Grasping the Nettle

Sorry I've been so quiet the past week. I actually began a couple of posts that I couldn't seem to finish; let's see if I can do any better tonight.

Easter, like the other big Christian holiday, has to be covered in the media, so it's a good time for all kinds of non-news and general wackiness. A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal gave comedian Ricky Gervais space to explain why he's an "excellent Christian," even though he's an atheist.

I am of course not a good Christian in the sense that I believe that Jesus was half man, half God, but I do believe I am a good Christian compared to a lot of Christians.

It’s not that I don’t believe that the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t make this a better world if they were followed. It’s just that they are rarely followed....

Jesus was a man. (And if you forget all that rubbish about being half God, and believe the non-supernatural acts accredited to him, he was a man whose wise words many other men would still follow.) His message was usually one of forgiveness and kindness.

These are wonderful virtues but I have seen them discarded by many so-called God-fearers when it suits them. They cherry pick from their “rulebook” basically.

Quite a few atheists say such things, but they're generally vague about which teachings of Jesus would make this a better world if they were followed. In Gervais' case, he cherry picks "forgivenness and kindness," which do feature in Jesus' teaching as they do in the teaching of just about every religious teacher except Ayn Rand, but they are surrounded by a lot of stuff that is not so kind or forgiving at all. Hellfire and damnation (you'd better be kind and forgiving, or I'll condemn you to eternal torture!), which make up quite a bit of Jesus' teaching. Or the stuff about plucking out your eye if it leads you to sin, because even a lustful look at a woman will end you up in Hell, or becoming a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven because marriage, while allowed, isn't a good idea. Or hating your family if they get in the way of your salvation, because the time is short and Judgment is at hand, and Hellfire awaits those who dawdle. Did I mention that the fire is not quenched there, and the worm is not sated? And so on.

Did Gervais grapple with this small issue? No. I can't say I blame him much, because it's one thing to attack Christians (Christians do it all the time), and another thing to attack Jesus. Because Jesus was, like, way cool. So how did Gervais fill out his space in the Wall Street Journal? By going after the Ten Commandments. You know. The Old Testament stuff. It's true that Christians at least pay lip service to the Decalogue, as Jesus did, but there's a whole pile of interesting stuff in the New Testament that is a lot more relevant to Gervais' issues with Christians than the Ten Commandments. According to Wikipedia, for example, Gervais and his girlfriend of twenty-nine years have cohabited without getting married because "there’s no point in us having an actual ceremony before the eyes of God because there is no God"; I think they'd run afoul of Jesus on that one, with his dim view of fornication and all. (And there's also this little thing called civil marriage, which I think they have in England too.)

One reason I have a soft spot for the Noble Engineer Robert A. Heinlein is that he recognized this little obstacle and took a couple of swings at it, most notably for me in Stranger in a Strange Land. In that book his alter ego Jubal Harshaw is having a conversation with another, more naive character about a recently invented religion known as Fosterism. The disciple is outraged by the Fosterite scripture, which she considers just "hateful." Harshaw asks her if she's ever read the holy books of any other religion.

"... I could illustrate my point from the Bible but do not wish to hurt your feelings."

"You won't hurt my feelings."

"Well, I'll use the Old Testament, picking it to pieces doesn't usually upset people as much." [Stranger in a Strange Land, Putnam, 1991, p. 318]

Maybe that was Gervais' motive; but I don't think so. I think he's simply ignorant and dishonest, dodging the hard questions in favor of the easy ones. Or maybe it's just that he has no quarrel with any of Jesus' teachings -- so, Ricky, when are you planning to become a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven? Or sell all you have and give to the poor?

But more in the spirit of the season, MSNBC had a couple of winning examples of non-news. This article announced that a perennial biblical difficulty has been solved: the discrepancy between the date of the Last Supper according to the gospel of John, and and the date according to the other three (Matthew, Mark and Luke -- known collectively as the Synoptic gospels). According to Mark, Jesus ate a Passover meal with his disciples, was arrested later that night, and crucified the next day. According to John, Jesus was crucified on the Passover itself. This creates many complications for those who want to treat the gospels as not just history, but eyewitness accounts by Jesus' followers.

Colin Humphreys, a "a metallurgist and materials scientist and a Christian" at Cambridge University, claims to have solved the problem:

Humphreys' research suggests Jesus, and Matthew, Mark and Luke, were using the Pre-Exilic Calendar, which dated from the time of Moses and counted the first day of the new month from the end of the old lunar cycle, while John was referring to the official Jewish calendar of the day.

... With the help of an astronomer, Humphreys reconstructed the Pre-Exilic calendar and placed Passover in the year AD 33, widely accepted as the year of Jesus' crucifixion, on Wednesday April 1.

I am deeply suspicious about this. First, I've seen this explanation before, in scholarship going back to the 1960s at least, so I doubt the originality of Humphreys's "research." Second, as Humphreys says himself, the problem then becomes how to explain how such an inconsistency found its way into texts supposedly written by Jewish followers of Jesus. Why were they using different calendars? (Third, I suppose I'll have to try to find whatever Humphreys is going to publish and see what his evidence is. The gospels are pretty explicit that they're talking about the same calendar.)

There's a famous quip of the distinguished English New Testament scholar Vincent Taylor to the effect that if certain critical scholars were correct, Jesus' original disciples "must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection," since they supposedly contributed nothing to the gospels as we have them. But Taylor's witticism applies no less to more conservative scholarship, which has to account for the fact that the gospels disagree on so many important matters -- not just the date of the Last Supper, but the Resurrection stories: the gospels disagree almost totally about to whom Jesus appeared, when, and where. If, as Taylor also wrote, "for at least a generation [the disciples] moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of those who sought information”, it's very hard to explain the discrepancies. ("Difficult?" as Doctor Johnson cried out in another context, "I wish to heaven it were impossible!")

In other non-news, MSNBC reported controversies surrounding the release of some new versions of some English translations of the Bible. "Mary a 'virgin' or a 'young woman?'" asks the title of the page; "Bible edits leave some feeling cross," puns the title of the article. (Well, Christianity is supposed to be the Way of the Cross.) The article contains a lot of minor errors, such as the claim that the new editions are "separate 'official' updated translations of the Christian Bible." One, the New American Bible, could conceivably be called "official," since it's produced by Catholic translators for Catholic readers, but there are other translations produced for Catholics, and the new one "isn't yet approved for use in the Catholic Mass, the bishops conference said, because only the Vatican can grant such approval — a process that can take years."

The other new edition, of the notorious fundamentalist-friendly New International Version, is even less "official." The Southern Baptist Convention adopted earlier editions of the NIV for use in the "pews", but members of other denominations have used it too. According to the article, both the Baptists and many Christian bookstores are unhappy with the new edition, and won't use or stock it. So -- "official", how?

The controversies are also old hat: should 'almah in Isaiah 7:14 be translated as "virgin" or "young woman," a matter of great import for Christians who see the verse as a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus. The Revised Standard Version came down on the side of "young woman" fifty years ago, and Jewish translations never went with "virgin." The NIV has come under attack for using "inclusive" language -- that is, mostly inclusivity of gender, as in words like "mankind" or "son" as opposed to "child." There's a lot of room for disagreement in translation of specific cases, since Greek and Hebrew words don't necessarily match English ones. But people who grew up on the archaic King James Version often throw tantrums at any changes made in what they may consider the original Biblical text.

