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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Pope St Francis
by rjosephhoffmann
As we wait for the media to make Pope Francis into its own image of a “people’s Pope” I thought I would offer a few thoughts. I have no special insight. I am a lapsed Catholic who, when most recently asked if I was “practicing,” replied that I had given up practicing when I felt I reached a sufficient level of perfection and could go no further with it.
Francis of Assisi, to use CNN”S favourite adjective, is an iconic saint. That means everyone knows a little bit about him, even protestants who normally can’t be bothered with names like Boniface and Thomas Aquinas. I haven’t checked the registry today, but my recollection is that there haven’t been popes named Thomas either. Peter is off limits, so too the names of the apostles with the exception of lots of Johns and Pauls and a few Marks. –Odd in the institution that invented the theory of apostolic succession but ended up with names Like Zosimus, Celestine, Pius, and (hee hee) Hilarius. But that is a quibble.
So what about Francis? Francis was a thirteenth century hippie who talked to birds, had delusions of spiritual communion so intense that he bled, and was neither pastoral nor especially generous. He was dirty, sickly, a coward, spiritually selfish, weird, a poor administrator, a beggar who lived off others’ charity and left his own order in a shambles of rival sects that made little impact on the consolidating authority of Rome, then heavily into the regal trappings of an imperial papacy. Those who wish to read good but sanitized versions of these interpretations may wish to have a look at the recent biographies of Dominican priest Augustine Thompson (Francis of Assisi, A New Biography) and, from the French to English, Andre Vauchez’s Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint.
It is not that Francis that this Francis wants to evoke. It is the Francis legend: that Francis, the Francis of Catholic piety and garden statues, loved birds, wore a brown robe as he strolled in the evening composing nature poems, and in his spare time loved the poor. The crucial part of the legend which is almost certainly crucially false is the bit where Pope Innocent I, in a vision, dreamed he saw a monk holding in his hands the Basilica of St John Lateran (the pope’s own church), and decided it was God’s will for him to approve the monk’s new order. As a symbol of their obedience to his authority, however, the friars were required to be “tonsured” ( a patch of their hair removed from their pate), signifying they would not preach heresy.
This Francis, a pope, is said to prefer the simple white cassock and to eschew gold, ermine and red slippers. Offered those trappings immediately after his election, he is reported to have said to an attendant, “No, the carnival is over.” But this may just be a rumour being spread by traditionalist Catholics. Who could know?
What I do know is this. The least offensive thing about Benedict XVI is that he fulfilled the central office of the papacy, which is to be a teacher. That is the job description. Loving the poor and being concerned about the plight of the environment are noble things, and everybody should care about those things. But that is not what popes can do best. The councils of the modern secular state are where poverty alleviation and environmental protection take place, not in a baroque office under the ever-blue skies of eternal Rome.
The unavoidable fact is, the Church is only strong in a world where the poor and the hungry are a majority. A church of well-educated men and women who manage their incomes well and plan their families by using contraception and, in a pinch, abortion—that kind of world has no use for popes.
Loving the poor is code for needing the poor, the uneducated, the disillusioned. Those poor no longer live, primarily, in Europe and increasingly not in North America. They live below the equator, in Africa, parts of South America, the southern Atlantic and the Pacific. That is where the church is strongest, because it is also where superstition is the strongest. These Catholics do not need to be taught the doctrine of the Church. They don’t need (or even like) Latin masses. They believe in simplest terms that Jesus is God, that Mary is his Mother, that priests have magical power, and that when they die, if they are saved, they will go heaven and live forever. They pray these things in their own language and they sing about them to the strumming of untuned guitars and marimbas. They want to feel loved, and to feel compassion. No one can fault people for that. I certainly don’t.
I do not even believe that the Church conspires to keep them in this state. The difficulty for Catholicism throughout history has been how to lift many people up intellectually and then keep them in the walls once they are lifted. A former priest teacher of mine (who left his order about five years after my high school graduation to become a social worker) once put it simply: people who need bread don’t need a lecture on transsubstantiation. The ironic outcome of Catholic “education,” including my own, has been to show people the world that scholar-priests, philosophers, and theologians helped bring into existence—a world of serious thought, questions, and solutions—and then to ask them to choose faith instead. A rather grim reversal of Plato’s Allegory.
Benedict’s failed attempt was to call people back to the smart Church and to that world. Francis will be satisfied with the nostrum: Have faith—prefer faith. If you have any insight beyond that, good for you. Odd for a member of a religious order that is not especially known for its faith-based initiatives.
And just for the banal, persona-shaping media, this also has to be said. When it comes to this pope “reforming” the papacy: No. This pope will be even more adamant in opposing birth control, abortion, a new definition of marriage, the relaxation of priestly celibacy, and women’s ordination. The Church has certainly and frequently called for social justice, but when it gets right down to it, they have benefited from poverty and ignorance. The very survival of the church depends on it. A smart church, European-style, is an empty church. Rome is not naïve about this. If simplicity is the PR campaign they need to increase numbers, then simplicity, not complex theological dicta, it will be.
That is the kind of Francis this Francis has to be. If he saves a few birds and trees in the process and preaches peace to the choir, that is fine and good. But there will be no dramatic change here—just a reassertion of the medieval “pro-life” social values and the interfering sexual politics of his predecessors, going back to Paul VI, the pope who issued Humanae Vitae condemning contraception as intrinsically opposed to the will of God.
Paul VI had a tough time smiling. When he did, he only managed to look as if the laxative was working.. This pope has a broad and winning smile. But what he is selling is the same used car.
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Published: March 16, 2013
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11 Responses to “Pope St Francis”
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Fr. Augustine Thompson O.P.
March 17, 2013 at 12:26 am
I don’t think you read my biography of Francis. Or, if you did, you did not understand it.
And I think I know because I wrote that book.
–Fr. Augustine Thompson O.P.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 17, 2013 at 2:30 am
It was a very good book and I apologize for giving the impression that my view was yours! That is unforgivable, and I have revised this bit accordingly.
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Franklin Percival
March 17, 2013 at 5:49 am
Thank you for furthering my education.
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neodecaussade
March 17, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Reblogged this on Neodecaussade’s Weblog and commented:
This is the type of discussion we need to have at this time of Papal transition.
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James Ridgway
March 18, 2013 at 2:41 am
Reblogged this on JamesRidgway.net and commented:
An excellent post on the new pope’s choice of name, by one of my former lecturers.
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Maria
March 25, 2013 at 11:26 am
Such a load of prejudiced and ignorant rubbish! The author of this article needs to read a few more biographies of St. Francis as well as some primary sources, then he might begin to understand what anyone following in his steps might have to offer our world. And of course, as a former Catholic, he should know that the aim of the Church is never to keep people in poverty. In fact, it plays a major role is defending the poor and lifting them out of poverty via education, medical care and developement projects. Likewise, the author of this article should inform himself about what abortion is doing to women, about modern alternatives to artificial conception and about the suffering of children living within the confines of liberal interpretations of marriage – all of which is available via emphirical research and in social and medical journals. Contrary to his claims, what the Catholic Church teaches is a healthy and inspiring alternative to abortion, artificial contraception and “gay marriage”. Oh, and by the way, Pope Benedict is known as the “green pope” because of his initiatives, eg. solar panels in the Vatican.
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steph
March 25, 2013 at 9:37 pm
You make a lot of very silly false accusations and assumptions about the author who is a highly distinguished professor of linguistics, theology and a biblical historian. Your own prejudice betrays you Maria. Jesus probably said something like this, as have other wise men too. : t? d? ß??pe?? t? ???f?? t? ?? t? ?f?a?µ? t?? ?de?f?? s??, t?? d? ?? t? s? ?f?a?µ? d???? ?? ?ata??e??. Your last statement is golden. Is catching a helicopter for a lunch date ‘green’ Maria?
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Maria
March 25, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Very interesting. I see that my wholesome and informed critique of your article did not get beyond the moderator…
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steph
March 25, 2013 at 9:29 pm
‘wholesome and informed’ – very amusing…
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Insight
April 12, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Is Pope Francis really a reformer? Is he really such an outsider? His parents, after all, were Italian immigrants in Argentina. Will Francis stand up to the Italian clerics in the Curia? IHas the media overstated the REFORMER? For more, pls see my essay at: http://deligentia.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/pope-francis-a-reformer/
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Terry B
April 24, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Quote
“They pray these things in their own language and they sing about them to the strumming of untuned guitars and marimbas.”
Why should they not “pray these things in their own language”? And why do you presume that their guitars are “untuned”? I do not mind cynicism but I, and many “from below the equator” object very strongly to such narrow minded ignorance from the US of A. It is no wonder that ‘Yanquis’ have such a bad name below the equator. You certainly do nothing to improve relationships – but then you are a philosopher, so maybe there is an excuse!
However an apology would be in order but I am not holding my breath.
TerryB
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Prayer of Pope St Francis
by rjosephhoffmann
Lord, make me an instrument of political persuasion:
Where there is pomp let me feign humility;
Where there is skepticism, sincerity;
Where there is tradition, anything that looks new and comes in white,
Where there is certainty, relativism;
Where there is light, gray;
Where there is doctrine, opinion.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much
Do as be seen to be doing;
Change things as to pray for changes;
Be Pope as to be one of the boys who happens to be Pope;
Teach anything clearly as to listen to absolute drivel from nincompoops in ten languages, including Chinese, and pretend to take it seriously
For it is in pretending that we are convincing.
It is in forgiving everyone anything that we look good,
And it is in chucking it all up in about eight years, more or less, that I am saved…
Amen.
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Published: March 24, 2013
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3 Responses to “Prayer of Pope St Francis”
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steph
March 24, 2013 at 2:40 am
I think you overheard him praying in the Garden to have so accurately written it down. I bet he peeped when he prayed, pretending. Did he?
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diamondbolt
March 24, 2013 at 2:41 am
Big R
You must be joking.
Joseph
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Franklin Percival
March 25, 2013 at 4:27 am
Another dose of much needed cynicism – you do not disappoint, Mr Hoffmann.
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Pope and Circumstance
by rjosephhoffmann
Of course I have no business saying so, but I think Pope St Francis is a bore. From the moment he said he wouldn’t wear the ruby red slippers, I thought the guy was a fraud. Then came the news that he’d ordered a Vespa (joke), wouldn’t live in the papal apartments, preferred washing the feet of tattooed prostitutes and criminals to those of his fellow priests on Maundy Thursday, and liked being called Bishop Francis (Why not just Jorge?) instead of Your Holiness.
What about “Your Silliness”? I have nothing against simplifying the world’s largest bureaucracy, being attentive to the needs of the gazillion Catholics in the southern reaches of the globe who now make up the largest active segment of the Church’s population, or eschewing the more flagrant symbols of office that Benedict XVI seemed to enjoy. –Confidentially, though, I like my popes to look like popes and not like an ad for Clorox. A little red as an accent colour reminds me the popes have blood, and sins, and aren’t simply parading around like perpetual virgins.
The problem with Francis is that he already looks like a guitar mass and a paper hymnal. There is something Old Vatican II about him that makes me want to bang my head against the wall. He has begun to sound like those Jesuits before him that gave us thirty years of tuneless tripe that tightlipped Catholic congregations refused to sing. In a scary, bad-memory kind of way he looks like those liberal priests who liked their liturgies (in the strict sense) vulgar, their chalices wooden, their genuflections optional and their altars square. For the sake of relevance OV-II style, it helped to make the congregation stand when they should kneel and put the tabernacle to one side in an ecclesiastical game of Where’s Waldo? That is the “context” Francis fits into away down south in Argie.
The idea he is anything new just shows you how quickly you can forget about how old and stale Vatican II had become by the time Benedict XVI replaced the drooling and Parkinson’s ravaged John Paul II, himself soon to be sainted for presiding over the total dissolution of Catholic liturgy and priestly training while the rest of the world looked on oblivious (and oddly forgiving) of his sins and limitations.
What is saddest about Francis is that he may honestly believe one gesture is worth a thousand bells. He may believe that the Catholic church is a church of the poor, or he may, more cannily, know that the future of the Church depends on a demographic that is largely poor and looks at a pope in red velvet and ermine-trimmed mozetta and sweet lacey surplice beneath as out of touch with the nitty gritty of the Church Militant—the old name for those of us here below, working out our salvation in an era of sexting and American Idol.
If Francis believes that his gestures are significant he is merely ignorant. If he fails to recognize that Benedict brought the Church back from a forty year decline into liturgical torpor that fell past the pedestrian into the ditch of banality, then he is both ignorant and malignant. At age 74, he may be too old or too diffident or (dare I say it) too new world to realize that people like a little paprika with their potatoes, and so far he is all stodge and no excitement. I think it was Steinbeck who said that no American thinks he is poor; he thinks he is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Most Catholics, for the same reason, like a pope who isn’t afraid to strut a bit, as long as underneath the strutting they sense compassion and integrity. To be honest, Francis is doing his own kind of strutting for the cameras, and I am not at all sure the integrity is there.
