths, but let us look at Acts 10: 34-35 which says- "Peter began: 'I now see how true it is that God has no favourites, but that in every nation the man who is godfearing and does what is right is acceptable to him." What is especially important about this verse is that it comes as a climax to a pericope -series of related verses that concern a single story- which begins, in Acts 4 where Peter says that the only salvation possible is through the name of Jesus. What follows is the equivalent of the kind of progression that is found in a dialogue by Plato in which an early statement of conviction is gradually replaced by new and superior insight and eventually the speaker has a major change of heart. But you wouldn't know this ,either, unless you had some kind of background in Greek philosophy. Which is to say that "Jesus only" theology is fundamentally fallacious. You cannot understand the Bible only by reference to the Bible; that is an impossibility. You need a grounding in the history of religion, especially religions of the ancient world. Otherwise in your interpretation of scripture you will make mistake after mistake, guaranteed. You may still make mistakes otherwise, but at least they won't be based on guesswork and you will have a fighting chance of breakthroughs to new truths. All of this said, to return to the e-mails to my friend, we need to face, head-on, "a problem in Christianity generally, news literacy and literary literacy at large. What is it about Christianity that does not inspire people to make themselves well informed? To ask this is also to ask why so many Jews do seem well informed and why large segments of Catholics and Lutherans are well informed. And I would guess that urban Episcopalians are also well informed, and some others, but the generalization seems valid enough. Modernist (liberal) Protestants are also basically in the well-informed camp, too. But this is not the case for most Evangelicals and, it would seem, a large part of the rural Christian population of any stripe. But here is the crux of the matter: The trouble with the well-informed "liberal Christians" is that for them the New York Times editorial pages replace the New Testament and they have no Old Testament to begin with. What does that leave?" Is it any wonder that, even if a significant percentage of 'modernist' Christians is dedicated to objective truth, -a proposition that is open to debate- obviously they are doing something very wrong. With some exceptions wherever you look the liberal churches are collapsing, it is a not-so-slow-motion implosion. Where is the soul searching? I do not know of any, do you? What there is, is doubling down on liberal theology, which, as of 2015, is hardly much different than talking points of the DNC. What is the solution? My solution is to start over and do it right this time. My ideology derives directly from Henri Saint-Simon, the avidly pro-American "father of Socialism," although his version of Socialism is much better described as Capitalist-Socialism, and those who were 'converted' to his ideas were mostly engineers, entrepreneurs, tradesmen, artists of one kind or another, scholars, forward thinking businessmen, and bankers like the Rothschilds. He lived before anyone had heard of Marx and his influence extended to people like John Stuart Mill and August Comte. He was anything but perfect but he was a visionary with whom I identify. It was Saint-Simon's view, expressed in his last book, The New Christianity, published in 1825, that what we need is a new kind of Christian faith, one that is based not only on faith but on science, creativity, and objectivity. Yet it must be communal, it must be a faith, and it must appeal to people in their real lives. It should be a source of inspiration and a commitment to the highest purposes that people may choose for themselves. For me this must be Biblical and centered on Christ; otherwise it would hardly be a form of Christianity. But it should have as its foundation the kind of ecumenical outlook found in Malachi 1: 11 and many other passages in the Bible. Necessarily it should be Buddhist in some ways, Hindu in others, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Taoist and Confucian, with a sense of the sacred in nature as found in Shinto. But above all it needs to be as honest and truthful as it is possible to get. No polite fictions, no pretense, and no denial of facts. It should be something to live for with all your heart, mind, and soul. This is my dream. Billy Rojas October 18, 2015 ======================================= Rebekah Simon-Peter blog 10 Commandments for a Martian Church By: Rebekah Simon-Peter October 12, 2015 The recently released movie _The Martian_ (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_martian/) starring Matt Damon tells the not-so-far-out tale of botanist Mark Watney left for dead on the planet Mars. His fellow crew members have reluctantly left him behind to undertake the 4 year return voyage to Earth. When he comes to after being knocked unconscious he is faced with a series of catastrophic realties he must tackle in order to survive. While not explicitly a story of faith–Watney says he’ll have to “science the s&!