These are, as I said, old controversies, often very old. (How to translate 'almah is as old as Biblical translation, which means a couple thousand years.) But if you're writing the news, you have to come up with something for Easter, I guess.

So, tomorrow's Easter, when Jesus rises from the dead and comes out of his tomb. If he sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of winter, so let's hope for cloudy skies!

Grasping the Nettle

Sorry I've been so quiet the past week. I actually began a couple of posts that I couldn't seem to finish; let's see if I can do any better tonight.

Easter, like the other big Christian holiday, has to be covered in the media, so it's a good time for all kinds of non-news and general wackiness. A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal gave comedian Ricky Gervais space to explain why he's an "excellent Christian," even though he's an atheist.

I am of course not a good Christian in the sense that I believe that Jesus was half man, half God, but I do believe I am a good Christian compared to a lot of Christians.

It’s not that I don’t believe that the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t make this a better world if they were followed. It’s just that they are rarely followed....

Jesus was a man. (And if you forget all that rubbish about being half God, and believe the non-supernatural acts accredited to him, he was a man whose wise words many other men would still follow.) His message was usually one of forgiveness and kindness.

These are wonderful virtues but I have seen them discarded by many so-called God-fearers when it suits them. They cherry pick from their “rulebook” basically.

Quite a few atheists say such things, but they're generally vague about which teachings of Jesus would make this a better world if they were followed. In Gervais' case, he cherry picks "forgivenness and kindness," which do feature in Jesus' teaching as they do in the teaching of just about every religious teacher except Ayn Rand, but they are surrounded by a lot of stuff that is not so kind or forgiving at all. Hellfire and damnation (you'd better be kind and forgiving, or I'll condemn you to eternal torture!), which make up quite a bit of Jesus' teaching. Or the stuff about plucking out your eye if it leads you to sin, because even a lustful look at a woman will end you up in Hell, or becoming a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven because marriage, while allowed, isn't a good idea. Or hating your family if they get in the way of your salvation, because the time is short and Judgment is at hand, and Hellfire awaits those who dawdle. Did I mention that the fire is not quenched there, and the worm is not sated? And so on.

Did Gervais grapple with this small issue? No. I can't say I blame him much, because it's one thing to attack Christians (Christians do it all the time), and another thing to attack Jesus. Because Jesus was, like, way cool. So how did Gervais fill out his space in the Wall Street Journal? By going after the Ten Commandments. You know. The Old Testament stuff. It's true that Christians at least pay lip service to the Decalogue, as Jesus did, but there's a whole pile of interesting stuff in the New Testament that is a lot more relevant to Gervais' issues with Christians than the Ten Commandments. According to Wikipedia, for example, Gervais and his girlfriend of twenty-nine years have cohabited without getting married because "there’s no point in us having an actual ceremony before the eyes of God because there is no God"; I think they'd run afoul of Jesus on that one, with his dim view of fornication and all. (And there's also this little thing called civil marriage, which I think they have in England too.)

One reason I have a soft spot for the Noble Engineer Robert A. Heinlein is that he recognized this little obstacle and took a couple of swings at it, most notably for me in Stranger in a Strange Land. In that book his alter ego Jubal Harshaw is having a conversation with another, more naive character about a recently invented religion known as Fosterism. The disciple is outraged by the Fosterite scripture, which she considers just "hateful." Harshaw asks her if she's ever read the holy books of any other religion.

"... I could illustrate my point from the Bible but do not wish to hurt your feelings."

"You won't hurt my feelings."

"Well, I'll use the Old Testament, picking it to pieces doesn't usually upset people as much." [Stranger in a Strange Land, Putnam, 1991, p. 318]

Maybe that was Gervais' motive; but I don't think so. I think he's simply ignorant and dishonest, dodging the hard questions in favor of the easy ones. Or maybe it's just that he has no quarrel with any of Jesus' teachings -- so, Ricky, when are you planning to become a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven? Or sell all you have and give to the poor?

But more in the spirit of the season, MSNBC had a couple of winning examples of non-news. This article announced that a perennial biblical difficulty has been solved: the discrepancy between the date of the Last Supper according to the gospel of John, and and the date according to the other three (Matthew, Mark and Luke -- known collectively as the Synoptic gospels). According to Mark, Jesus ate a Passover meal with his disciples, was arrested later that night, and crucified the next day. According to John, Jesus was crucified on the Passover itself. This creates many complications for those who want to treat the gospels as not just history, but eyewitness accounts by Jesus' followers.

Colin Humphreys, a "a metallurgist and materials scientist and a Christian" at Cambridge University, claims to have solved the problem:

Humphreys' research suggests Jesus, and Matthew, Mark and Luke, were using the Pre-Exilic Calendar, which dated from the time of Moses and counted the first day of the new month from the end of the old lunar cycle, while John was referring to the official Jewish calendar of the day.

... With the help of an astronomer, Humphreys reconstructed the Pre-Exilic calendar and placed Passover in the year AD 33, widely accepted as the year of Jesus' crucifixion, on Wednesday April 1.

I am deeply suspicious about this. First, I've seen this explanation before, in scholarship going back to the 1960s at least, so I doubt the originality of Humphreys's "research." Second, as Humphreys says himself, the problem then becomes how to explain how such an inconsistency found its way into texts supposedly written by Jewish followers of Jesus. Why were they using different calendars? (Third, I suppose I'll have to try to find whatever Humphreys is going to publish and see what his evidence is. The gospels are pretty explicit that they're talking about the same calendar.)

There's a famous quip of the distinguished English New Testament scholar Vincent Taylor to the effect that if certain critical scholars were correct, Jesus' original disciples "must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection," since they supposedly contributed nothing to the gospels as we have them. But Taylor's witticism applies no less to more conservative scholarship, which has to account for the fact that the gospels disagree on so many important matters -- not just the date of the Last Supper, but the Resurrection stories: the gospels disagree almost totally about to whom Jesus appeared, when, and where. If, as Taylor also wrote, "for at least a generation [the disciples] moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of those who sought information”, it's very hard to explain the discrepancies. ("Difficult?" as Doctor Johnson cried out in another context, "I wish to heaven it were impossible!")

In other non-news, MSNBC reported controversies surrounding the release of some new versions of some English translations of the Bible. "Mary a 'virgin' or a 'young woman?'" asks the title of the page; "Bible edits leave some feeling cross," puns the title of the article. (Well, Christianity is supposed to be the Way of the Cross.) The article contains a lot of minor errors, such as the claim that the new editions are "separate 'official' updated translations of the Christian Bible." One, the New American Bible, could conceivably be called "official," since it's produced by Catholic translators for Catholic readers, but there are other translations produced for Catholics, and the new one "isn't yet approved for use in the Catholic Mass, the bishops conference said, because only the Vatican can grant such approval — a process that can take years."

The other new edition, of the notorious fundamentalist-friendly New International Version, is even less "official." The Southern Baptist Convention adopted earlier editions of the NIV for use in the "pews", but members of other denominations have used it too. According to the article, both the Baptists and many Christian bookstores are unhappy with the new edition, and won't use or stock it. So -- "official", how?