After a while, even the media are going to get sick of watching him be one of the guys. When we see him auctioning off treasures of the Vatican Museum or trying to hock the keys of the kingdom for a sensible padlock, we’ll know his moment in the limelight is over. But that, probably, will never happen. Francis will be too hard pressed to find new, meaningful gestures that seem to tweak his papacy as a papacy for the little guy without really doing much of anything. My own feeling, as a devout lapsed Catholic, is that if you’re not going to do much of anything, do it in style.
I am not sure what walk this pope is walking or talk he is talking because gestures, of course, are just that. They cost him nothing and change nothing that may need to be changed. The great virtue of his predecessor was that Benedict “knew” the Church in both real and historical terms. Francis has all the marks of a diocesan ordinary who thinks what worked in Buenos Aires will work globally. Benedict was all about recreating an authentic Catholicism that transcended the local, because Catholicism is, after all, by name and self-understanding, a global faith.
In pinpointing the life and ministry (and obsessions) of a thirteenth century monk as the way forward for the church universal, Francis runs the risk of becoming an artifact of Vatican II, a bit of nostalgia , repackaged as The Latest Thing. Shaw infamously teased about the teaching of St Paul that the conversion of barbarians to Christianity was the conversion of Christianity to barbarity. Francis’s determination to create a Church of the poor will impoverish the Church is ways still to be seen.
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Published: March 29, 2013
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5 Responses to “Pope and Circumstance”
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steph
March 29, 2013 at 3:26 am
Impeccable points. What benefit are his pretentious gestures to the poor? Will he do anything to alleviate poverty in the world? He’s hoping his dramatic and ‘radical’ tradition breaking displays are distracting the world enough to make them forget the Church scandals, sex, marriage, contraception and ordination of women… So far he seems to have been successful in that. I’m dreading him scrapping Latin in Rome and calling for a more universal language to spread the ‘good news’ … like English or Chinese. I’m guessing less than a decade before we can be free from Silliness.
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jamesdtabor
March 29, 2013 at 10:17 am
Ah yes, if you watched the Showtime series on The Borgias we know what a “real” Pope should be like and look like and act like–Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia!! Oh for the days of old!
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Dominic
March 29, 2013 at 3:05 pm
This piece is excellent. It describes exactly how I feel.
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Franklin Percival
March 30, 2013 at 3:07 pm
I love the sentiment you express.
Perhaps it’s time to let the whole religion as temporal power thing wither while the rest of humanity gets on with the serious business of finding out how to run ourselves in equilibrium with the planet we call home.
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Terry B.
April 21, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Your comments on Pope Francis in this and previous articles do not go down very well with me! They may get applause from your fellow cynics in the U.S. of A. but for someone who has lived and worked with the poor in Argentina they come over as snide and ignorant. “Untuned guitars” indeed! The poor guitar players in the Argentine Chaco could teach your north american “guitarists” how to play properly.
If your comments are an example of how athiests treat others, then I am glad that I am still a Christian!!
Terry
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The Baltimore Catechism Annotated
by rjosephhoffmann
Q: Who is God?
A.: God is the supreme being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in existence.
“Supreme” …….. having nothing above it,
“being” …………..an isness that can’t be compared
“infinite” ………..with nothing to love it,
“perfect” …………has never been scared.
“who made”…….i.e., fashioned, created
“all things”………cats, dogs, thunder, and mist
“keeps them” ….controls, and is fated
“in existence”.….to perpetually shake his big fist.
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Published: May 9, 2013
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Deep-end Dawkins
by rjosephhoffmann
“Put the kids in the basement Mother, there’s one of them scientist fellers at the door.”
Religion as Child Abuse
Short of saying, “The sun is shining today,” I’m not one to make scientific pronouncements. I’m too afraid that a physicist who happens to be passing by will say, “Actually, no. The sun may appear to be shining to you, but it does not shine. It gives off radiant energy in the form of heat and light. In fact using the formula (32 x 106) / (3.46 x 1016) = 9.25 x 10-10 where the area through which the sun’s radiation is pouring = 4 (pi) R2 = 3.46 x 1016 square miles only about -90.3 dB, or one billionth of the sun’s radiation reaches the earth. So ‘shining’ is not the word you want.”
Naturally you would not follow a correction like that with “Have a nice day,” let alone speculate about the chance of rain.
I was puzzling over assertions and pronouncements recently when I read that Richard Dawkins, a scientist who probably knows as much about radiation and energy as he does about biology and evolution, said that the teaching of religion amounts to child abuse.
Apparently he did not have in mind the coifed, grim-faced nuns who thwacked my hands with wooden rulers for getting math problems wrong (math being like catechism: there are only right answers and wrong answers). He was talking about religion in general and religious training of all flavors. Like other new atheists, but unlike scientists in their realm, Dawkins doesn’t think in terms of “species” of religious belief: there’s just one big cavernous genus into which everything can be piled. Religion. That makes analysis a lot easier to do, because general (from genus) statements are much easier to make than specific (from species) ones.
Dawkins can defend the use of generalization (categorization) by saying that while science needs to be specific because it deals with facts, theology (religion tarted up as an academic pursuit) is one big gasbag with no facts in it, so better to call it what it is.
I am not going to rehash the familiar cavil that Dawkins is not a theologian and thus has no right to say anything about theology.
That’s absurd. Most priests and ministers aren’t “theologians” either: they have been through three or so years of seminary and have not been fazed by serious theological study. Increasingly, they are linguistically inept, philosophically unformed and critically dumb. That doesn’t stop them from climbing into a pulpit every Sunday and sharing the air with thousands of bored listeners, eager to get their souls washed and on to a KFC extra crispy traditional special. I don’t think we should call Richard Dawkins any less of a theologian than they are. Plus, while a priest gets a paycheck for exhibiting his ignorance, Dawkins works as a theologian for free—sort of pro bono—for which he should be commended.
I also don’t buy the idea that science makes no claim on religion. Of course it does. If it didn’t we could still believe in a lot of stuff that the evolution of ideas—including scientific ideas—has proved wrong.
Religion: A Dead Horse that Won’t Lie Down?
Most religious people aren’t worried any more that Galileo was right and the Church was wrong, something it shamefacedly confessed in 1992 with a nice letter of apology from the late Pope. (Worry more about the masses of folk, religious and non-, who don’t know what the fuss was all about). My many smart, sort-of-religious friends find Darwin’s theories and modern cosmological theory completely sensible, if not compatible with Genesis. They manage to go to church (sometimes) and still use their library cards without fear of being exposed in the village square as double-dealers. They see the scientific view as the only rational explanation of how our world got here and how we got to be in it. To think this way, they have to think that much of what they read in the Bible and what they might have learned in Sunday school is mythology and legend, very little of it historical (in the modern sense of the word) and some of it, at a different level of discussion, morally reprehensible. This is not all they–or I –see: they also see poetry, tragedy, political intrigue, lessons for kings and servants, folk wisdom, flashes of brilliance, the darkness of hopeless wars and greed—and much more, some of it awful
I still need a brisk walk when I read the story of Jephthah in Judges 11 (he kills his daughter, on a promise to God) and the story of the Levite in Judges 19 (he carves his not-quite-dead girlfriend into twelve bits, after throwing her outside to be pack-raped by some love hungry teenagers, then sends a part of her to every tribe of Israel). You hardly find stuff like that anymore, even on Discovery Channel.
The freethought websites now offer handy links to these “toxic texts” so that the unaware can be made wary, the assumption (correctly) being that no one actually reads the Bible and barely knows what’s inside it. Leaving aside the fact that an unread book might not be psychologically traumatic to a non-reader, however, there’s also the fact that all ancient literature is violent. –Ever read the story of the slaying of Hector in Iliad 22? Of course you haven’t. That’s because it was probably required on your school syllabus. But unchanging human nature has always liked images of violence (including violent sex) and war, and its occurrence in religious texts from our distant past shouldn’t surprise us. That “occurrence” says very little that is shocking about religion, but it does say something about what we like. While the Greeks thought that the gods were prettier than us, both they and the Hebrews thought God was the sum total of our worst and best features, failings, and moral lapses. The idea of God’s mathematical perfection and philosophical consistency is a construction of the Middle Ages: it isn’t there in the text because if wasn’t there in life, and one thing the ancients weren’t shy about was the grittiness of human existence.
Except for some people named Ogletree down in Butte, Texas, who live in barricaded trailers and have twelve wives and eat dog because Leviticus permits it, there aren’t many people who become crazy because religion made them crazy or violent because religion made them violent. In fact, the most recent research, funded by the Lilly Foundation, shows the opposite: that religion performs a socializing function that is often missing in a purely secular or value-free environment. If the Ogletree family is crazy they were crazy already. Even their Methodist neighbors think so—not to mention the liberal Episcopalians in Houston who only read about such sideshows when they read the Ogletrees have accidentally blown themselves up while preparing a fireworks display to announce the coming of the apocalypse.
The vast majority of Christians—even “American” Christians, the ones Richard Dawkins touts as the epitome of stupid and damaged–are “message people.” They like their religion lite and attractively packaged. The most liberal of them won’t raise an eyebrow when you tell them the Bible is a collection of stories from the distant past and reflects the culture and values and wrong ideas we used to have—deficient moral ideas, bad ideas about fairness and justice and women (and men) and creation and nature. They might not blanch, either, when you say to them that God behaves like a scoundrel, a rough draft for all the petty despots (not to be confused with pretty depots) of the ancient Near East, that the Bible (and the Quran) justifies war and celebrates violence, that it reflects not the golden age of God’s people but a society we would find vomitously primitive if we had to live in it.
Most Christians either only “sort of” or do not believe that God labored for six days to make the world, that Mary was a perpetual virgin, that Jesus walked on water, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, or is coming back to earth before the warranty on the Ford pickup runs out. Oddly, many believe in God and might even believe that in some weird, undefined way (not that definitions are historically lacking) Jesus was his son or at least a player. The American polls—Pew, Gallup, Barna Group, etc.—show only that most religious people are religiously confused, not dangerous. It is why I have been arguing—for a long time—that what people need is more critical study about religion—not more physics and chemistry and exhortations about religion’s destructive potential. If the proper study of mankind is man as the poet once said, the proper study of religion is the study of religion, not biology.
Undiscovered Philosophy? Unknown Bible ‘Facts’?
But many religious folk I know are also people who wonder why, after accepting all that they accept, atheists need to evangelize on street corners or deface billboards and buses with signs that say, “Wake Up Fools: The Emperor is Stark Naked.” When I read The God Delusion I wondered (and I am not the only one) how much reading in the philosophy of religion Professor Dawkins actually did before he leapt into print with his attacks on arguments—like those of Thomas Aquinas—that philosophers have been talking about and dismantling for six hundred years. My answer to myself ranges from not very much to none at all.
The remarkable thing about The God Delusion was that it could ignore the entire history of philosophical critique and discussion, as though its author was the first to notice the weaknesses in medieval logic. The Renaissance? The Enlightenment? Pico? Bacon? Erasmus? Footnotes? Attacking 13th century thinking in the early 21st was little bit like pointing out that a windmill can’t turn without wind.
The book gained a following because many of the people who read it were as ignorant of the history of religion and theology (which is “about nothing at all”) as Dawkins himself: trained in that peculiar Oxbridge system where before he was seventeen he had to choose which subject to read at university, he is the epitome of the narrowly trained, humanities-deficient guy who thinks literature and music are just fine as long as you recognize they don’t actually teach you anything. Languages, history, philosophy, and assorted other subjects can ride in the back of the bus as long as science does the driving. Atheists had long been seeking an intellectual messiah and in Richard Dawkins they found their Jesus.
The basic fallacy of Dawkins and his cohort from the beginning was a stubborn commitment to anachronism, as though he and his atheist buddies were the first to recognize the literal contradictions, the bloody-mindedness, historical inaccuracies, textual problems, and scientific primitivism of the Bible. Dawkins’s fans (especially his ardent, religiously depressed American fans) considered him an “authority” –an innovator, even–for pointing, however vaguely and generally, to these things, and saying in exasperation (repeatedly)
“I ask you, how can any reasonably intelligent man or woman believe this shit?”
The obvious problem with that applause line, in addition to it being a false dilemma, is that reasonably intelligent men and women have been talking about that shit for centuries.
Dawkins creates his own delusion when he asks his audiences to think that a five hundred year history of historical scholarship and a two century -old history of textual scholarship—much of it done, by the way, in Oxford lecture rooms and cloisters—has never taken place, never been incorporated into the (non-existent) discipline of theology.
The questioning of biblical authority didn’t start with Dawkins, or with Darwin, or even with Galileo, and the latter two barely questioned it at all: it has its own chain of development that starts as far back as Augustine and the church fathers, and is never quiet after that.