# out of things”–it’s a great metaphor for the church in this day and age. Watney is up against what _David and Goliath_ (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316204374?keywords=david%20and%20goliath%20malcolm%20gladwell&qid=14447 04482&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1) author Malcolm Gladwell calls “ desirable difficulties” which hone his imagination and capitalize on his desire to live. Much like dyslexics who innovate and orphans who excel precisely because of their difficulties, Watney rises to the occasion, and [spoiler alert] survives. Indeed, thrives. The church has a history of thriving when the chips are down. We grow comfortable and weak when all is well. We would do well to remember our rocky history when bemoaning our post-Christian world and spiritual but religious cohorts. What can the church learn from The Martian? Here are 10 Commandments for a Martian Church. 1. Thou shalt step into the unknown. The premise of The Martian is the courage of astronauts to go to Mars and to set up camp in an unforgiving environment. Getting left behind in that environment pushed the uncertainty principle to the max. Congregational survival similarly calls for a willingness to purposefully move into new territory. We can’t sail new seas and stay in a safe harbor at the same time. 2. Thou shalt flex thy faith muscles. Watney doesn’t express an explicit faith in God. But he demonstrates faith in himself and his training. That faith is tested time and again. Instead of weakening under scrutiny it grows stronger. Here’s the thing, church: certainty does not require faith. Only uncertainty does. In the early years of the life of the church, no one was sure if this thing would survive or if all the followers of Jesus would be martyred. Following him took a vigorous, muscular faith. Our faith muscles, by contrast, are fairly weak and flabby. What if we were to embrace uncertainty as an opportunity to grow stronger? 3. Thou shalt embrace pain. The first obstacle Watney encounters might have done the rest of us in. In order to not bleed to death, he has to perform painful surgery on himself. It would have made sense for him to lay down and die right then and there. Instead, he is willing to endure more pain to get on the right track. Is your church embracing the pain of corrective self-surgery or is it bleeding out? 4. That shalt not blame. Watney demonstrates remarkably good humor and compassion in the face of intense isolation, seemingly insurmountable odds, and several failed attempts at survival. He doesn’t blame his crew, Mars, NASA, God, or himself. Instead, he understands and approves of the decision his crew made. He goes to work with what he’s got. How much energy do we waste on blame when we could be putting it toward creativity and faith flexing? Things are the way they are. Let go of blame and get on with it. 5. That shall not covet thy neighbor’s success. Watney doesn’t get lost in the fantasy that life would be better if only… Covetousness blinds us to what we do have. The next time you drift into envy over megachurches, famous pastors, large budgets or fabulous buildings, you are wasting precious energy on fantasy. Do like Watney: improvise, improvise, improvise. That too is the stuff of faith. 6. Thou shalt fail. Being willing to fail is the only way to truly succeed. Watney had to put his limited resources on the line in order to figure out what would actually work. He failed, and failed big. More than once. But those failures are what pushed him to ultimately succeed. When the church is unwilling to fail, or to lose only a little, it is also unwilling to succeed big. Big fails require big faith. Big faith leads to big breakthroughs. 7. Thou shalt not be blind. Only one thing drives Watney’s efforts: his desire to live. This vision pushes him through pain, failure and the seemingly impossible. It gives him the courage to try things that seem impossible. If your church is not operating with a fresh and compelling vision, its hard to imagine you’ll do more than limp along until death. 8. Thou shalt give thy all. At one point, Watney must concede that he may in fact not make it. He asks the Commander to break the news to his mother and father, if needed. “Tell them I love them. Tell them I loved my work. Tell them I have died in the service of something greater than myself. And that it was worth it.” If your church has tried everything, failed, and must die, be proud that you gave your all. 9. Thou shalt give back. After Watney comes back to Earth, he gives back. Another person might have hid away and nursed their wounds, or gone on a vendetta. Not Watney. He becomes a professor of aspiring astronauts, helping them navigate their fears and concerns. Every congregation, no matter the size or budget, can give something back. We don’t exist in a vacuum. When we refuse to give back, we refuse to participate in the cycle of life. Our stingness will come back to haunt us. One small congregation I know of is so concerned about its own survival that it prefers to hoard its sizeable bank account rather than share it with those in need now. Stinginess does not inspire faith, deliver hope, or bring the Kingdom. Give back or pay it forward. 10. Thou shalt not coast. When Watney returns, he reveals the grit that got him through. People ask him: Did you think you were going to die? “Yes,” he says. “Space is unforgiving. Things will go wrong. You solve one problem. Then the next. Then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you will live.” Does your church ignore its problems, confusing denial with faith? God does not do for us what we can do for ourselves. Coasting is not faith. Coasting is laziness. The lessons of faith are all around us. Even in sci-fi movies. So don a pair of 3D glasses, and head to the theater. Then, thou shalt consider the 10 Commandments of a Martian Church. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