The controversies are also old hat: should 'almah in Isaiah 7:14 be translated as "virgin" or "young woman," a matter of great import for Christians who see the verse as a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus. The Revised Standard Version came down on the side of "young woman" fifty years ago, and Jewish translations never went with "virgin." The NIV has come under attack for using "inclusive" language -- that is, mostly inclusivity of gender, as in words like "mankind" or "son" as opposed to "child." There's a lot of room for disagreement in translation of specific cases, since Greek and Hebrew words don't necessarily match English ones. But people who grew up on the archaic King James Version often throw tantrums at any changes made in what they may consider the original Biblical text.

These are, as I said, old controversies, often very old. (How to translate 'almah is as old as Biblical translation, which means a couple thousand years.) But if you're writing the news, you have to come up with something for Easter, I guess.

So, tomorrow's Easter, when Jesus rises from the dead and comes out of his tomb. If he sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of winter, so let's hope for cloudy skies!

Where the Wild Things Are

Open Salon features some strange stuff, often several months past its sell-by date, but some garbage is timeless, y'know? Like this piece denouncing the burning of books, reacting to the threatened Koran-burning last fall, by a "former advertising and marketing executive and winner of over 50 advertising awards for excellence, ... an unpaid Senior Advisor on John Kerry's 2004 Presidential Campaign... [and a] blogger, activist, Democratic Strategist on MSNBC and FOX News and founder of Common Sense NMS." As you'd expect from such a person, his post was bogus from the title on, which he repeated in the main text. "Americans Don't Burn Books"? I suppose this is an example of the "No True Scotsman" tactic, because of course, Americans often have burned books, though nowadays it's simpler just to pulp them. The blogger's extended tantrum is, by the way, an example of the very magical thinking that underlies burning books or flags or effigies: that the burned object is a poppet, and by burning it you burn the person it stands for. (This is often associated with "voodoo dolls", but poppets are European magic, as American as apple pie.)

Then there was this one, "Political Propaganda Has Defined Patriotism." Patriotism often goes along with the poppet-magic mentality, and it has always been associated with propaganda. (Remember Samuel Johnson's quip that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels -- the unsavory aspects of patriotism are not exactly a new discovery.) The post begins by invoking the "Nazi's" (a plural was presumably meant but the possessive was written) and the popular legend about the Big Lie, blithely ignoring, oh, say, Parson Weems, "The Star-Spangled Banner," and "Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'" According to the blogger, Paul Joseph Goebbels wrote that "The most brilliant propagandist technique… must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over and over." (Except that Goebbels didn't write that, it was Hitler. Details, details.) Then she writes, "Over the past two years, many of the very techniques Goebbels employed have been used to mobilize a discontent and fearful America." You'd have to call that liberal propaganda defining patriotism, because it's the kind of big lie that was a staple of liberal discourse under Bush, like Molly Ivins's 2007 lament, "What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny?" The US was never such a nation, any more than it was the kind of nation depicted in Reaganite propaganda (white people living behind picket fences in small towns, self-reliant and beholden to no one, especially government bureaucrats). So this post is a textbook example of what it pretends to denounce.

Most recently I stumbled on this post. The title was promising: "I'm an Atheist, Ask Me How." Except that the blogger doesn't know how. She begins:

I can hardly believe that Christianity is still so prevalent in this, the year of our Lord, 2010. It’s fucking bizarre that an organization advocating homophobia and misogyny is so globally cherished.

Starting from the atheist premise that there is no god, the answer should be obvious: an organization advocating homophobia and misogyny is globally cherished because homophobia and misogyny are globally cherished. To oversimplify somewhat, since there is no god, religious doctrines and dicta must be invented by people. Religions are collective constructions, so they don't need to be consistent or reasonable. Someone who for political reasons has a voice gets to insist that this or that bit goes into the stew. If enough people agree with him, his bit will be embraced and cherished and trumpeted by most believers. If not, his bit will be tactfully reinterpreted, or paid respectful lip service and ignored. Consider Mark 10:25, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." It's as securely scriptural as Leviticus 18:22, in fact it's a teaching of Jesus, but you won't find most Christians putting a lot of store by it.

Or consider Jesus' prohibition of divorce, Mark 10:11. Even in the New Testament this teaching is diluted by Matthew, who shows Jesus giving a loophole for someone with an adulterous spouse. Conservative Christians hung on to it in the US until fairly recently, but by the time the divorced and remarried Ronald Reagan became a presidential contender, they were ready to shove this Christian teaching down the slippery slope. And now, homosexuals are demanding the "right to marry," and it's Reagan's fault.

I don't know why misogyny and homophobia are so popular, but they are, and if they weren't, it wouldn't be possible for religion to exploit them. And the blogger knows this, because she also says, "There is no God, Heaven, or Hell, all religion is man-made, and you are not morally superior because of your faith." See that? "All religion is man-made."

Further, where traditional religion fades, other, newer authorities take up these attitudes and run with them. Secular science's first take on homosexuality and women was straightforwardly reactionary: Homosexuals were not sinners, but they were sick, and could be cured. Women needed to stop trying to usurp the place of men, such as universities (hard study would render women sterile and eventually drive them mad), and should stay at home tending the children, as Evolution intended. Women who continued to rebel in this manner were clearly mannish and might even try to love each other (see homosexuality), would wear suits and smoke cigars, and civilization would perish as the contagion spread.

But this was all in the past, I hear you say, and we are more enlightened now! Perhaps, or perhaps not. Not until 1973 did the American Psychiatric Association remove homosexuality from its official list of disorders, and not for another couple of decades did it reject therapeutic attempts to "cure" us, though there had always been good evidence that such attempts were ineffective and mainly succeeded at making the patients miserable. As for gender, there are still plenty of scientists pushing a biological determinist line, that boys like guns and girls like dolls, and despite the critical flaws in their evidence and their claims, they still have no trouble getting funding for their research or publicity for their claims. The corporate media give them all the exposure they could wish, and the line is that only backward, biased feminists and leftists quibble with these secure, unbiased scientific findings. The case of race is similar.

The problem isn't science, or even religion; it's what the philosopher Walter Kaufmann named "decidophobia," the fear of fateful decisions. Neither science or religion can make our decisions for us. And that is frightening, as Kaufmann acknowledged. Most people evidently want to believe that there is a solid, certain place where they can stand, and absolute principles by which to make their moral choices. Atheists tend to choose different ones than theists, but they seem to be no less likely to pretend to know more than they know.

Where the Wild Things Are

Open Salon features some strange stuff, often several months past its sell-by date, but some garbage is timeless, y'know? Like this piece denouncing the burning of books, reacting to the threatened Koran-burning last fall, by a "former advertising and marketing executive and winner of over 50 advertising awards for excellence, ... an unpaid Senior Advisor on John Kerry's 2004 Presidential Campaign... [and a] blogger, activist, Democratic Strategist on MSNBC and FOX News and founder of Common Sense NMS." As you'd expect from such a person, his post was bogus from the title on, which he repeated in the main text. "Americans Don't Burn Books"? I suppose this is an example of the "No True Scotsman" tactic, because of course, Americans often have burned books, though nowadays it's simpler just to pulp them. The blogger's extended tantrum is, by the way, an example of the very magical thinking that underlies burning books or flags or effigies: that the burned object is a poppet, and by burning it you burn the person it stands for. (This is often associated with "voodoo dolls", but poppets are European magic, as American as apple pie.)