Augustine wrote that if a Christian takes the Bible literally he should not be surprised if a non-Christian laughs. The philosopher Origen complains that the Greek anti-Christian writer Celsus had no appreciation of allegory and imagery, going as far as to say that the story of the temptation of Jesus by the devil is literally false and absurd because there is no point high enough on earth from which Jesus might have seen “all the kingdoms of the world” (Matthew 4.8)” The Christian thinkers are followed in this by Muslim writers like Averroes (ibn Rushd) who says that the ones who take the sacred text of the Quran in its literal sense should not be permitted to quote it. Last I looked, Augustine, Origen, and Averroes were still respected names in the history of theology, and Averroes also in the history of science—especially medicine, physics and astronomy, where his Arabic translations of Greek works preserved the scientific tradition for rediscovery in the west.
One of the reasons the sacred texts were locked up in inaccessible languages like Greek and Latin and classical Arabic for so long, Professor Dawkins might want to recall, is that the church and the mosque wanted to create a professional class of well-educated interpreters who would prevent the slide into emotionalism and fundamentalism that happened at the time of the Reformation, which in turn began as a movement against superstition and the supernaturalism of medieval Catholicism. Yet, writes Dawkins, “The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that theology is a subject at all?”
But they have done, and affected and meant immensely important things to the history of learning, because theology prior to the “partition” of knowledge in the post-Renaissance era encompassed almost every area of learning. Because its central questions were the big questions of God, man, and existence, there is scarcely an area where it did not affect the course of knowledge and discovery—not always for the good, but not always for the bad either. As it stands–as it looks–Dawkins’s statement goes beyond customary outrageousness to simple, self-satisfied, unexamined historical ignorance.
In fact, it is safer to say that the problem all along has not been the Bible and religion as some bugaboo or ticking bomb, but the use of the Bible as proof-text—for a favorite idea, doctrine, political theory, or social or moral position. That is occasionally still a problem—whether we’re talking about abortion or “just war” or gay marriage. But science has not solved these questions for us and the Bible did not create them: it reflects attitudes (sometimes—rarely–rules about them) that are culturally locked and loaded. Science did not destroy biblical authority: the cumulative weight of history, archaeology, linguistics, political theory, and ethical self-awareness did. Humanism (rightly defined) did.
In fact, “science” as the new atheists use the term, as an iconic form of truth, was late to the game: Wycliffe, Biddle, Miguel Servetus and Erasmus did more harm to the “claims” of Christianity before the dawn of the sixteenth century than Darwin did three hundred years later. Paine and Jefferson were harder on the idea of “revelation” than Darwin himself (and predate him). Newton never doubted “the booke,” though he didn’t derive his laws from it; and the poster boy of free-thought saints, Galileo, lay buried in the same tomb with his eldest daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, in Florence. The complexity of the relationship between religion (especially Christianity) and religion is not exactly infinite, but it is a lot more intricate than Professor Dawkins’s sloganeering makes it
If Dawkins wants to see religion cured, and the Ogletrees liberated from their trailer-park of superstition, he needs to get with the news that the critical and scientific study of religion is the “cure” he wants, not pep talks and rallies in which religion becomes simply the incarnation of human stupidity and religious people told to snap out of their intractable dullness .
The Bible Doesn’t Measure Up
The new atheists, to the extent that name still means anything six years on, like their religion simple and funny. The Bible preaches bad morals that come from the lying mouth of a God who, if he were one of us, would be locked away for child abuse and rape. After all, he defiles a virgin, gets another man to take the blame, arranges for his son to be killed, and threatens people with everlasting punishment if they disobey even the smallest of his rules. Remember Noah? Nice. Jesus, I was gratified to learn recently in an email from yet another atheist adept, was probably a pedophile himself. That is, if he existed. If he didn’t he was a mythical pedophile, which is even worse, because they are much harder to convict. If God is all-knowing, why did he put the prostate near the urethra? If God is all good, why can’t he give us the recipe to cure AIDS and cancer? Theologians call these little dilemmas “theodicy,” but in the hands of the new atheists they are simply idiocy, one-liners for the pep rallies and meet-ups that have become the mainstay of new atheist culture.
It’s hard to appeal for clear-headedness in this environment because the atheist faithful, like the religious faithful, have their own defenses and survival strategies. (I’ve discussed these, often and soberly, on this site: look around). They also have a messiah with a distinguished career in science, an Oxford doctorate, and a message they take as gospel.
But the problem is this: the Bible cant’ be evaluated on the basis of how it measures up to modern science, any more than the Iliad you never read, or the Mayan Calendar, or even Aristotle’s Treatise on Animal Bodies or Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius. If modern science is perpetually in a state of self-correction and development, ancient literature is not. The slack we cut it is the slack required by the distance between us and them. To an enormous extent, progress, even in the sciences, developed from the recognition that the ancient texts had it wrong—foremost the Bible. Its value to science has been “antithetical” and indirect but it has had its place. Of course we know more than the writers and tellers of biblical and Quranic stories knew; that is what makes us modern and them dead. And one of the things we know is that it is mainly myth. The question scholars ask about these texts is what do we learn about our past, early culture, the development of language, ideas, law, nature, ethics—and scientific thinking.
Not to respect antiquity is not smart; it is not bright; it is to be woefully indifferent as to how we became intelligent human beings—people like, if not quite as smart as, Richard Dawkins. The atheist error that originates in Dawkins’s anti-religion polemic is to treat the Bible as though it has intellectual standing in our own time, mistaking the fundamentalist yahoo’s limited understanding of the Bible as the totality of its relevance to human history.
The religion-fundamentalist error is that the Bible is true in our time and context. The Dawkins delusion is that the fundamentalist position can be answered as you would answer a set of propositions: P1: Jesus rose from the dead. P2 No he didn’t because people don’t rise from the dead, etc. If the conversation persists along those lines the Bible comes off as all wrong, all useless, and (because it encourages magical thinking and superstition) potentially harmful.
But the real answer—P3—will be lost in the shuffle: Jesus lived at a time when people were thought to rise from the dead. Or The story of the god of Genesis emerged at a time when the people of Mesopotamia worked in clay and fashioned figurines; that’s how Adam got his name. Serious historical investigation (which, I admit, is compromised by media sensationalism: just look at the average cable lineup) has a wonderful way of desuperstitionizing existence. Tell people the history of a thing and the miraculous and the incredible melt away: in fact, modern evolutionary studies and modern cosmologies are both histories. My original statement about the sun shining is an historical statement, because the photons that hit my eyes were created within the sun tens of thousands of years before they were emitted and (in about eight minutes) travelled to earth. People who are smart about those subjects will understand that the Bible deserves its history, and people need to learn it to learn about themselves.
Abuse?
And that brings me to my final point. Dawkins’s suggestion that religious “indoctrination” is abusive is another one of those sloppy, unsupported and naïve statements that is designed merely to be outrageous, so extreme that I wonder if he actually wants to be remembered for saying it. His protégé, the emotional and blusteringly self-promoting Lawrence Krauss wrote,
“If you’re introducing it (creationism or Intelligent Design) as reality, if you’re telling your kids the world is 6,000 years old, and they shouldn’t believe scientists because there is no way humans are related to other animals, and don’t believe any of that stuff you learned in school, or take you kids of out of school because they are learning something, then it is like the Taliban at some level, which is an extreme form of child abuse.”
The Taliban and creationism?—perfect fit. Of course, it doesn’t get “simpler” than this, or more wrong. Dawkins himself has been more careful, saying that religious indoctrination can be as “bad as child abuse” and that no child should be taught to accept the beliefs—Catholic, Muslim, Jewish—of his parents without being taught at the same time to question the claims made by religion.
And what claims are those? The Bible is not a collection of claims. It does not claim God made the world; it tells a creation story. It does not claim Jesus rose from the dead, it tells a few stories, none of them consistent, about a resurrection. Religion is not a collection of propositions. True, certain churches and sects systematize their teaching as dogma and doctrine, but a large number of the faithful have no idea what those doctrines are (ask a pious Christian to explain the trinity). I suspect most Roman Catholics believe that their Church’s teaching on abortion is an article of faith—maybe a core article: it isn’t; it’s merely social teaching based on a compendium of vague biblical references and ancient quotations. Sad to say, it’s the ones that almost no one believes any more that occupy the core; trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the virgin birth, Eucharist (the real presence), the Assumption of Mary (she went bodily upwards to heaven), original sin, sacraments, the plenary inspiration of scripture. But here too, indeed especially here, it is hard to say that the preaching of things no one quite understands or agrees with can be abusive. In most confessions, the door to the church swings both ways, although, alas, that’s not always true of the mosque.
However you frame it, religion did not develop as a set of logical conclusions. The sacred texts of the world evolved from human experience and imagination, and (as a little anthropology can show), practices whose origins are often difficult to pin down.
Now that the age of priestcraft has passed and people can read for themselves, we have to rely on the ability of a reader to judge what’s true and what’s not, what is revolting and what is beautiful—like a psalm or hymn. If Johnny can’t read and can’t think, religion isn’t the issue–and better science classes won’t help him. One of the greatest proponents of this ironically was Luther, the father of the protestant reformation, whose Treatise of the Freedom of a Christian is one of the most eloquent defenses of freedom of conscience ever written. It inspired the intellectualism and individualism of the seventeenth century and (though Luther would have regretted it) the conscientious objections to religion that characterized the age of reason.
To say the obvious, we live in a moment shaped by modernity and experience. The fundamental worldview of the modern period is scientific, even if people who live in the twenty first century are ignorant of their own basic presuppositions, even if they can’t explain relativity, or particle theory, and think Higgs Boson is a pub in Wantage. I would agree that any parent or teacher who kept Johnny from learning math and science, to the extent he can learn it, would be abusive. But the most we can do is teach him: after that he’s on his own. A great help in that process would be to teach him about religion as well as about math, science, geography and history. Why don’t the new atheists (and religious women and men) push for that—for insisting on a religious literacy that saves our children from the risk of thinking that myth and reality have the same epistemological standing.
What might help the most recalcitrantly stupid of religious people, of all sects, is not to be shouted down but to be persuaded that like everything else the existence of their faith and the sacred books they read have a history. And to teach them about that–fairly and knowledgably, not as a sequence of falsifiable “claims.” You won’t win the baptized over by calling them idiots, any more than the high school math teacher you despised got you to be a good student by telling you that you were destined to clean latrines.
Tell them God and his book have a history too. Make them learn it. It’s a process, not a war.
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Published: May 11, 2013
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18 Responses to “Deep-end Dawkins”
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Dwight Jones
May 11, 2013 at 11:33 am
Looks like the Yosemite Sam of critical thinking is back in action; great to see such superb use of the vernacular for dealing with the peculiar..
A problem is emerging for Dawkins’ tidy little science/religion cosmos, in the form of Group Evolution as posited by E.O. Wilson, who reversed his previous stand made in Sociobiology, that ascribed human behaviour to “selfish genes” sneaking into subsequent generations through altruism. This was a workaround to account for the apparent contradictions related to self-interest. genetic succession and survival.
Dr. Wilson has now concluded that cooperation within Groups is the main reason our species has been so successful. He says morals are derived from Group associations, that “sins” warn and are born of the Individual’s greedy walk through life. (So indeed does much of Confucianism).
It indeed follows then that “religion performs a socializing function” as you mention, to the horror of Dawkins and his all-science boys. Humans are an infant species, and organized religion is just a few thousands years old. Yet in that interval, under religion’s Group influences we have unquestionably advanced to somewhat less barbaric status, long before the ascendancy of science.
True humanism consolidates science with religion, as two paths to the same city, recognizing the latter as our (admittedly florid) Group history in large part, with science as a positioner for individuals if intellectually referencing themselves in this process.
Militarists are legacy Groups that perpetuate Group vs Group acrimony for their own purpose, ergo Christian vs Muslim, and we can anticipate an amicable melding under humanism of all religions under its envelope.
The Internet will be everybody’s alma mater, and humanism shall make all things whole for this species. There – it is written – so believe it and go back outside and play nice with the other kids.
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Peter Smith
May 11, 2013 at 12:42 pm
I may be a card carrying Catholic (an ex-atheist to boot) but I much enjoy your writing. It is entertaining, lucid and always pertinent. Bonus points for your take-down of Richard Dawkins, but then he is such an easy target.
I have recommended to our parish priest that we use the God Delusion as a text book since it so beautifully exposes the weaknesses of atheist claims.
I sincerely hope you do not turn your talents to writing a similar book, you would be a most formidable opponent.
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decourse
May 12, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Using TGD as a book to expose the weaknesses of “atheist claims” is kind of like using Frank Turek to expose the weaknesses of “Christian claims”.
Besides, the fact that we’re talking about “claims” at all is a large part of the problem. Since when have “claims” been the selling point of religion?
I think the answer is in the article: that’s a medieval idea, too. Certainly, to call it a “biblical” idea is an act of eisegesis.
