Reason and Belief

By Dan Hagen

Christian televangelist Pat Robertson once said that earthquake-ravaged Haiti had been “cursed” by a “pact to the devil.”

And that's the "science" of earthquakes for you, as interpreted by the fundamentalist loons.

Why should religion invade only the biology classes to silence Darwin’s science? Shouldn't our students be studying exorcism along with tectonic plates in geology class?

Organized religion is dangerous because it is based on the premise that everything important is already known, and even known without effort. In fact, the opposite is true.

Eff your elitist smarty-pants “fact.” Fascist fundamentalist propaganda offers FAITH, baby, the unassailable, satisfyingly holy-holy-holy, lily-white fact-free faith that anyone who isn't sufficiently like you richly deserves your fear and your anger and your violent and undying hatred.

The assumption that religion is the basis of morality is a strenuously spread bit of theological propaganda. It is spread so strenuously because people are always in danger of finding out that it isn’t true.

Fundamentalist Christians don’t obey God because they think he is good. They tremble before him because they think he is omnipotent. They do not call themselves “God-inspired” Christians, do they? They call themselves “God-fearing” Christians.

No moral philosophy at work there. You wouldn’t call the trembling subjects of a tyrant “moral,” would you?

The point is, once you base your whole belief system on assertions for which there is no rational evidence — and that’s what religion does and must do — you have cut an essential tie to reality, and are always in danger of floating loose.

Some things, such as letting children starve, stabbing your child to death on a mountain as a sacrifice or putting every man, woman and child to the sword, simply cannot be justified on a rational, human scale of values. But people will do them — and do them cheerfully, while singing hymns — when they believe that “God” has instructed them to do so.

In the Book of Joshua, to take one example, God orders the Hebrews to slaughter every man, woman and child in the land of Canaan. What a moral inspiration that God is, eh?

And “mainstream” religion, in which people eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood, isn’t particularly more rational than any other “stream.” It’s just more habitually conventional.

Far from having any exclusive claim to morality, Judeo-Christian religion often has nothing to do with morality or even works against it, as during the Spanish Inquisition.

Morality? Maurice Clemmons' successful application for clemency pitched an appeal directly to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s fundamentalist Christian religion. After all, that’s what had worked so often to get other violent criminals freed by Huckabee.

Clemmons wrote that he prayed Huckabee would show him compassion and that he had changed his life since “the angel of death has visited and taken away my dear sweet mother.”

Meanwhile, between 1989 and 1998, the dear sweet Christian Clemmons broke prison rules more than two dozen times and sometimes violently, said state prison system spokeswoman Dina Tyler. But who needs evidence when you have faith, right?

Clemmons was subsequently responsible for the Nov. 29, 2009, murder of four police officers in Parkland, Washington. After evading police for two days following the shooting, Clemmons was shot and killed by a police officer in Seattle.

In other words, Mike Huckabee is a dangerous fool who releases violent criminals from prison as long as they make pretty speeches about his pet religion.

Humans have values not because their values are divine, but only because of their natures as thinking mortal beings — beings who live or die, together with their fellows, based on the rationality or irrationality of their choices.

That is the basis of human morality, and it arises not from any ancient book of myths but from empathy, from the child’s recognition that other people can be hurt the way he can be hurt. From that beginning, we’ve filled whole libraries with thoughtful, philosophical explorations of how humans should live ethically.

Human nature, human experience and human intelligence determine what is right. It doesn't come naturally, and it doesn't come from a burning bush that talks. It comes from the hard-fought, millennia-long struggle for civilization and education that know-nothings just itch to throw away so they can comfort themselves by imposing their own superstitious ignorance on the world.

One thing you can be certain of. Whenever someone starts saying “God does this” or “God wants that,” they don't know what they're talking about.

Yes, religion can offer symbolic truth, metaphoric truth about human existence. What it cannot offer is literal truth, and those who insist that it can are on a dangerous path.

The Tea Partiers, for example, are not “Christians” in the sense that they actually believe or intend to practice any of the principles that Jesus advocated. They are "Christians" in the sense that they are drawn to ancient, primitive blood sacrifice — the idea that the ground must be sprinkled with the life blood of the king so that the crops may grow, or, in their version, so that they may personally dwell forever in redneck heaven.

Their religion is narcissistic, not philosophical. See Mel Gibson's deity snuff film “The Passion of the Christ” for an illustration.

In his “When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs,” religion professor Charles Kimball told us to watch out for these ominous signals in religious groups – 1) claiming absolute truth; 2) seizing upon an “ideal time;” citing imminent disaster or looming “end times;” 3) demanding blind obedience; 4) using ends to justify means, as in cheerful acceptance of “collateral damage” and 5) waging “holy war.” 

You will note that American fundamentalists have long since hurtled past all five signposts of danger, shouting halleluiah all the way.