Then there was this one, "Political Propaganda Has Defined Patriotism." Patriotism often goes along with the poppet-magic mentality, and it has always been associated with propaganda. (Remember Samuel Johnson's quip that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels -- the unsavory aspects of patriotism are not exactly a new discovery.) The post begins by invoking the "Nazi's" (a plural was presumably meant but the possessive was written) and the popular legend about the Big Lie, blithely ignoring, oh, say, Parson Weems, "The Star-Spangled Banner," and "Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'" According to the blogger, Paul Joseph Goebbels wrote that "The most brilliant propagandist technique… must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over and over." (Except that Goebbels didn't write that, it was Hitler. Details, details.) Then she writes, "Over the past two years, many of the very techniques Goebbels employed have been used to mobilize a discontent and fearful America." You'd have to call that liberal propaganda defining patriotism, because it's the kind of big lie that was a staple of liberal discourse under Bush, like Molly Ivins's 2007 lament, "What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny?" The US was never such a nation, any more than it was the kind of nation depicted in Reaganite propaganda (white people living behind picket fences in small towns, self-reliant and beholden to no one, especially government bureaucrats). So this post is a textbook example of what it pretends to denounce.

Most recently I stumbled on this post. The title was promising: "I'm an Atheist, Ask Me How." Except that the blogger doesn't know how. She begins:

I can hardly believe that Christianity is still so prevalent in this, the year of our Lord, 2010. It’s fucking bizarre that an organization advocating homophobia and misogyny is so globally cherished.

Starting from the atheist premise that there is no god, the answer should be obvious: an organization advocating homophobia and misogyny is globally cherished because homophobia and misogyny are globally cherished. To oversimplify somewhat, since there is no god, religious doctrines and dicta must be invented by people. Religions are collective constructions, so they don't need to be consistent or reasonable. Someone who for political reasons has a voice gets to insist that this or that bit goes into the stew. If enough people agree with him, his bit will be embraced and cherished and trumpeted by most believers. If not, his bit will be tactfully reinterpreted, or paid respectful lip service and ignored. Consider Mark 10:25, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." It's as securely scriptural as Leviticus 18:22, in fact it's a teaching of Jesus, but you won't find most Christians putting a lot of store by it.

Or consider Jesus' prohibition of divorce, Mark 10:11. Even in the New Testament this teaching is diluted by Matthew, who shows Jesus giving a loophole for someone with an adulterous spouse. Conservative Christians hung on to it in the US until fairly recently, but by the time the divorced and remarried Ronald Reagan became a presidential contender, they were ready to shove this Christian teaching down the slippery slope. And now, homosexuals are demanding the "right to marry," and it's Reagan's fault.

I don't know why misogyny and homophobia are so popular, but they are, and if they weren't, it wouldn't be possible for religion to exploit them. And the blogger knows this, because she also says, "There is no God, Heaven, or Hell, all religion is man-made, and you are not morally superior because of your faith." See that? "All religion is man-made."

Further, where traditional religion fades, other, newer authorities take up these attitudes and run with them. Secular science's first take on homosexuality and women was straightforwardly reactionary: Homosexuals were not sinners, but they were sick, and could be cured. Women needed to stop trying to usurp the place of men, such as universities (hard study would render women sterile and eventually drive them mad), and should stay at home tending the children, as Evolution intended. Women who continued to rebel in this manner were clearly mannish and might even try to love each other (see homosexuality), would wear suits and smoke cigars, and civilization would perish as the contagion spread.

But this was all in the past, I hear you say, and we are more enlightened now! Perhaps, or perhaps not. Not until 1973 did the American Psychiatric Association remove homosexuality from its official list of disorders, and not for another couple of decades did it reject therapeutic attempts to "cure" us, though there had always been good evidence that such attempts were ineffective and mainly succeeded at making the patients miserable. As for gender, there are still plenty of scientists pushing a biological determinist line, that boys like guns and girls like dolls, and despite the critical flaws in their evidence and their claims, they still have no trouble getting funding for their research or publicity for their claims. The corporate media give them all the exposure they could wish, and the line is that only backward, biased feminists and leftists quibble with these secure, unbiased scientific findings. The case of race is similar.

The problem isn't science, or even religion; it's what the philosopher Walter Kaufmann named "decidophobia," the fear of fateful decisions. Neither science or religion can make our decisions for us. And that is frightening, as Kaufmann acknowledged. Most people evidently want to believe that there is a solid, certain place where they can stand, and absolute principles by which to make their moral choices. Atheists tend to choose different ones than theists, but they seem to be no less likely to pretend to know more than they know.

The War on Christmas -- I Can See the Light at the End of the Tunnel

Speaking of people who Just Don't Get It, Mary Elizabeth Williams, a Christian writer for Salon.com, recently wrote an attack on atheists who attack religious faith, in particular those who put up a billboard attacking Christmas:

And as a practicing, questioning Christian, I'm in strong agreement with the belief that church and state should firmly be separated, and with the concept of civil rights for all Americans, regardless of their points of view. Because shoving your beliefs on other people is just plain rude. Do you see where I’m going with this? Whether one unshakably believes in a perfectly swaddled little baby Jesus who arrives precisely on Dec. 25 surrounded by cute donkeys and starstruck shepherds is hardly the point. It's that snotty, oh-just-face-it-you-idiots attitude, that utter certainty, that's just as belligerent coming from an atheist as it from an evangelical.

"Because shoving your beliefs on other people is just plain rude" -- am I alone in seeing the delicious, totally clueless irony in that statement? If this billboard constitutes "shoving your beliefs on other people", then so are all the pro-"faith" billboards and churches with roadside marquees and Gideon Bibles in motel rooms and Christmas carols on the radio and all the Christian paraphrenalia that permeates our culture is "shoving your beliefs on other people." To say nothing of all the religious advocates, ranging from the Roman Catholic Church to Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner, who are hollering for more god-talk in the public arena, as if it weren't already saturated with it. By any measure, these atheist billboards amount to less than a drop in the bucket by comparison.

And "belligerent"? The whole tone of Williams's post is belligerent, though no doubt she'd say she was provoked. Fair enough, but to allow oneself to be provoked into belligerence goes against two thousand years of Christian theory, though in fairness it conforms perfectly with two thousand years of Christian practice, starting with the frequently intemperate rhetoric of Jesus himself. I guess it's okay for Christians to be righteously belligerent, but not for nonbelievers. Christendom was built on the belief that it's not only legitimate but a moral duty to attack the beliefs of others; Williams should try investigating early Christian history.

For that matter, American Atheists are aware that they're being belligerent, and quite properly unapologetic about it.

Silverman: Here's That War on Christmas You Ordered The Times reports that "Mr. Silverman said the billboard served two purposes. The first was to get the many people who do not actually believe in God but practice religious rituals to 'come out,' in his words ... The billboard also stands up to what Mr. Silverman described as a reactionary assault on atheists driven mainly by the religious right. 'Every year, atheists get blamed for having a war on Christmas, even if we don't do anything,' he said. 'This year, we decided to give the religious right a taste of what war on Christmas looks like.'"

I'd only object that these billboards are hardly even a taste of "what war on Christmas looks like." But baby steps, baby steps.

From the same source, we get some reports of concern trolling:

I Can See This Backfiring, writes Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review. "Ironically, in his desire to out Christians who are just going through seasonal retail motions, [Silverman's] billboard may serve to remind believing Christians of the real reason for the season."