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Peter Smith
May 13, 2013 at 3:01 am
At least we are agreed that RD is not an intellectual giant but despite his intellectual stature, he is influential, hence the necessity for a Dawkins Delusion seminar.
rjosephhoffmann
May 13, 2013 at 4:59 am
Yet recently named by Prospect Magazine at the top of the world’s leading intellectuals (65 in all), but to wit, David Wolpe’s comment on the preposterous list in a recent Huffington Post article:
“Dawkins on biology is an elegant, lucid and even enchanting explicator of science. Dawkins on religion is historically uninformed, outrageously partisan and morally obtuse. If Dawkins is indeed our best, the life of the mind is in a precarious state.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-david-wolpe/is-richard-dawkins-really-the-worlds-leading-intellectual_b_3226638.html
Peter Smith
May 13, 2013 at 5:49 am
Quite so. Polls reveal the biases and prejudices of the subjects of a biased sampling procedure. They say nothing about real ability but a lot about fickle social influence. Putting Dawkins at the top of the list speaks volumes for the biases and prejudices of Prospect readership.
The most useful methodology is that followed by Charles Murray in his book Human Accomplishment. Pages 122 to 142 give a summary of the real intellectual giants. Fast forward one hundred years and by contrast, Dawkins will be a forgotten footnote in a dusty tome locked away in the damp basement of an obscure provincial library.
Pseudonym
May 16, 2013 at 8:32 am
“Intellectual giant” is probably a title that is only granted posthumously.
In my opinion, Dawkins is certainly a decent public intellectual, when he’s talking about a topic on which he is an expert. On religion, he is proud of his ignorance, which wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t subsequently express strong opinions on that particular topic.
nicola
May 11, 2013 at 5:02 pm
That was really interesting, thank you, although the story of Jephthah made me feel really quite sick. You must be an excellent teacher.
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neodecaussade
May 11, 2013 at 6:37 pm
Reblogged this on Neodecaussade’s Weblog and commented:
This is a good read.
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Townmouse
May 12, 2013 at 7:36 am
Jo – I love your writing and the way you express yourself with such wit and clarity, making it accessible to everyone. It make me realise how lucky I was all those years ago to have you as a tutor at Westminster College. And Nicola is right – you were/are an excellent teacher. You should do a weekend course at Gladstone’s Library called The Dawkins Delusion. People would flock . . .
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scotteus
May 12, 2013 at 5:00 pm
Interesting, if Dawkins can claim or suggest that reglion is child-abuse, then someone else can say this essay is ‘intellectual abuse’ of its readers.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 12, 2013 at 5:34 pm
That would be a permissible “claim,” sure.
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scotteus
May 12, 2013 at 6:23 pm
I’ll happily take the abuse. Actually, how much do I owe you for the classes? (;
stephanie louise fisher
May 12, 2013 at 8:06 pm
I’m so delighted Dawkins concedes that the teaching of religion can be beneficial. According to Dawkins there is value in teaching children ‘about’ religion – but wait – only as long as scorn is poured on its claims! For a Christian or Muslim to bring up their children as Christian or Muslim and therefore according to their values (all of which he assumes is indoctrination – that is, teaching someone to accept doctrines uncritically – in his typical general sweep) is effectively tantamount to ‘child abuse’ according to Dawkins because Dawkins disagrees with all religious ‘claims’. Horrible as sexual abuse (by priests) no doubt was, says Dawkins, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place. Sexual abuse, says Dawkins, might by “yucky” but not as bad as bringing a child up and saying ‘God loves you’ and ‘love your enemies and neighbours’ and ‘look after the sick’. (To be fair Dawkins has a fixation on his belief that all ‘religion’ teaches children they will burn in a great big underground fire pit). According to Dawkins all religious parents must be guilty of emotional abuse of their children (unless they tell their children to accept atheism … uncritically). But Dawkins is making a claim that religion is ‘wrong’ (whatever that means) because Dawkins doesn’t believe anything. Yet he believes that children should be told what to think about religion rather than encouraged to develop their critical tools. Isn’t that hypocritical? According to the principles made up by Dawkins’ and his misapplication of the term, wouldn’t telling children how to think be tantamount to ‘child abuse’? Imagine a world full of obedient little Dawkins clones. Clones … clowns… I don’t believe Dawkins knows much about ‘religion’ or ‘claims’ or what religious people believe or how they teach their children.
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Ken
May 14, 2013 at 10:33 pm
“Imagine a world full of obedient little Dawkins clones…”
You’ll find plenty in your local atheist “Meetup” group, a misfortune that befell me when I belonged to such a group a while back.
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decourse
May 12, 2013 at 10:08 pm
To be fair to Dawkins, his remarks about child abuse originally arose in the context of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, where words like “Protestant” and “Catholic” were used basically as gang symbols. He argued that indoctrinating children with that was a form of child abuse.
At the time, I thought that argument made some kind of sense. After all, instilling children with any kind of identity specifically intended to support “us and them” bigotry is child abuse. I’m reminded of the phenomenon of assigning children to a gang affiliation based on which street they live in; I find it hard not to call that “child abuse” too.
This is part of what annoys me about Richard Dawkins. There’s a germ of a very good idea in here, which could be developed into something useful in the hands of someone with some appreciation for the humanities and/or the social sciences. But he seems determined not to do that.
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Jim Linville
May 14, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Prof. Hoffmann,
Thanks for excellent bit of commentary. I just finished leading a seminar at the University of Lethbridge (turn north at the Montana border) on the “New Atheists and Religious Studies” A few of the students were pretty strong fans of Dawkins and company and I think they successfully talked themselves out of it. I didn’t assign any blog posts as reading but I will probably do the seminar again in a year or two, and this one (and a few others or yours) are on the list of things to consider.
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Stevie
May 16, 2013 at 10:52 am
I am so very glad to read this; I have just returned from Athens, via Mumbai, and endured the horror of what was supposed to be an expert commentary on the 100 miles or so of the Suez Canal as we sailed up it.
It turned out to be mostly about Moses. I might not have minded so much were it not for the fact that I was born in Egypt, and can prove it, which is more than can be said for Moses.
So I was in need of assistance in regaining my equilibrium, and you have provided it: thank you!
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Religiophobia
by rjosephhoffmann
Two pieces in the last three days have opened my eyes to a new reality. Being opened to a new reality doesn’t happen every day, probably because as you get older there are fewer realities that are actually new. Just things you have forgotten that seem new when you rediscover them.
One article which was good enough to repost in its entirety came from Jacques Berlinerblau, who often says wise things and should be heeded when he does. Jacques has commented frequently on the need for secularists and even atheists to learn table manners and not rely simply on the assumed rectitude of their position while trying to influence people and win converts.
They could learn a lesson from that old time religion, Christianity, where instead of just shouting at people, like John the Baptist did (and look what happened to him), St Paul professed to become all things to all men in order to win souls to his cause. Eventually, that strategy made Christianity the majority faith of the Roman empire.
Of course, the atheists old and new don’t believe there are souls to be won. But there are political values at stake, and elections, and demographics which atheists and “seculars” do claim to care about. But so far Americn secularism hasn’t had the savvy to know how to preach its gospel in a way that (really) ups the numbers.
For Berlinerblau, this has something to do with an historical incompetence at every level of the secular movment: Without naming names that could be named, he cites
“…a colossal failure of leadership and strategic vision. Those who advocated on its behalf in the 1970s and ’80s had little understanding of who their irate, coalescing adversaries actually were. In the secular mindset these “Fundies” were just a bunch of yokels, sitting on their front porches, cleaning their guns to the musical accompaniment of Pa strumming the gutbucket. In reality, however, the movement had scads of charismatic and savvy, if not incendiary, leaders. …Secular leadership, by contrast, was static and moribund.
Which brings me to the second piece, by E J Dionne, a truly liberal soul. The always bluff Freedom from Religion Foundation, which sees itself as a “radical” conservator of First Amendment rights, has outed liberal Catholics for being hypocrites and challenged them to do the right thing: leave the Church. Writes Dionne:
Recently, a group called [the FFRF] ran a full-page ad in The Washington Post cast as an “open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.” Its headline commanded: “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church.”
The ad included the usual criticism of Catholicism, but I was most struck by this paragraph: “If you think you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you’re deluding yourself. By remaining a ‘good Catholic,’ you are doing ‘bad’ to women’s rights. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.”
Yes, it does sound just like the nun who told you to give up looking at dirty magazines during math class. Or maybe I have given away too much of my eighth grade year at St Joseph School.
But there is a pattern here that displays itself, as in neon lights, through the shouting. I have commented more than three times on this site about the ugliness of the American Atheists’ (and others’) billboard campaigns and the way atheism itself is promoted by using a strategy that depends, basically, on repeating one hundred times the mantra: “Wake Up Stupid: Nobody is at Home Up There.”
This is supported by the infinitely reasonable proposition that if there is no Santa Claus, no big bad wolf, and no such thing as ghosts, there is no Sky Fairy either. Anyone who says there is is just using up the oxygen that smart people need to grow brain cells.
But guess what? Many people who would call themselves religious–like E J Dionne, and even the resoundingly secular Jacques Berlinerblau–are not at all stupid. And they wonder why the advocates of freethought and secularism don’t get that. Why is a secularism that flows from principles of religious tolerance more suspect than a secularism that flows from atheist suppositions? It is a good question, because in those countries where a dogmatic atheism has been imposed from the top, tolerance has not fared well. Restrictive practices based on the godlike perfection of the state–witness Chen Guangcheng– have.
And that leads me to conclude: there is a troubling religiophobia going on here. The shouters and ultimatum-givers are not just in favor of separation of church and state, or freedom of (or from) religion, or secularism or the right not to believe in God and say so openly.
There is profound stress and anxiety about religion in these movements.
Why?
Is this a teenage anger pathology that comes from a passive fear of the gods? A bad church experience that stems from the awakening that Pastor Bob (or Sister Mary Therese) lied to you about…everything? The possibility that despite social approval of your atheism, your private doubts sometimes clash with that approval and put unreasonable and seductive thoughts in your head–a hankering for a ten o’lock sermon or a quick Mass at St Aloysius?
Probably none of the above. It’s probably more easily explained as your anxiety over the existence of what you have come to believe is SPS–Stupid People Syndrome: your feeling that the co-existence of atheists and believers has only been paralleled in human history by the brief co-existence of Neanderthal and modern humans. And it would, after all, be so much easier if social disapproval could be generalized and society were rid of religion once and for all–its lures and seductions driven from the world and the gods into the fiery pit. Maybe then you could get some sleep. And stop being so Angry.
Homo Religiosus
Until the day that happens and the First Amendment is repealed, which is what the solution would require, reading Seneca and a little Marcus Aurelius or Lucretius on the gods would help: They had this phobia mastered long before Christian thinkers like Boethius took up the question. The gods are lazy blighters who don’t care about you. They only care about themselves. You are on your own.
The point is, religiophobia leads to aggression and aggression often manifests itself in stupidity and rash behavior. I am not certain, given the religious perspective that God takes care of everything, that religion exhibits fear in quite the same way–which is a poor way of saying that fear of the gods (theophobia) is different from fear that there are no gods (religiophobia).
Oh, I know: you atheists out there will tell me I am making things up and that every atheist has the courage of his convictions and isn’t afraid of the big bad wolf or the big old sky fairy or any of those things. And I say: Good for you, Pinocchio. Then stop worrying about what goes on in the heads of religious women and men, or their being hypocrites for believing some of the things you no longer believe.
–And read some Seneca.
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Published: May 14, 2012
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Catholic Church : E J Dionne : First Amendment : Freedom from Religion : human values : humanism : humanism. Jacques Berlinerblau : New Humanism : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : secularism : separation clause ..
30 Responses to “Religiophobia”
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James
May 14, 2012 at 1:35 pm
As always, a thought provoking piece, for which thank you. I would however take issue with your last paragraph. AS an atheist I have absolutely no problem with those who choose to adhere to one or other religion, and I see no reason why what goes on in their heads should frighten me. But in a civilised secular society, I am troubled by the sometimes none too subtle way that many try to influence the legislature to favour their religiously inspired view of the World, when it flies in the face of 21st Century values shared by the majority..
Reply
Sabio Lantz
May 14, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Secularity flowing from tolerance sounds like the best option. But I must admit, I think all sorts of voices are beneficial.
Reply
Lisa Guinther
May 14, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Marvelous post!
I have taken St. Paul’s words to heart (1 Cor. 9:22) therefore, as an Evangelical, I have amazing conversations with the philosophy professors at the college I am attending. One recent comment was, “Usually Evangelicals are so defensive…” I find that in these discussions I learn more about how to answer questions of my own, while trying to answer the questions posed to me by Atheists.
God bless!
Reply
Jeffrey Shallit
May 16, 2012 at 2:02 am
Fascinating how so many of the comments on this site praise you and your writing. But that’s because you relentlessly censor those who take issue with your poor reasoning and soporific writing.
Reply
stephanie louise fisher
May 17, 2012 at 8:18 pm
Poor Jeffrey, Fascinating that your own erroneous comment is evidence of your bitter and malicious envy. Not only this but you’re hopelessly incompetent and while you feign an impression of daring and courage, reality exposes you as pitifully foolhardy. I suggest that Professor Hoffmann has many appreciate readers who have a more sophisticated understanding of life, an ability to think laterally and relish his wit, eloquence and incisive accuracy.
As Martin Luther wrote, in ‘Rebaptism’ ironically, “you are like butter in sunshine …. or spittle.”
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
May 17, 2012 at 8:23 pm
Ah Jeffrey… Thought you would be in bed reading me at this late hour
Reply
N
May 17, 2012 at 3:20 am
Dr Hoffman
Your fellow atheist, computer scientist Dr Shallit has a post on you: More stupidity from Hoffman
http://recursed.blogspot.com.au/
Reply
stephanie louise fisher
May 17, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Atheists love to adopt people who can think critically, imaginatively and creatively, as their own. Poor Jeffrey the atheist, despite his jealousy, is uncontrollably compelled to try and claim Professor Hoffmann as part of the gang. Martin Luther says, condemning Jeffrey’s erroneous, dull, empty and slanderous misrepresentation of Hoffmann which Jeffrey is compelled to type bold fearing otherwise of exposing his own feeble insignificance and fear and slobbishness, “He does nothing more than latch on to a small word and smear over with his spittle as he pleases, but meanwhile he does not take into account other texts which overthrow he who smear and spits, so that he is up-ended with all four limbs in the air. So here, after he has raved and smeared for a long time… like the ostrich, the foolish bird which thinks it is wholly concealed when it gets its neck under a branch.” (Against the Heavenly Prophets)
Reply
Jeffrey Shallit
May 31, 2013 at 9:38 am
Yet, oddly enough, neither Hoffman nor his verbose defenders actually feel compelled to address the points I made.
steph
May 31, 2013 at 8:37 pm
Point? You didn’t make one. Pointless.
Beau Quilter
May 21, 2012 at 2:31 pm
“in those countries where a dogmatic atheism has been imposed from the top, tolerance has not fared well.”
In those countries where ANY ideology has been imposed from the top, tolerance has not fared well! And the most common historical examples one can find are those of religious ideologies imposed by governments.
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
May 21, 2012 at 3:11 pm
“the most common historical examples one can find are those of religious ideologies imposed by governments.” no–Just the ones you would like to focus on,.
Reply
Beau Quilter
May 21, 2012 at 5:16 pm
I’m sorry, Mr. Hoffman, but your response is simply not true. You cannot deny, that most governments throughout history have been theocracies, largely intolerant of other ideologies.
Beau Quilter
May 21, 2012 at 2:38 pm
The real problem with this silly treatise is that the phobias, angers, and intolerances that Hoffman is projecting on New Atheism, are vastly more prevalent in religious groups.
Matthew 7:5
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
May 21, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Thank you for quoting Matthew: would you think it might be applied to the atheist critique of religion as well, or was it just a favourite of yours from you Church of God in Christ days when the devil bit you?
Reply
Beau Quilter
May 21, 2012 at 5:20 pm
In fact, you’ll find that the toughest critics of atheists are other atheists.
It’s just ridiculously clear that all you accuse atheists of – spreading their ideology by billboard, aggressive behavior towards other ideologies – the religious in this nation are far, far more guilty of.
rjosephhoffmann
May 21, 2012 at 5:24 pm
I do deny this because it is false; if your major premise is that all governments in history have exhibited intolerance, I might agree, or that governments that have been theocracies have been intolerant–sure. But that is not what you are saying. By historical standards, ancient Rome was neither tolerant and in some was was theocratic, at least during the empire. Your categories are askew.
rjosephhoffmann
May 21, 2012 at 5:26 pm
I am also interested in atheists who care about atheism not repeating the idiocies of the born again. And I do not see a great deal of internal critique going on within the atheist community–or if there is, you should welcome mine.
Beau Quilter
May 21, 2012 at 2:46 pm
“Then stop worrying about what goes on in the heads of religious women and men, or their being hypocrites for believing some of the things you no longer believe.”
If what went on in the heads of religious women and men, stayed in their heads, there would be nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, what goes on in religious heads floods out into the public arena:
into legislative efforts to put creationism in science classrooms
into efforts to ban/impede stem cell research
into impartial political interference in the middle east
into ridiculous attempts to legislate morality
to name just a few areas.
Reply
All Things to All Men says:
May 23, 2012 at 5:01 am
[...] document.getElementById("fb-root").appendChild(e); }()); R. Joseph Hoffman over at the The New Oxonian has another entry in the “why are atheists so rude” genre. There’s not much to [...]
Reply
reyjacobs
June 14, 2012 at 10:49 pm
“They could learn a lesson from that old time religion, Christianity, where instead of just shouting at people, like John the Baptist did (and look what happened to him), St Paul professed to become all things to all men in order to win souls to his cause. “
I’m sure Paul shouted plenty. He threatens the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:21) and says “How do you want me to come? in love? or with a stick?” I wonder how he ended up going. Probably he went with the stick and beat their brains in for their behaving morally and thinking they should live right rather than just be saved by faith alone. What a douche that Paul.
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
June 15, 2012 at 12:25 am
Hhahaha are you sure he existed?
Reply
reyjacobs
June 15, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Actually I have expressed my Paul mythicism many times. I believe he was a mere literary character created by Marcion and that the original epistles were written by Marcion in the name of this fictional character, and that when the Catholics finally accepted “Paul” about 160 or so, they edited those epistles of this fictional “Paul” to make them more orthodox and created the pastorals and the book of Acts to historicize this fictional character.
rjosephhoffmann
June 17, 2012 at 12:25 pm
@Reyjacobs: I applaud your mythtic consistency. Let me test your tactics: Confronted with the following text which is dated around 95 and doesn’t usually get a lot of attention except by evangelicals and fundies who think bishops were invented after Satan took over Rome, what do you say:
1Clem 47:1
Take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle.
1Clem 47:2
What wrote he first unto you in the beginning of the Gospel?
1Clem 47:3
Of a truth he charged you in the Spirit concerning himself and Cephas
and Apollos, because that even then ye had made parties.
1Clem 47:4
Yet that making of parties brought less sin upon you; for ye were
partisans of Apostles that were highly reputed, and of a man approved
in their sight.
1Clem 47:5
But now mark ye, who they are that have perverted you and diminished
the glory of your renowned love for the brotherhood.
1Clem 47:6
It is shameful, dearly beloved, yes, utterly shameful and unworthy of
your conduct in Christ, that it should be reported that the very
steadfast and ancient Church of the Corinthians, for the sake of one
or two persons, maketh sedition against its presbyters.
1Clem 47:7
And this report hath reached not only us, but them also which differ
from us, so that ye even heap blasphemies on the Name of the Lord by
reason of your folly, and moreover create peril for yourselves.
etc.
Even if poeople accepted my early dating for Marcion (and most don’t) he would have been about 10 years old when this was written. or do you think he wrote it? or that a nameless forger wrote for no reason? To “create” Paul? Why would anyone do that? And if it is an epistle from the end of the 1st century, and as it suggests the failure of Paul’s mission to Corinth, of which there is earlier literary evidence, and as the author seems to know a bit about the letter and the mission (but doesn’t seem to have the text in front of him), how do you construe that? Applying Occam’s razor to evidence doesn’t mean slashing the neck of common sense; and frankly, the view that Paul is made up is merely silly and not even provocative. Give me your own scenario that would explain the necessity for the Paul myth–I know several and want to see if yours is an improvement on the whole sorry lot.
reyjacobs
June 17, 2012 at 11:07 pm
Ah 1st Clement! This Clement guy is writing to Corinth from Rome to admonish a bunch of unruly youngsters to obey their bishops. And he decides the best way to keep the attention of the youth is to spend 30 chapters yammering on about things totally off topic, and waste all his time quoting every passage from the Pauline corpus he can possibly squeeze in. By the time he gets to the matter at hand, the youths have already put down his “letter” and so he accomplishes nothing. Well, nothing except convincing credulous moderns that orthodox ministers in 95 utilized the Pauline epistles! Come one, this “letter” is obviously a forger. In fact, scholarship in the early 1900s (or was it the late 1800s?) said as much. But then fundamentalists entered scholarship and reversed the decision for no other reason than that they need to false letter to prove that Paul wasn’t made up by Marcion! Anyone who knows the history of scholarship on this letter knows that, even if they (like me) can’t remember precisely any more whether it was in the late 1800s or early 1900s that the scholarly consensus was that it was spurious.
rjosephhoffmann
June 18, 2012 at 5:01 pm
Reyjacobs: “… this “letter” is obviously a forger.” Of course, just like Paul is made up. You have future as a young earth creationist given the way you do science by tossing all the embarrassing rocks aside. I know a teensy bit about Marcion; please solve the mystery for me, as I asked: when did he make Paul up and why? Was it so that mythtics could say that Paul’s silence proves Jesus is a figment?
rjosephhoffmann
June 18, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Not that it matters but you may be thinking about 2 Clement, which is almost universally regarded as later and by a different writer, just as 1st Clement is regarded as authentic by almost everyone. Why do you not answer my question about Marcion being about 10 years old when it was composed, that is, if my very early date for Marcion is correct? And you say he quotes–he almost never quotes–which is one of the reasons the epistle is dated early. He “alludes” to historical situations at Corinth he seems to know first hand, and historically, which means that while he knew what Paul was up against, he doesn’t seem to have a complete text of a Corinthian letter and he doesn’t know Paul’s solution to the Corinthian controversy–which Marcion certainly did. Bloody hell, you are ready to make pronouncements on these things and show no evidence of ever having read them. Have you?
reyjacobs
June 18, 2012 at 8:51 pm
If you know as much about Marcion as you think you do then you know why he would create the Paulina and invent Paul. He needed a source of tradition different from and independent of the 12, and since it didn’t exist, he created it.
As to Marcion only being 10 in 95, obviously when I said 1st Clement is a forgery I meant it was written much later, probably about 160-170 in point of fact. And no I’m not confusing 1st and 2nd Clement.
You’ll find a fairly decent and humorous explanation of why Paul’s epistles are clearly forged here : http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/epistles2.htm
rjosephhoffmann
June 19, 2012 at 6:33 am
@reyjacobs: Ah! Thanks. It’s perfectly clear now.
rjosephhoffmann
May 16, 2013 at 6:09 am
Reblogged this on The New Oxonian and commented:
Blasts from the Past Two Years
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Catholics and the Contraceptive Conscience
by rjosephhoffmann
The Catholic bishops think that they have a right to an opinion about contraception and abortion. They do. They also think that when they speak in the name of their Church, as custodians of its moral philosophy, to people who want to listen, they have a right to be heard. They do.
Unfortunately they think as well that when they are heard they deserve deference and to be obeyed. They don’t.
The right of a church (or a religion) to teach is not the same as the obligation of the people to listen, especially when listening would mean setting aside one of the core principles of a constitutional democracy: the health and welfare of its population regardless of what any individual or group, religious or secular, considers sacred truth .
In the United States, among the 43 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89% are practicing contraception. Whatever else the bishops might want to preach about, contraception is the least likely to result in obeisant listening: the failure of Catholics to heed the absurd teaching of Paul VI’s panicked “birth control encyclical” (Humanae Vitae, 1968) is impressively documented in every survey done since 1970.
If abortion remains a controversial topic for some ethicists, the court of public opinion gave the verdict on birth control a long time ago.
But obedience is the trademark of the Roman church, as it was originally of the Roman Empire. When the bishops of Rome first assumed the title pontifex maximus or supreme pontiff in the late fourth century, they did so using the imperial idea that the emperor was the bridge (pontus) between the gods and mankind. Beginning with Augustus, Roman emperors were venerated as the sons of god: it’s one of the reasons Jesus gets the title in his christological role as “king of kings,” and why in their inspired mode, ex cathedra–from the throne of Peter–popes are thought to be infallible when teaching on “matters of faith and morals”–something no protestant, never mind an agnostic or a United States congressman, is required to believe.
Welcome to America, Land of the free and home of the politically vacuous. If anyone needs to be indignant about anything in the Obama administration’s effort to secure contraceptive protection for women as part of health care coverage by employers (including corporations owned by the Catholic Church), it should be the congressional leaders who are now screaming about the government’s “intrusion” into matters of conscience. They should be telling the Church to calm down, hush up, and learn to be American. Congress is entrusted with the legislative function of government, yet a significant majority of American legislators, or at least those who can read, are banefully ignorant of the secular character of the document that describes their job.
Whose conscience? What teaching? By what authority? This isn’t China, or the Europe of the Middle Ages. It’s the world’s oldest (yes oldest) continuing republic. It is supposed to be the place where the pretensions of hierarchical religion and monarchical rule were set aside in favor of a secular constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion but not its dominance over the welfare of its citizens. The fact that a plenum of backward politicians, if that is not a tautology, happen to find that their antediluvian religious views and political needs coincide with the teaching of Rome on this matter should have no bearing on the discussion of contraception, health care, and reproductive rights. None.
But naturally, in hyper-religious America, any program that seems to challenge the unwritten catechism of the Christian right is construed as an assault on the freedom to worship, on religion itself. The Sean Hannitys and Laura Ingrahams of this old world with their rabidly anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-science agenda and traditional-Catholic fear of sexual freedom dominate the discussion with a mixture of political illiteracy, brusque stupidity and the sort of dull sophistry that we usually associate with salesmen working on commission at Radio Shack. But they have an audience, and they have homo Americanus’ natural gift for missing the point in their favour.