I'm sure Ms. Lopez would just hate to see anything like that happen. Oh, and What About Teh Children?

Does It Have to Be So Confrontational? wonders Fox anchor Megyn Kelly. In a mostly amiable interview with Silverman, Kelly asks, "Why impose your belief on a big billboard when the little kids drive by? It's in a place that gets a ton of visibility." Silverman replies, "We're allowed to express our views, just like all the churches are allowed to express their views on billboards."

I wouldn't expect any less from Fox News, the network that fought in court for its right to lie to you, but isn't it surprising that so many people have trouble grasping what freedom of expression (to say nothing of freedom of religion) means? Well, no, I guess not.

On the other hand, "reason" doesn't have much to do with any of this. How do you "celebrate Reason," and what's reasonable about that? For that matter, why not put up billboards debunking the myth of Santa Claus? (That might get American Atheists in trouble with the business community, a more fearsome opponent than the community of faith.) I also remember seeing one atheist blogger denouncing the erection of billboards touting belief, but that was before these atheist groups started doing the same thing, so I guess it was different, and anyway that was ancient times; we have to look to the future!

My objection to the fetishization of Reason by so many atheists and self-declared skeptics is that they are generally unaware of how much unreason and mythology they themselves subscribe to, and don't do actual reasoning very well. Take this interesting paragraph from a mostly pretty good rebuttal to a Christian from the Toronto National Post:

It’s not atheists who use ancient books to lecture and sometimes legislate people on how to live. It’s not atheists who fight over a divided Jerusalem nor who taught my French Canadian mother-in-law that the more miserable a life she lived the more she would be rewarded in death. It’s not atheists who can rally a crowd to stone a woman for being a rape victim. And while non believers likely try to pass critical thinking on to their children they don’t send them to weekly lectures about atheism and tell them they are bad if they don’t learn to parrot their parents’ beliefs.

Oh, really? Atheists are a varied lot, but some of us do use ancient books (Plato and others) to lecture and sometimes legislate people on how to live. As for fighting over a divided Jerusalem, let us not forget that the Zionists who built the modern state of Israel, in full knowledge that they were displacing the people who already lived there, were mostly fiercely secular and often Socialist Jews; blaming the Palestinian resistance to their dispossession on religion is fundamentally dishonest. Given the history of scientific racism, it's also disingenuous to blame social injustice solely on religion: scientific rationalists have been all too happy to take up the task of keeping the lowly in their place, if not for God then for Natural Selection and the good of the Race. Women and homosexuals have not always found Science to be our friend, nor Religion always to be our enemy. (Not surprising, since neither Science nor Religion has any inherent moral content.)

As for "pass[ing] critical thinking on to their children," you have to know how to do it before you can pass it on to anyone else. And most atheists are not, as far as I can tell, any better at critical thinking than most religious believers; I sometimes think they're worse, since so many assume that not believing in gods automatically makes you rational, and that's the kind of belief that makes people stupid. Waving "reason" around as a buzzword is not importantly different from waving "faith" around. Better than celebrating reason is trying to practice it well, and that's a lot harder to do.

The War on Christmas -- I Can See the Light at the End of the Tunnel

Speaking of people who Just Don't Get It, Mary Elizabeth Williams, a Christian writer for Salon.com, recently wrote an attack on atheists who attack religious faith, in particular those who put up a billboard attacking Christmas:

And as a practicing, questioning Christian, I'm in strong agreement with the belief that church and state should firmly be separated, and with the concept of civil rights for all Americans, regardless of their points of view. Because shoving your beliefs on other people is just plain rude. Do you see where I’m going with this? Whether one unshakably believes in a perfectly swaddled little baby Jesus who arrives precisely on Dec. 25 surrounded by cute donkeys and starstruck shepherds is hardly the point. It's that snotty, oh-just-face-it-you-idiots attitude, that utter certainty, that's just as belligerent coming from an atheist as it from an evangelical.

"Because shoving your beliefs on other people is just plain rude" -- am I alone in seeing the delicious, totally clueless irony in that statement? If this billboard constitutes "shoving your beliefs on other people", then so are all the pro-"faith" billboards and churches with roadside marquees and Gideon Bibles in motel rooms and Christmas carols on the radio and all the Christian paraphrenalia that permeates our culture is "shoving your beliefs on other people." To say nothing of all the religious advocates, ranging from the Roman Catholic Church to Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner, who are hollering for more god-talk in the public arena, as if it weren't already saturated with it. By any measure, these atheist billboards amount to less than a drop in the bucket by comparison.

And "belligerent"? The whole tone of Williams's post is belligerent, though no doubt she'd say she was provoked. Fair enough, but to allow oneself to be provoked into belligerence goes against two thousand years of Christian theory, though in fairness it conforms perfectly with two thousand years of Christian practice, starting with the frequently intemperate rhetoric of Jesus himself. I guess it's okay for Christians to be righteously belligerent, but not for nonbelievers. Christendom was built on the belief that it's not only legitimate but a moral duty to attack the beliefs of others; Williams should try investigating early Christian history.

For that matter, American Atheists are aware that they're being belligerent, and quite properly unapologetic about it.

Silverman: Here's That War on Christmas You Ordered The Times reports that "Mr. Silverman said the billboard served two purposes. The first was to get the many people who do not actually believe in God but practice religious rituals to 'come out,' in his words ... The billboard also stands up to what Mr. Silverman described as a reactionary assault on atheists driven mainly by the religious right. 'Every year, atheists get blamed for having a war on Christmas, even if we don't do anything,' he said. 'This year, we decided to give the religious right a taste of what war on Christmas looks like.'"

I'd only object that these billboards are hardly even a taste of "what war on Christmas looks like." But baby steps, baby steps.

From the same source, we get some reports of concern trolling:

I Can See This Backfiring, writes Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review. "Ironically, in his desire to out Christians who are just going through seasonal retail motions, [Silverman's] billboard may serve to remind believing Christians of the real reason for the season."

I'm sure Ms. Lopez would just hate to see anything like that happen. Oh, and What About Teh Children?

Does It Have to Be So Confrontational? wonders Fox anchor Megyn Kelly. In a mostly amiable interview with Silverman, Kelly asks, "Why impose your belief on a big billboard when the little kids drive by? It's in a place that gets a ton of visibility." Silverman replies, "We're allowed to express our views, just like all the churches are allowed to express their views on billboards."

I wouldn't expect any less from Fox News, the network that fought in court for its right to lie to you, but isn't it surprising that so many people have trouble grasping what freedom of expression (to say nothing of freedom of religion) means? Well, no, I guess not.

On the other hand, "reason" doesn't have much to do with any of this. How do you "celebrate Reason," and what's reasonable about that? For that matter, why not put up billboards debunking the myth of Santa Claus? (That might get American Atheists in trouble with the business community, a more fearsome opponent than the community of faith.) I also remember seeing one atheist blogger denouncing the erection of billboards touting belief, but that was before these atheist groups started doing the same thing, so I guess it was different, and anyway that was ancient times; we have to look to the future!