If John Kennedy were a candidate for the presidency in 2012, given what likely would have been his views on contraception and abortion, he would have been trashed by the Catholic media and the bishops for being a disloyal son of the Church. In fact, that’s just what Rick Santorum, that most mule-faced and mulishly stupid of Catholic rightists, called him.
The Church as church has every right to its doctrine and its view. But religious doctrine should not stand (in countless cases has not stood) when a religious organisation (for example) advocates child marriage, or the abuse of children in the form of corporal punishment, or life-threatening health practices that would restrict emergency treatment to minors. The Catholic Church has lost significant moral persuasiveness in recent years by preaching on stage its gospel of life and sermonizing about the rights of the unborn, while behind the curtain abusing the born, the vulnerable and the old as “human weaknesses” that the laity should learn to comprehend and forgive. The denial of contraceptive rights to women as a fundamental part of health care is just another example of this malignant behavior.
Deciding women's futures
Because of its antiquity, the rules and pronouncments of the Catholic church are not often compared to those of other denominations; after all, in addition to being the world’s largest owner of private hospitals it is the world’s most ancient monarchy. To a large extent, its theology has defined both the institution of marriage, the nature of the family, and the conflicting duties individuals face in their religious life and as citizens.
The church has argued and will continue to argue that the City of Man is the imperfect representation of the City of God–to which the church stands nearer because of its privileged position as guardian of timeless truths. Once again, the Church is free to believe this. It is not anyone else’s duty to accept it as true. The Church’s position on contraception and abortion is derived from particular traditions regarded as sacred by its teachers. By their very nature, therefore, they are not binding on the conscience of those who regard those truths as damaging, irrational or destructive. The secular state is under no more obligation to accept the Church’s teaching on reproductive issues than it is to accept the Church’s teaching on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. If American legislators would howl at the latter example, why are they lined up behind the Church in opposing freedom of choice. After all, the church is supposed to know more about eternal than temporal things, and nothing is more temporal then reproduction.
But the church as an owner of corporations is not acting in the same role as the Church as the avowed dispenser of God’s grace through teaching and the sacraments. Its ecclesiastical privileges cannot extend into its social involvements and projects.
What the Church claims to do for the salvation of souls is one thing: if you believe it, and it doesn’t hurt animals, by all means continue to do it.
But contaception is matter of the flesh, for men and women who have presumably decided not to heed the jeremiads of two hundred aging celibate prelates who will never be pregnant, never suffer a miscarriage, never have to consider the risks of giving birth, or of giving birth to a child with a genetic disorder.
Most sickening of all of course is the bare teeth hypocrisy of the politicans who want to see the Obama administration’s decision about contraceptive care as a violation of the First Amendment, an infringement of the free exercise of religion. It is the government “telling religion what to do,” they say, with the assured self-satisfaction of a high school debater who’s just scored a point against the team from the next county.
Well, exactly. That is exactly the way our system works. It tells religion when to climb down. It says a Presbyterian can believe in God’s prevenient saving grace and a Catholic can believe in actual grace earned through merit and priestly offices.
It says the government couldn’t care less unless the two want to fight it out with guns (cf. Amendment II) at dawn. It says a woman can believe in a hundred gods or in no god at all and still run for elected office. It says that a Church should not be licensed to be a hospital but might own hospitals that meet specific standards for health care. Those standards are not doctrinal but empirical, measurable, scientific. That hospital is not required to perform abortions. It is required to provide the same standard of care for its employees–not all of whom are Catholic–as they might expect from a hospital that was not subject to the Church’s magisterium.
If the bishops and the Christian Right and their Republican mouthpieces win this one, the Constitution loses. But most Americans won’t know that and many won’t care.
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Published: February 13, 2012
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Catholic Church : contraception : Obama health care : R. Joseph Hoffmann ..
4 Responses to “Catholics and the Contraceptive Conscience”
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andom2000
February 14, 2012 at 8:21 am
“the court of public opinion gave the verdict”…
the appeal to the public opinion is an interesting topic.
Should we also respect the public opinion expressed in a referendum in California that said no to gay marriage?
Should we also respect the public opinion that in the USA in his majority is in favor of the capital punishment?
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Charles Geoffrion
February 18, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Add to your cogent commentary the array of significant non-contraceptive medical benefits women receive from the use of this science-based technology. Is the Catholic Church to deny such health-related value to women (and the men, women and children in their lives) based on its inability to understand, appreciate and accept the importance of sex to all humans?
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Steersman
February 20, 2012 at 2:59 am
Unfortunately they think as well that when they are heard they deserve deference and to be obeyed. They don’t.
Precisely and exactly right. And which underlines and amplifies, as you probably know, a sentence or two from Daniel Dennett’s recent tribute to Christopher Hitchens:
Of all the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” Hitchens was clearly the least gentle, the angriest, the one most likely to insult his interlocutor. But in my experience, he only did it when rudeness was well deserved – which is actually quite often when religion is the topic. Most spokespeople for religion expect to be treated not just with respect but with a special deference that is supposedly their due because the cause they champion is so righteous.
An interesting topic and perspective though. For one thing it seems to manifest more than a few passing similarities with the Emperor and his new “clothes” who, along with his courtiers, tried to brazen things out with bare-faced lies by assuming the public’s limitless gullibility.
And for another, maybe more charitably, it may highlight the essence of C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures. Seems the religious in particular really have very little comprehension that the essence of science is its reliance on the “hypothetico-deductive” model and attendant principles of tangible evidence and predictability – in which fields, of course, religion falls down badly.
But it seems to me that a salient feature if not the essence of all human thought, the rational kind anyway, is that same model, regardless of whether it occurs in theology, philosophy, the humanities, pseudoscience or the “hard” sciences like mathematics, physics and molecular biology. Just that theology in particular towards one extreme end of that spectrum seems to rest on the hypothesis leg and never makes the effort, disingenuously or fraudulently, to provide any evidence for its contentions. Although, regrettably, “science” itself is not immune to that failing which was illustrated by the well known biologist Richard Lewontin who has noted the prevalence of and reliance on “just-so” stories as the unexamined premises of various sciences, some more pseudo than others.
Also speaking to that dichotomy was the British scientist and Nobel laureate P.B. Medawar who, in his collection of essays The Art of the Soluble, made several comments on a “favorite conceit of eighteenth-century philosophizing”. That conceit and the resulting “Philosophick Romances” argued, in effect, that one hypothesis was as good as another – once one has connected all of the known dots together in some fashion, any fashion in spite of the myriads of other possibilities, then the job is done. But while Swedenborg may or may not have said that “There is nothing that cannot be confirmed, and falsity is confirmed more readily than truth”, that seems a rather questionable categorical statement. And, in addition, it seems quite easily disproved simply by considering the aphorism, “The proof is in the pudding” – the tangible consequences of one’s hypotheses and reasoning and recipes that one puts on the table. Or as Medawar phrased it:
As the very least we expect of a hypothesis is that it should account for the phenomena already before us, its ‘extra-mural’ implications, its predications about what is not yet known to be the case, are of special and perhaps crucial importance. [pg 147]
And since the religious in general, and the Catholic bishops in question in particular, seem to have absolutely diddly-squat in the way of tangible evidence and have been forever at each other’s throats like a pack of rabid dogs over ephemeral and picayune details of dogma, I would say that, far from being given any deference whatsoever, they should be laughed off the stage for being deluded if not ridden out of town on a rail for being a bunch of criminals and charlatans.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 16, 2013 at 6:11 am
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Quodlibet: Of Gay and Plural Marriage
by rjosephhoffmann
Does the irreversible trend toward legalizing same-sex marriage augur good tidings for proponents of polygamy, especially the reconstruction Mormons (Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints) and other groups who support the practice?
An article in the July 20 New York Times raises the question, and another by Joanna Brooks, who was raised a conservative Mormon, hints at how lively this discussion is going to be—or already is.
Or will the noise stop when the definition of marriage contained in the “Defense of Marriage Act,” which defines a legitimate marriage as a union of one man and one woman is repealed.
Until the twelfth century the Christian church was not very interested in marriage, and when it got interested in it it was mainly because there were financial implications for the Church.
Rome needed to ensure that estates and the financial holdings of lords and barons were legitimately passed on and that anything due to the church came to the church. Some of these dues (called benefices) were paid to bishop-princes under the feudal regime, so it was to the Church’s advantage to have a trusted priest or bishop as the church’s official “witness” (the term still used in the Catholic protocol for matrimony) on the scene to seal the deal.
“Holy wedlock” was a church-approved contract; whatever else being a bastard meant, it meant primarily that the church did not recognize a boy as the rightful heir of his father’s property, money, or titles.
As for the common people, the Church took on marriage as a sacrament somewhat grudgingly after centuries of being happy to let the peasants do it the way they had done it for ages, on the ruins of the Roman empire: at home, in bed, with relatives drinking and cheering the couple on.
The glamification of marriage is a relatively modern affair. Without the development of the “romantic theory” of matrimony, it’s hard to imagine anyone picketing for the right to take on the burden of a permanent opposite-sex relationship.
In Judaism and Christianity, and later in Islam, it had been primarily a contractual matter—easier to wriggle out of in Judaism and Islam than in Christianity because of some highly problematical words that were misappropriated to Jesus (Matt. 5:32 ; 19:9; Luke 16:18; Mark 10:2-12) about divorce in the Gospels. Paul has no use for marriage, and the church fathers regarded it as a necessary evil for people who didn’t have the spiritual stamina for celibacy and virginity. –If you were wondering about why the Catholic church has maintained its weird two-track system for ministers and ordinary folk, it goes back to the Church’s early contempt for the married state–a contempt that reaches exquisite spasms of intolerance in writers like Tertullian, the most hateful of all Christian writers, and Augustine.
Wives should be veiled but not pregnant
True, marriage was popular among protestants from the 16th century onward, but it wasn’t a sacrament. Luther defends it ( Estate of Marriage, 1522) as an “ordinance”—an arrangement—given by God for the production of families. In fact, Luther’s famous treatise on the subject reminds the Church that for most of its history it regarded marriage as a second class ritual, useful for relieving aches, pains and passion and primarily good for populating the world with new Christians. He also entertained three reasons for divorce: impotence, adultery, and refusal to fulfill conjugal duty. In other words, whatever doesn’t lead “naturally” from sex to legitimate offspring.
Which brings me to the point. A great deal of the same-sex marriage defense has been framed in romantic terms: Why should two people who love each other not be permitted the freedom to be together, sleep together, share lives and income and tragedies and life’s joys together?
The answer is (has to be in the modern, secular sense) No reason at all. The state has no reason and probably no justification for impeding the pursuit of happiness. To arrive at this answer, however, the state is obliged to redefine marriage in strictly secular terms, and to reject most of the symbolism and above all the “properties” that have been part of the popular understanding of marriage, an understanding heavily tinctured by theological canons and legal thought.
What has been going on in the legislatures of New England, New York and elsewhere is as much a process of rethinking as insisting, but rethinking the definition in historical context needs to be done if we want to avoid the impression that being pro-same sex marriage is simply being iconoclastic towards the “institution” itself. If something goes, does everything go?
The old, legalistic and Aristotelian thinking behind the “sacrament” of marriage dies hard. So does its biblical sanction, or justification. A lot of conservatives will point to the Adam and Eve story as a tale of the first marriage. That’s hogwash of course. God does not marry them, he just “makes” them (in two very different tales) and they do the rest, according to command (Gen 1.28).
But “the rest” is probably what matters most in the biblical context: they have children, lots of children. When God gets tired of their habits and floods the world, he starts out with a “good family”, Noah and company, whose proficiency at carpentry is only exceeded by a commitment to repopulating the devastated earth.
Noah’s Family: Time for multiplying
When the Hebrews first become aware of their minority status in a hostile environment, they looked to a patriarch whose preoccupation is with having descendants—the story of Abraham and Sarah and Haggar and Sarah, again, is all about developing the critical mass of Hebrews needed to make God’s name strong among his enemies (Genesis 26.4ff). Increase is everything in threatened or endangered groups. Ask any anthropologist.
The paradigms of reproductive success, however, are the kings: David with his wives and lovers, and Solomon with his international harem of 1000 women. No self-respecting Jew aspired to such bounty, but (like Tevye) he could admire it.
Reverence for large families as a symbol of doing your duty for “the people of Israel” emerges as the primary justification for marriage. It also explains why stories about barrenness and impotence feature so proiminently in Hebrew lore: what could be worse than a father who can’t do his bit for the tribe? What can be more humiliating (think Job) than losing your spawn? What is more disgraceful than a barren woman, like (at least temporarily) Rebecca or Sarah? The fear of childlessness even sneaks into the New Testament in the pilfered story of Elizabeth (Luke 1.36), mother of John the Baptist.
It’s well known that religious minorities, especially tribal minorities, have always followed similar logic, though not always in clear cut ways. If Jesus said anything about marriage it was probably forgotten in the eschatological fervor of the early community. That’s why Paul make so little (or inconsistent) sense when he talks about it.