My objection to the fetishization of Reason by so many atheists and self-declared skeptics is that they are generally unaware of how much unreason and mythology they themselves subscribe to, and don't do actual reasoning very well. Take this interesting paragraph from a mostly pretty good rebuttal to a Christian from the Toronto National Post:

It’s not atheists who use ancient books to lecture and sometimes legislate people on how to live. It’s not atheists who fight over a divided Jerusalem nor who taught my French Canadian mother-in-law that the more miserable a life she lived the more she would be rewarded in death. It’s not atheists who can rally a crowd to stone a woman for being a rape victim. And while non believers likely try to pass critical thinking on to their children they don’t send them to weekly lectures about atheism and tell them they are bad if they don’t learn to parrot their parents’ beliefs.

Oh, really? Atheists are a varied lot, but some of us do use ancient books (Plato and others) to lecture and sometimes legislate people on how to live. As for fighting over a divided Jerusalem, let us not forget that the Zionists who built the modern state of Israel, in full knowledge that they were displacing the people who already lived there, were mostly fiercely secular and often Socialist Jews; blaming the Palestinian resistance to their dispossession on religion is fundamentally dishonest. Given the history of scientific racism, it's also disingenuous to blame social injustice solely on religion: scientific rationalists have been all too happy to take up the task of keeping the lowly in their place, if not for God then for Natural Selection and the good of the Race. Women and homosexuals have not always found Science to be our friend, nor Religion always to be our enemy. (Not surprising, since neither Science nor Religion has any inherent moral content.)

As for "pass[ing] critical thinking on to their children," you have to know how to do it before you can pass it on to anyone else. And most atheists are not, as far as I can tell, any better at critical thinking than most religious believers; I sometimes think they're worse, since so many assume that not believing in gods automatically makes you rational, and that's the kind of belief that makes people stupid. Waving "reason" around as a buzzword is not importantly different from waving "faith" around. Better than celebrating reason is trying to practice it well, and that's a lot harder to do.

Saved

I'm still reading James Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption, and while I think there's a good reason many of these pieces remained uncollected so long -- they're just not his best work -- they still make interesting reading. Take "To Crush a Serpent," published in 1987, the year Baldwin died. It's partly autobiographical, telling of Baldwin's brief career as an adolescent preacher and how it ended. Baldwin is, as usual, reticent about his own desires and loves, writing as one who was acted on rather than one who acted:

My sexuality was on hold, for both women and men had tried to "mess" with me in the summer of my fourteenth year and had frightened me so badly that I found the Lord. The salvation I was preaching to others was fueled by the hope of my own [160].

Reticence, of course, is anyone's right, though as with so many of the openly closeted men of Baldwin's generation, his enemies never respected it while he was alive. By 1987, Baldwin was ready to say that "rather than betray the ministry, I left it" (160).

It can be supposed, then, that I cannot take seriously -- not, at least, as Christian ministers -- the present-day gang that calls itself the Moral Majority or its tongue-speaking relatives, such as follow the Right Reverend Robertson.

They have taken the man from Galilee as hostage. He does not know them and they do not know him [160-161].

Oh, Jimmy, the Moral Majority was like so early Eighties! By the time he wrote this piece, the Reagan administration had already mainstreamed the Christian Right, though Reagan disappointed them as much as his admirer Obama would later disappoint secular liberals. Such is politics in the US of A.

And come on: "taken hostage"? Jesus can't be taken hostage. In the first place, he's dead. If you're one of those people who believe he's still alive, then it's even more obviously impossible to take him hostage. If he's alive, and he objected to the Moral Majority or to Pat Robertson, he should have spoken up. Bart Ehrman had a much better take on Robertson after the latter's offensive remarks about the Haitian earthquake last January: "If that happened to the Haitians because they're so sinful, then why hasn't it happened to him?" Any comment, Mr. Of Nazareth? No? Maybe Jesus liked palling around with Falwell and Robertson. But this is too much like Anne Rice's recent complaint that she wasn't going to call herself a Christian anymore because the bad Christians have roont the name. Which is also like the Christians who say that if Teh Gay are allowed to marry, it'll roon marriage for the Decent People.

Nowhere, in the brief and extraordinary passage of the man known as Jesus Christ, is it recorded that he ever upbraided his disciples concerning their carnality. These were rough, hard-working fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Their carnality can be taken as a given, and they would never have trusted or followed or loved a man who did not know that they were men and who did not respect their manhood. Jesus ... appears not to have despised Mary Magdalene and to have got on just fine with other ladies, notably Mary and Martha, and with the woman at the well. Not one of the present-day white fundamentalist preachers would have had the humility, the courage, the sheer presence of mind to have said to the mob surrounding the woman taken in adultery, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone," or the depth of perception that informs "Neither do I condemn thee: Go, and sin no more" [161].

You can tell Baldwin was a preacher, can't you? But this is all bogus. First, it is certainly recorded that Jesus did upbraid his disciples concerning their carnality, a word that Baldwin is using here as a euphemism for sexuality. But there's more to the flesh than copulation or lust. Jesus' disciples are frequently portrayed in the gospels as the Twelve Stooges: squabbling over status, failing utterly to understand his teaching, lacking the faith to drive out a teeny little demon much less to move mountains, saying foolish things out of fear or confusion, falling asleep during his final vigil in Gethsemane, running away in terror when the cops arrive, and denying him three times before his enemies. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," he sighs (Mark 14:38) resignedly as he rouses the dozing Peter one more time.

Second, Jesus frequently (though not, I admit, constantly) fulminates against the flesh. From the Sermon on the Mount:

27“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; 28but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29“If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30“If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.

Got that? Lust, hellfire -- check. Better to cut off some of your flesh than to burn in hell -- check. Then, on the question of marriage and divorce, Matthew 19:

8He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

10The disciples said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.” 11But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12“For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

There's more, but this gives you some idea what I mean. So, those carnal disciples (some of whom were married, as we know from a reference to Peter's mother-in-law and a complaint of Paul's) said that if you couldn't divorce your wife, it was better not to marry at all, and Jesus didn't argue: he even urged them to become (figuratively, figuratively, we're not literalists here!) eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. I think it's reasonable to say that Jesus was a wee bit ambivalent about carnality, and didn't encourage his male disciples to indulge it.

Third, about the women Baldwin mentions. We don't really know much about Mary Magdalene or the sisters Mary and Martha. Mary Magdalene's reputation as a loose woman is post-biblical legend as far as I know, and Jesus kept her at a safe distance anyway ("Touch me not," he told her after his resurrection at John 20:17, "for I have not ascended to the Father," but he let the boys touch him and stick their fingers in his wounds). I'm not impressed by his attitude toward the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: her love life was all that seemed to interest him, and rather pruriently at that. As for the woman taken in adultery, the story was probably added to the New Testament about 300 years after the gospels were written, but if it's authentic it's not much comfort. She was still sinning, and she'd better mend her ways, for hellfire awaits.

Baldwin goes on to tell of a threatening encounter, when he was thirteen, with "an aging, gaunt white woman", the only white person in his church, who warned him of "the eternal torment that awaited boys like me" (163). This was because of his close friendship with the son of a deacon whom "the elders of the church" had accused of "walking disorderly" (162). "I was in love with my friend, as boys indeed can be at that age, but hadn't the faintest idea of what to do about it -- not even in my imagination ... perhaps I simply refused to allow my imagination to wander, as it were, below the belt" (163).

But Jesus had nothing to do with it. Jesus would never have done that to me, nor attempted to make my salvation a matter for blackmail. The motive was buried deep within that woman, the decomposing corpse of her human possibilities fouling the air [163].

To analyze everything that is wrong here, the aging Baldwin's ongoing inability to embrace his own human possibilities, would take more energy than I feel like expending right now. But really, that he couldn't accept his own thirteen-year-old's carnality -- had to speak of it so slightingly -- forty years later, is heartbreaking.

For a Christian like Baldwin, the idea that Jesus would forgive him for drinking, smoking, and dancing the hoochie-koo, to say nothing of lying in the gutter with men, was surely reassuring. But why should those things be sins, putting a person in peril of hellfire, in the first place? This is one of the reasons why I don't feel that I'm missing anything by being an atheist. First you have to believe that you're in danger, then you have to believe that someone has the magic formula to get you out of danger. I know very well that this is not all there is to religion, or even just to Christianity, but it's a major element, well supported in Jesus' teachings, and one that is often used in missionary work and revivalism.

At the same time, I want to stress again that I don't blame "religion" or "Christianity" for these distasteful elements: I blame the people who put them and keep them in their faith, and that includes Jesus and the authors of the gospels. Religion is not an alien, autonomous force that makes people believe bad (or good) things: it's a human creation, and if religions are ambivalent about the flesh, as they very often are, it's because human beings are ambivalent about the flesh. Getting rid of religion won't get rid of the ambivalence, it will only displace it. That's where we need to begin -- by facing our ambivalence about having bodies -- if we want a better, more humane ethic of sexuality.

By the way, "To Crush a Serpent" originally appeared in Playboy magazine. I don't know how ironic that is; I leave that to the reader.

Saved

I'm still reading James Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption, and while I think there's a good reason many of these pieces remained uncollected so long -- they're just not his best work -- they still make interesting reading. Take "To Crush a Serpent," published in 1987, the year Baldwin died. It's partly autobiographical, telling of Baldwin's brief career as an adolescent preacher and how it ended. Baldwin is, as usual, reticent about his own desires and loves, writing as one who was acted on rather than one who acted:

My sexuality was on hold, for both women and men had tried to "mess" with me in the summer of my fourteenth year and had frightened me so badly that I found the Lord. The salvation I was preaching to others was fueled by the hope of my own [160].

Reticence, of course, is anyone's right, though as with so many of the openly closeted men of Baldwin's generation, his enemies never respected it while he was alive. By 1987, Baldwin was ready to say that "rather than betray the ministry, I left it" (160).

It can be supposed, then, that I cannot take seriously -- not, at least, as Christian ministers -- the present-day gang that calls itself the Moral Majority or its tongue-speaking relatives, such as follow the Right Reverend Robertson.

They have taken the man from Galilee as hostage. He does not know them and they do not know him [160-161].

Oh, Jimmy, the Moral Majority was like so early Eighties! By the time he wrote this piece, the Reagan administration had already mainstreamed the Christian Right, though Reagan disappointed them as much as his admirer Obama would later disappoint secular liberals. Such is politics in the US of A.

And come on: "taken hostage"? Jesus can't be taken hostage. In the first place, he's dead. If you're one of those people who believe he's still alive, then it's even more obviously impossible to take him hostage. If he's alive, and he objected to the Moral Majority or to Pat Robertson, he should have spoken up. Bart Ehrman had a much better take on Robertson after the latter's offensive remarks about the Haitian earthquake last January: "If that happened to the Haitians because they're so sinful, then why hasn't it happened to him?" Any comment, Mr. Of Nazareth? No? Maybe Jesus liked palling around with Falwell and Robertson. But this is too much like Anne Rice's recent complaint that she wasn't going to call herself a Christian anymore because the bad Christians have roont the name. Which is also like the Christians who say that if Teh Gay are allowed to marry, it'll roon marriage for the Decent People.

Nowhere, in the brief and extraordinary passage of the man known as Jesus Christ, is it recorded that he ever upbraided his disciples concerning their carnality. These were rough, hard-working fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Their carnality can be taken as a given, and they would never have trusted or followed or loved a man who did not know that they were men and who did not respect their manhood. Jesus ... appears not to have despised Mary Magdalene and to have got on just fine with other ladies, notably Mary and Martha, and with the woman at the well. Not one of the present-day white fundamentalist preachers would have had the humility, the courage, the sheer presence of mind to have said to the mob surrounding the woman taken in adultery, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone," or the depth of perception that informs "Neither do I condemn thee: Go, and sin no more" [161].

You can tell Baldwin was a preacher, can't you? But this is all bogus. First, it is certainly recorded that Jesus did upbraid his disciples concerning their carnality, a word that Baldwin is using here as a euphemism for sexuality. But there's more to the flesh than copulation or lust. Jesus' disciples are frequently portrayed in the gospels as the Twelve Stooges: squabbling over status, failing utterly to understand his teaching, lacking the faith to drive out a teeny little demon much less to move mountains, saying foolish things out of fear or confusion, falling asleep during his final vigil in Gethsemane, running away in terror when the cops arrive, and denying him three times before his enemies. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," he sighs (Mark 14:38) resignedly as he rouses the dozing Peter one more time.

Second, Jesus frequently (though not, I admit, constantly) fulminates against the flesh. From the Sermon on the Mount:

27“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; 28but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29“If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30“If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.

Got that? Lust, hellfire -- check. Better to cut off some of your flesh than to burn in hell -- check. Then, on the question of marriage and divorce, Matthew 19:

8He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

10The disciples said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.” 11But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12“For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

There's more, but this gives you some idea what I mean. So, those carnal disciples (some of whom were married, as we know from a reference to Peter's mother-in-law and a complaint of Paul's) said that if you couldn't divorce your wife, it was better not to marry at all, and Jesus didn't argue: he even urged them to become (figuratively, figuratively, we're not literalists here!) eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. I think it's reasonable to say that Jesus was a wee bit ambivalent about carnality, and didn't encourage his male disciples to indulge it.

Third, about the women Baldwin mentions. We don't really know much about Mary Magdalene or the sisters Mary and Martha. Mary Magdalene's reputation as a loose woman is post-biblical legend as far as I know, and Jesus kept her at a safe distance anyway ("Touch me not," he told her after his resurrection at John 20:17, "for I have not ascended to the Father," but he let the boys touch him and stick their fingers in his wounds). I'm not impressed by his attitude toward the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: her love life was all that seemed to interest him, and rather pruriently at that. As for the woman taken in adultery, the story was probably added to the New Testament about 300 years after the gospels were written, but if it's authentic it's not much comfort. She was still sinning, and she'd better mend her ways, for hellfire awaits.

Baldwin goes on to tell of a threatening encounter, when he was thirteen, with "an aging, gaunt white woman", the only white person in his church, who warned him of "the eternal torment that awaited boys like me" (163). This was because of his close friendship with the son of a deacon whom "the elders of the church" had accused of "walking disorderly" (162). "I was in love with my friend, as boys indeed can be at that age, but hadn't the faintest idea of what to do about it -- not even in my imagination ... perhaps I simply refused to allow my imagination to wander, as it were, below the belt" (163).

But Jesus had nothing to do with it. Jesus would never have done that to me, nor attempted to make my salvation a matter for blackmail. The motive was buried deep within that woman, the decomposing corpse of her human possibilities fouling the air [163].