But by the time the second century rolls around, a man writing in Paul’s name, and against the “heresy” of radical anti-marriage sects like the gnostics and Marcionites, is teaching that”a woman is saved by childbearing” (1 Timothy 2.15). Marriage becomes important, in other words, because the church recognized that its future (almost tribally construed) depended on a stable supply of cradle Christians— something the more puritanitical and perfectionist bishops didn’t provide. Interestingly, the non-celibate writer of 1 Timothy thinks bishops should be married–to one woman.
In every place where Christianity flourished centuries later, especially in colonial and missionary cultures, the ideal of a large family had everything to do with the “sanctity” of marriage: this was its primary definition. Love had nothing to do with it.
Which explains a great deal about Mormonism. As an old “new religion,” Mormonism could draw on its own desert and exodus experiences: Ohio, Missouri, Illinois (where Joseph Smith was killed), Utah. The myth of a persecuted remnant drove them on; they created their own class of martyrs ( just like the ancient Hebrews and early Christians) and took care of keeping the numbers up through “plural marriages.”
Before it was finally repudiated in 1904, the practice was an “open secret” in the denomination. But there was nothing un-Biblical about it. We have no idea whether all early Christians were monogamous and some reason to think some weren’t. What we do know is that when monogamy has become a norm in religion—as in most parts of Islam–it is attached to financial rather than moral considerations.
What we also know is that from Genesis onward, and from the religious traditions that correspond with it, marriage is a fertility covenant. Adam does not love Eve, and we have no idea how Solomon felt about his 700 wives and 300 concubines—in fact, only one, Naamah the Ammonite is given a name. David gets Bathsheva pregnant after arranging her husband’s death, and receives as punishment not forty lashes but this: “Before your very eyes I the Lord will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight (2 Samuel 2.10ff.).
Bathsheba
Personally, I think history tells us a lot about human nature but very little about how “institutions” and the definitions that describe them can be transformed. I doubt there is any logical argument within the current thinking about same-sex marriage that entitles us to think that what’s good for gays is good for Mormons, or others who espouse plural marriage.
The rationale for plural marriage belongs to the sociology of the practice at a time when threatened minorities considered procreation a method of survival. That rationale is no longer persuasive, no longer needed: religions that are losing members will end with a whimper and will almost certainly not be able to sustain themselves by reformulating their marriage codes.
Having said this, it is no accident that the religion that still extols marriage primarily as a fertility covenant (and has stressed this doctrine in its Gospel of Life theology) is also the one most viciously opposed to same-sex marriage.
The defense of gay marriage is something else: it reflects the development, over time, of love and emotional attachment as the primary criteria for the right [sic] of marriage and at least implicitly rules out fertility and procreation—the old biblical and ecclesiastic rationales—as defining properties or necessary ends. That is where we are in history.
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Published: July 22, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Catholic Church : gay marriage : Latter Days Saints : matrimony : Mormon Church : Plural Marriage : Polygamy : sacraments : same-sex marriage ..
11 Responses to “Quodlibet: Of Gay and Plural Marriage”
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steph
July 22, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Veeery good post. Rights and rites… Today I think marriage is a ritual about declaration of love. Love between two human beings, and a ceremony which will entitle them to particular legal rights. And whatever Mark’s source (Mark probably being the source for Matthew and Luke) that ‘instruction’ has been inappropriately applied to modern contexts. A plausible reason for it being originally articulated in such a way, might be that it would ensure the protection of women and their children from being cast out with no means of financial support. Nothing endures but change – they all said it in different ways. Just as a woman and her children are protected by law in divorce now, marriage is no longer needed to increase the population. We have an overload crisis. Marriage is for love first. Between two people. How can you love more than one?
Many wives today, is like open and honest adultery, at best, adultery without deceit and lies. Some people stay together because of ‘the children’. Some people shouldn’t have children, particularly right wing American politicians. Some people just shouldn’t get married. Some priests should get married. Gay couples, should be allowed to get married if they want to because marriage is about love between two human beings. We all need love for spiritual, physical and intellectual fulfillment and companionship. And fun and a future. Love makes people happy. Let gay couples be happy. Let those many wives find one love each… But don’t let that man in a white robe kiss any more babies please.
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steph
July 23, 2011 at 10:44 am
Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. You can’t have one without the other, so let the gay and merry couple dance down the avenue and raise your glasses and drink to
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rjosephhoffmann
July 23, 2011 at 10:59 am
In the horse and carriage analogy, what sex is the horse?
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steph
July 23, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Which sex is the carriage?
steph
July 23, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Whatever sex you like.
x
steph
July 25, 2011 at 3:53 pm
The horse will be a mare or a gelded stallion. Stallions are frisky and temperamental and liable to bolt and upset the carriage. I was employed as a groom and rider on an Appaloosa horse stud a while ago now, in Takapau, near Onga Onga where my sister’s farm was before they moved up to Te Pohue, near Napier. I looked after Bold Warrior, formerly a champion steeplechaser. He was nearly 19 hands tall and I sometimes used a fence to mount him but he never bolted because he was so collosal and overweight I almost did the splits to sit astride him and he was an elderly gentlemen anyway at 17 years old. He’d had his day with mares, poor soul, and had never pulled a carriage. He was incredibly fine and handsome though and had a beautiful sweet and gentle nature.
Mike Wilson
July 23, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Funny thing about groups wanting to get back to the Old Testament standards of marriage. Have seen an example of a happy polygamous marriage in it?
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rjosephhoffmann
July 23, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Good point. The beginning of marriage is the beginning of jealousy, and polygamy doesn’t seem to have reduced the risks.
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steph
July 25, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Mum said some people are born jealous and other people don’t have a jealous bone in them. I think she was right. She wasn’t generally wrong about anything that mattered.
steph
July 23, 2011 at 7:04 pm
Marriage is only the beginning of jealousy if the marriage isn’t a consequence of a couple’s love for each other. Because love isn’t love without trust. But a marriage to a man with more than one wife can’t be a marriage of trust because it’s unbalanced and he can’t love all his wives simultaneously. Therefore it can’t be a marriage of love. I’ve witnessed many marriages without love. Often they end messily or happily in divorce. But I’ve also seen enough meaningful marriages, including in my own family, which are all about love and trust.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 16, 2013 at 6:15 am
Reblogged this on The New Oxonian and commented:
I am almost alone (maybe Jeremy Irons is with me), but I am still not on board with gay marriage. This makes me a one eyed, probably dead pig. But please understand, I love an argument. Marriage has never been about love; and as divorce rates among gays show, it still isn’t.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
God and We the People
by rjosephhoffmann
At the end of the film Henry V, a single tenor voice intones , Non nobis, non nobis, Domine…
He is joined by a few others, until in the end a whole chorus (with orchestra) crescendos to complete the verse: Sed nomini tuo da gloriam. The passage is from Psalm 115, the bit of the Roman Easter liturgy where the priests, hearing the lines, would kneel in abasement: “Not to us, not to us, O Lord, but to your name give glory.”
The verse became a familiar song of the Knights Templar during the Crusades, but its most famous use was in 1415 when the English, against heavy odds and a superior army, defeated the French at Agincourt.
It was easy to see the battle in biblical terms–and the English never tired of attributing their unlikely victory to divine intervention. Except, of course: Henry V of England and Charles VI of France were Christian kings, fighting under the banner of the same God–not Israel’s armies ranged against idol-worshiping enemies whose gods “are silver and gold” (Ps 115.4-7). Invoking a God whose inscrutable will was never known until his competing worshipers lay scattered over the battlefields of Europe (and later America) and the score tallied was one of the reasons this God had to go.
I am beginning with that scenario because God has been the commander in chief for most of human history. The wars that were fought were fought in his name. The blood that was spilled was often considered a sacrifice to his glory–the blood of soldier-martyrs, blessed through violence. Even Lincoln, no war-lover, taught that the field at Gettysburg had been “consecrated ” by blood. It is one of the vulgarities of war that the bloodier the battle, the greater the sacrifice, the more hallowed the ground: “As they danced, they sang: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.’” (1 Samuel 18.7).
The Lord God of hosts was a war god in his youth: he protected his property and his family (like any dues-paying NRA member) and visited his wrath on the enemies of his people with stunning severity.
As he aged, God fought less and spoke more, but through men called prophets. As people listened less, they lost more–finally the whole game. By the time the Romans got to Palestine at the end of the second century BCE, the “kingdoms” of Israel and Judah were little more than a poetic reminiscence, tolerated by a succession of warring overlords who had ruled the area for hundreds of years:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
As an icon of his glorious past, God was reinvented by Christian armies, Muslim armies, and the armies of nations that considered themselves (by common descent or adoption) the rightful possessors of his earthly dominion. Abraham’s children have habitually behaved like children everywhere, throughout time, fighting over daddy’s estate. There’s still no end in sight–though daddy seems weirdly detached from the goings-on.
In the era of kingship, God was invoked as a kind of absent father, but of a distinctly no-nonsense, sovereign variety. There was an advantage to that. No matter how unjust or imbecilic the reigning monarch, God king over all creation, in an argument that reached back to biblical times, could always be invoked. God is king. The king is–well–the king. Long live the king! Naturally this theory ran afoul of the Church where beginning in the 11th century and ever after through the Middle ages the argument could run, The king is king, but the Pope is God’s representative on earth. Thus began the longest running battle for political ascendancy the world has ever known: the one between church and state, eventually won, more or less, by the state and abetted by a religious revolution called the Reformation and an intellectual one called the Renaissance. Oddly, in both of these movements–in art, literature, poetry and music–God seemed more robust and more down to earth than he had ever been.
But seems is not was. As theories of “divine right” faded and republican and constitutional forms of government replaced monarchial ones, he was invoked less frequently. Only in the early twentieth century was his fall as lord, king, judge and lawgiver fully confirmed, and the idea of the “secular” state–an idea that had been around in philosophy for at least two centuries prior–became the new model of political straight-thinking.
ii
Yet, I miss God. For my own reasons.
I fully accept in that “God does not exist,” if by that statement we mean the God of the Bible and the God of the Church. I am, however, not an atheist with respect to all possible formulations of the idea of God (not what Flew would call an impossibilist) and while I have a poor idea of how a credible formulation might run, I think the biblical one is historically valuable and culturally interesting. It is therefore literally false and culturally valuable, because it tells us the weakness of all such formulations, at least at a literary level. God is made in man’s image–just as, in an inverted way, the Bible tells us.
I often irritate my more militant atheist friends when they start their God-bashing binges by saying that people must have been as ignorant as geese to ever believe the things in the Bible.
But no: they were just people who believed what they believed. They believed it because there was little else to believe. They rose with the sun and went to bed when it disappeared beneath the horizon. They had no books. Why would they? They couldn’t read. The biblical world was not that different from the world they observed.
The physical and religious circumstances of the biblical writers and people of the European Middle Ages were remarkably similar, though they are separated by over a thousand years. Like the priests of biblical Jerusalem, the priests of the church (doing their job with the books they had) told people what to believe. God was God, now assisted by his only-begotten son, and he could save you or punish you, just as in olden days he had sometimes saved his people and sometimes punished them by cutting them off from his favor. Those two conditions–primarily political and territorial in the Old Testament–became something else in the Church: heaven and hell, with earth and the church, the dispenser of God’s grace, in between. The psychology of why such a God came into being, why he had to be periodically remodeled and saved from himself is disappointingly and thoroughly human and social.
At least since Feuerbach (d. 1872) the conclusion that God is what we made him has been inescapable. But it is also often ignored. It is obviously ignored by very religious people, who continue to believe that the God of the Bible exists “out there” somewhere and affects their lives and futures.
But the same kind of dyshistorical thinking also applies to atheists, who deny God exists, but need something to blame for all the outrages that have been committed in his name, and so often take the same sort of fundamentalist tack to the biblical story. They reify ignorance, ignore history and identify the problem as “religion,” an odd conclusion from people who purport also to champion the development of the species through evolution and adaptation.
Their mistake is and continues to be to meet the fundamentalist on his own ground, rather than on the field of history.
The most impressive example of this illogic is Richard Dawkins’s bumper sticker line, that “Most of us are atheists with respect to 99% of the gods who have ever existed; some of us just go one step further.” The presumed-to-be-self-evident point here is that if 99% of gods are false, there is a high probability that any god must be false.
This is shocking stuff, coming from a scientist who might be expected to know that it would take only 1 case of a “true god” to falsify 99 cases of false ones. The analogy of earth adrift in an otherwise unpopulated universe: Are we alone? There is of course a
“naturalist” argument against such possibilism (e.g. we know the conditions for life beyond earth because we know the conditions necessary for it to happen; we do not know such conditions for the existence of God); but it’s unnecessary to make it here since I agree with Dawkins’s conclusion if not with his way of reaching it.
What is true is that the God of the Judaeo Christian-Islamic tradition does not exist; we know this because we know how he developed, how his story was invented–and was changed.
Anyway, no one will miss the God of the philosophers, as dull, bloodless and expendable an entity as ever has been imagined, and very few will miss the God who soaks the world for all its evildoing in the time of Noah. (The sufficient disproof of the latter is that he hasn’t destroyed Las Vegas or went plagues on the Taliban, and if Hurricane Katrina or the multiple tsunamis of the past decade were really meant for Washington DC, he is obviously losing his grip on geography.)
iii
The God I miss is a God of lost causes and noble pursuits, a historical residue, an adaptation of what’s left when the God of the Bible has been forgiven for his crimes against humanity. –An idea, not a tangible reality, but something that is still separate from our better selves.
Feuerbach hits the nail head on when he writes in his Lectures on the Essence of Religion (XXX)
God, I have said, is the fulfiller, or the reality, of the human desires for happiness, perfection, and immortality. From this it may be inferred that to deprive man of God is to tear the heart out of his breast.
Unfortunately this breast-rending sense of God has been replaced by a completely unworthy substitute, at least in the United States. The American People.
The mistake begins with the language of representative democracy, the United States Constitution being, I think, the first document in world history that doesn’t come from the top down–king or emperor and parliament to the people by edict. It goes bottom up: We the people. Never mind that it would have been impossible for “We the people” to write anything and that it took a committee of fairly learned men to produce the document, but one thing it doesn’t do is to drag God into the business of government.
In a famous clause of the First Amendment, it actually, if politely, excuses him from further service. No God reigns here. No monarch gloriously rules as his vicar. No act of parliament requires an act of allegiance to his Church. We the people are who we are, and who we are is The American people.
Most the people in the world know that the American people are mostly religious. So religious that they sometimes look skeptical when we boast that we are the first country ever founded on the principle of separation of church and state. Looking at the deals congressmen have to make to keep their pious Baptist and Jewish and Catholic clients happy, it is easy to forget that invoking the will of God in the way, say, a feudal king might have done, a medieval pope, or even a modern mullah, is not done here. At least not officially.
We the people have taken his place–rhetorically.
The American people will not be fooled by the President’s shenanigans. The American people will not tolerate congressional gridlock. The American people deserve answers/to know the truth/a full explanation. The American people will see this bill [insert name] for the bureaucratic pork it is. The American people will reject this bill because they respect human life. The American people want jobs not entitlements. The American people deserve to have both sides of this issue debated fully, and hence will not permit it to come to the floor for a vote. The American people….
Why do the American people deserve so much, when some of the American people can’t quote even the first line of the Preamble to the Constitution, and some (an alarming percentage as I recall) would like to see limits on freedom of speech and would be very happy to see separation of church and state relaxed, Christianity taught in schools, the Bible restored to its previous, revered status in public education, and old fashioned (family) values incorporated into everything from town council meetings to media censorship to senior proms.
Why do the American people deserve so much?
Because:
The American people are wise. They are innately good and great-hearted. Their wrath is great when you cross them–look at their armies and navies–but when you see eye to eye with them they are kind, and patient, and even (often) bountiful. They are financially shrewd and naturally prosperous. They are self-reliant, independent. They are just super.
They are therefore a useful substitute for the God who can’t be invoked. I am humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic as I write, the most flagrant hybrid of the secular and religious commitments ever penned.
The American people want to see a quick end to this conflict. The American people will not tolerate the idea that aggression can be rewarded. The American people do not want to see Gitmo a single day more, or the environment compromised by greedy men who are just interested in quick profit and development . The American people do not want their children to be saddled with debt. The American people think that everyone who is willing to work should be able to work.
There is nothing directly wrong with using this highly charged phrase as the secular equivalent for a God who has been relegated to the sidelines of history.
As long as we recognize that it takes us right back to the days of Henry V of England and Charles VI of France. It is the same schizophrenic approach to political life that characterized the primitivism of the Middle Ages and led to Endless War: one God, many purposes–none of them self-consistent, all of them subject to the whims and objectives of the invoker.
I am worried that a God who evolved through history and was then cast aside when he had developed humanitarian impulses can be replaced by The American People, whose sole interests seem to be war, taxes, profit, self-interest, and finding the right enemies of the state. Can it be the God who was cast aside was too inconvenient, and that the secular was less demanding, less judgmental, more convenient and accommodating to conscience? After all, the God of the Bible (Dawkins be screwed), evolved; the secular state is still an experiment in the process of proving itself.
When Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama, or lesser avatars, invoke the American People, they may have the Constitution and the good of the Republic in their line of sight, but I doubt it. They are simply invoking something bigger than they are–andwith the justification that (like God with kings) The American People put them where they are.
The wishful thinking is that the American people will not be able to resist appeals to their innate wisdom and honor and will not notice that their government is simply massaging them into thinking its bad (and sometimes horrible) decisions are what they wanted all along–symbolized by the magical liturgy of voting–the supreme power of the electoral process.
The American people demand an honorable end to this war. The American people stand for freedom and justice and cannot walk away from this struggle. The American people will fight as long as it takes to protest their interests. The American people want to see justice done to the poor and the homeless. But the American people know that the way to achieve this is not to raise the minimum wage. The American People will reject any attempt to raise taxes. The American People want to see their Constitutional freedoms protected. The American people want to see their borders secure….
Our ancestors enjoyed the luxury of projecting these contradictions outward, or upward, and thus externalizing them as forces they were not themselves able to control, except through prayer and wishing.
God had no obligation to respond favorably because, after all, his will was only known after the fact.
When I read the words of a Henry II, or a Thomas Becket or a Pope Urban II (the one who called the First Crusade) or even an Osama bin Laden, I am struck that the “externalizing” also created an important fiction–the idea that God, or God in history, will judge true and false actions. It is one of the principles that the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, one the three greatest thinkers America has produced, made a pillar of his “democratic” philosophy. I’ve discussed Niebuhr’s thoughts previously in these pages, but I think it’s worth mentioning something again.
The rejection of the Bible, and indeed of Christianity, is not the beginning of wisdom, political or philosophical. Not if that rejection does not include all forms of idolatry, as Niebuhr called it–false faith in non-existent saviours. I hate to say it, but there is no such thing as The American People.
The beauty of biblical thinking actually derives from the belief that the worship of the true God separates what is noble from what is false, what is worth “worshiping” from what must be rejected or even demonized. Beneath the materialism of the Biblical language are some important values that are lost if we simply substitute the people for God. History has seen lots of secular equivalents–Das Deutsche Volk und Reich, The Chinese People, the American People, even the growing use of the meme “Our Children” meaning our responsibility to the future.
But the crisis of this way of thinking–this use of The American People as a secular proxy for an absent God, becomes apparent as soon as we wonder, What thing of ultimately symbolic value, what coherent symbol of our aspirations and better selves, what criterion for justice, what instantiation of beauty or love, even of anger, can take the place the God?
If the God of Abraham, the God of Constantine, of Henry of England and Charles of France and the God of Lincoln (Abraham’s namesake) didn’t measure up, one thing is sure: The American People is a very poor substitute Non nobis, Domine!
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Published: May 19, 2013
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5 Responses to “God and We the People”
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jsegor23
May 19, 2013 at 7:52 pm
Your statistical criticism of Dawkins is unfair. Dawkins gives a one to seven scale. One being absolute belief and seven absolute disbelief. He puts himself at six, leaving room for falsification. Ninety five percent is an accepted statistical standard, so Dawkins’ ninety nine percent is quite good. Anyway, let’s not take one liners too seriously.
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steph
May 20, 2013 at 7:55 pm
Hi Joseph, I think the critique of Dawkins is entirely reasonable. If you don’t want to want to take one liners too seriously, why quibble over 4 percent? And it isn’t a one liner – it’s a slogan Dawkins has exploited and used to his advantage, and furthermore, expounded. His atheism hangs on his argument – a fundamentalist argument which doesn’t acknowledge the evolution of ideas.
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decourse
May 21, 2013 at 2:02 am
I don’t agree that Dawkins’ atheism hangs on that particular argument, even to the extent that it counts as an “argument”.
Having said that, I agree with you about argumentum ad sloganum.
steph
May 21, 2013 at 11:49 pm
Sorry I was unclear. ‘His atheism hangs on his argument’, his argument being that ‘God’ does not exist. But ‘its a fundamentalist argument which doesn’t acknowledge the history and evolution of ideas and god ideas’ which render his claim, plastered on bumpers, illogical.
scotteus
May 21, 2013 at 11:33 pm
Perhaps it’s the God of the Humanists that is missed the most. It’s not that that particular deity is dead, just that he’s almost always shouted down by the extremists on both side of the debate.
In our own backyard, there’s certainly fulsome praise for the lord of hosts whose prime motive consists of kicking names and taking ass whenever he wants.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Mrs Prufrock
by rjosephhoffmann
Mrs Prufrock
Well, I remember the hips,
from my station in the bed.
Your husband was long gone
not even a trace of cologne,
not the underwear that hemmed
him in while you played possum in bed.
Old strategies die hard:
what we were at twenty two,
what we are now, not ingenues.
I tried to lure you back
but roaches you said would
come if you did not do dishes
then and there, with soap.
Your husband came and went,
and years, and hips.
I lost a soul, you lost
your lips.
I used to run. Now I can
barely walk, and have to roll
my pants-legs up:
and you can run rings around me.
An aging woman’s but a
distant thing. Your mother’s
querulous voice, your fore-
knuckle growing large on
undistinguished hands,
like a walnut, the firm breasts
begging for more time and
fewer veins.
You might have been
an anchor, or a dock: but no–
a temporary storm on a black sea
where there is no harbour,
no light, no, nor rising sun.
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Published: May 26, 2013
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Canto II: Umm ul-Banin
by rjosephhoffmann
When Dante visited the moon
Beatrice explained about vows.
“A vow’s a pact,” she said “between man and God,
but moons come and go, so don’t swear by them.”
Maybe he laughed at that, because she was young,
and had no right lecturing him in his dreams,
a spirit torn from his side. What can a girl know about vows?
When he first saw her, she was trembling like a dove.
She said “You’ll have to go through strange gates and dark alleys
into cities wet with spilled excuses.
You’ve got to pass this way. there’s no short cut.
You’ll see whatever you want to see.
“On the other side, there is a mountain
and from the top ledge you can see God.
It’s worth it, though–the crossing: He is beautiful,
and the best thing is, no one who sees him remembers
anything they’ve seen before,
not the crying, not being stung by wasps.
Not the smell of the Florentine women–
‘Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’Amore’–
Ladies who know all about love.’
“You’ll forget having your eyelids pierced
and weighted with leaden pendants so that you can can’t see truth
staring you in the face. It’s rumour of course,
but God’s more beautiful than the moon.”
So they walked towards the river and for the first hundred yards
she held his hand. Then he stumbled.
It was dark when he climbed into the rotting boat
that smelled like all the sins he had committed as a child.
He wasn’t sure, in the dark, in the cloak,
But he thought it was her. He wanted it to be her.
He rode the yellow sadness of Acheron, filled with naked men,
eyes alight with flaming coals. He saw starved falcons overhead,
thick as mosquitoes over a dead lake.
He saw Charon lobbing his oar against bodies clutching the sides of the
boat, turning the way forward into a slow trawl.
He saw pale arms rising and falling back into the black torpor,
drowning in waltz time, in little circles.
“It’s too much.” he said: “Here’s an extra five dollars,
I don’t care how beautiful God is. Take me back.”
He turned to her, but he saw instead the shadow of a poet
who said, “I’ll take you farther. You must go farther, because, as
She said, there is a mountain you’re meant to climb.
She wants it for you.”
“I have no legs, for mountains,” he said, “I do not want
To be a poet. I do not want to drown.”
But by then the boat had forked upriver:
Charon grinned as the water widened.
She stood on the other side, a firelight on the shore
fading like the glow of the moon behind a broken cloud.
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Published: May 27, 2013
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One Response to “Canto II: Umm ul-Banin”
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steph
May 28, 2013 at 5:07 am
Reading this was magical, mystical, compelling – and it really was, thrilling.
Nothing is more beautiful than the moon though. I don’t want to forget.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Villanelle Baneen
by rjosephhoffmann
f I’d sung songs that saw you through the night
and woke you with a smile at break of day,
and danced upon the moon and stunned the light–
You’d probably have said, “This is not right–
Because your words are words, and really they
Are not the ones that see me through the night.
“And there are others dancing, oh so bright,
I cannot count them–and you will not stay
Dancing on the moon to stun the light….
“So many boys who praised the moon in flight
And loved me, and saw me on my way:
Though you sung songs to see me through the night–
“Wild boys, full seeded, stirring for my sight,
Skin like leather, flesh like moulded clay
Dancing on the moon to stun the light.
“And you, my love, there on the mountain height–
What were you asking–and what trying to say?
If you’d sung songs that saw me through the night
and woke me with a smile at break of day?”
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Published: June 3, 2013
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One Response to “Villanelle Baneen”
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nicola
June 3, 2013 at 10:40 am
Ahhhh, how happy i’d be if you stayed with me through the night x
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