To analyze everything that is wrong here, the aging Baldwin's ongoing inability to embrace his own human possibilities, would take more energy than I feel like expending right now. But really, that he couldn't accept his own thirteen-year-old's carnality -- had to speak of it so slightingly -- forty years later, is heartbreaking.

For a Christian like Baldwin, the idea that Jesus would forgive him for drinking, smoking, and dancing the hoochie-koo, to say nothing of lying in the gutter with men, was surely reassuring. But why should those things be sins, putting a person in peril of hellfire, in the first place? This is one of the reasons why I don't feel that I'm missing anything by being an atheist. First you have to believe that you're in danger, then you have to believe that someone has the magic formula to get you out of danger. I know very well that this is not all there is to religion, or even just to Christianity, but it's a major element, well supported in Jesus' teachings, and one that is often used in missionary work and revivalism.

At the same time, I want to stress again that I don't blame "religion" or "Christianity" for these distasteful elements: I blame the people who put them and keep them in their faith, and that includes Jesus and the authors of the gospels. Religion is not an alien, autonomous force that makes people believe bad (or good) things: it's a human creation, and if religions are ambivalent about the flesh, as they very often are, it's because human beings are ambivalent about the flesh. Getting rid of religion won't get rid of the ambivalence, it will only displace it. That's where we need to begin -- by facing our ambivalence about having bodies -- if we want a better, more humane ethic of sexuality.

By the way, "To Crush a Serpent" originally appeared in Playboy magazine. I don't know how ironic that is; I leave that to the reader.

Their Glory Is In Their Shame

Incidentally, there's a good post by Richard "Lenin" Seymour at Lenin's Tomb on the British protests against the Pope's visit, with some sharp criticism of Richard Dawkins. (Thanks to Jenny for the reference.) Lenin writes:

I also know imperial condescension when I see it - when I first came to England and found that people here believed that Northern Ireland was torn apart for thirty years or so because of religious sectarianism, because Prods didn't get on with Tims, I was shocked. And I was offended, as I still am when I think of it. When Dawkins et al repeat this ridiculous canard and apply the same logic, mutatis mutandis, to the explanation of the Israel-Palestine conflict (or worse, to the 'civil war' in Iraq), I know all too well that this isn't really about atheism, or secularism. It is about representing those who do not partake of the relative wealth and stability of the Anglophone imperial core as tribal-minded, bloodthirsty, backward idiots. We do not have conflicts based on rational interests, each making a claim to universalism, in which imperialist powers have weighed in on one side. We have petty, parochial struggles over atavistic ideas which are childish premonitions of modern, scientific truth claims, and where imperial power is invisible. Indeed, as Eagleton suggests, part of the whole basis of Dawkinsian befuddlement and outrage over religion is the feeling that things couldn't be so bad as to require a spiritual, much less messianic, solution. Class privilege benights its beneficiaries in this respect.

(Of course I don't have much use for Eagleton either.) Lenin also wrote:

Thus, some of those assailing religion have themselves played a key role in naturalising patriarchy and white supremacy, even though they always insisted that this was not their intention. Dawkins would argue that "genetic kinship" and reciprocation offer an explanation of, and evolutionary basis for, solidarity, equality and altruism amid the cruel, harsh and competitive world that his version of Darwinism evokes. But this is neither orthodox Darwinism, nor is it adequate. It does not explain the range of sacrifices that some people are prepared to make for others. The theory of gene kinship entails, as per Haldane's quip, that one will sacrifice oneself for other people who are genetically close to oneself. That would lead us logically to insularity rather than universalism. Indeed, for Dawkins' case to work, he has to suggest that we can subvert our 'selfish', competitive, vicious biological basis through a metaphysically strong 'free will', which is ultimately every bit as idealist as any statement made from the Vatican.



Dawkins' own free will still seems to be constrained by his selfish, competitive genes, however. To the imperial chauvinism mentioned above, we could add his intolerance of cultural difference - he has said, for example, that he experiences a visceral revulsion at the sight of a woman in a burqa, a sensation which is probably similar to that which I feel on witnessing an upper middle class white Oxonian telling Muslim women that what they're wearing disgusts him. In relation to the Pope's visit, he described his Romanness as the head of the second most evil religion in the world. What, I wonder, might come first? Buddhism? Judaism? Hinduism? Jainism? Zoroastrianism? No? Ah, right - so it'll be Islam again. One form of religious intolerance informs another prejudice, one which is bound up with race-making processes across the 'white' world. Such a ranking of religions according to alleged harm is not really to do with atheism.

This reminds me of Andre Pichot's book The Pure Society, which contains some excellent criticism of evolutionary psychology generally and of Dawkins in particular, and which I also learned about from Lenin.



P.S. Looking again at that weird photo above, of Ratzinger's robes being held open to reveal the lacy garments beneath while he holds rampant a crucifix on a stick, I wonder if I shouldn't have titled this post "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes." I guess I'll save that one for another day.

Their Glory Is In Their Shame

Incidentally, there's a good post by Richard "Lenin" Seymour at Lenin's Tomb on the British protests against the Pope's visit, with some sharp criticism of Richard Dawkins. (Thanks to Jenny for the reference.) Lenin writes:

I also know imperial condescension when I see it - when I first came to England and found that people here believed that Northern Ireland was torn apart for thirty years or so because of religious sectarianism, because Prods didn't get on with Tims, I was shocked. And I was offended, as I still am when I think of it. When Dawkins et al repeat this ridiculous canard and apply the same logic, mutatis mutandis, to the explanation of the Israel-Palestine conflict (or worse, to the 'civil war' in Iraq), I know all too well that this isn't really about atheism, or secularism. It is about representing those who do not partake of the relative wealth and stability of the Anglophone imperial core as tribal-minded, bloodthirsty, backward idiots. We do not have conflicts based on rational interests, each making a claim to universalism, in which imperialist powers have weighed in on one side. We have petty, parochial struggles over atavistic ideas which are childish premonitions of modern, scientific truth claims, and where imperial power is invisible. Indeed, as Eagleton suggests, part of the whole basis of Dawkinsian befuddlement and outrage over religion is the feeling that things couldn't be so bad as to require a spiritual, much less messianic, solution. Class privilege benights its beneficiaries in this respect.

(Of course I don't have much use for Eagleton either.) Lenin also wrote:

Thus, some of those assailing religion have themselves played a key role in naturalising patriarchy and white supremacy, even though they always insisted that this was not their intention. Dawkins would argue that "genetic kinship" and reciprocation offer an explanation of, and evolutionary basis for, solidarity, equality and altruism amid the cruel, harsh and competitive world that his version of Darwinism evokes. But this is neither orthodox Darwinism, nor is it adequate. It does not explain the range of sacrifices that some people are prepared to make for others. The theory of gene kinship entails, as per Haldane's quip, that one will sacrifice oneself for other people who are genetically close to oneself. That would lead us logically to insularity rather than universalism. Indeed, for Dawkins' case to work, he has to suggest that we can subvert our 'selfish', competitive, vicious biological basis through a metaphysically strong 'free will', which is ultimately every bit as idealist as any statement made from the Vatican.



Dawkins' own free will still seems to be constrained by his selfish, competitive genes, however. To the imperial chauvinism mentioned above, we could add his intolerance of cultural difference - he has said, for example, that he experiences a visceral revulsion at the sight of a woman in a burqa, a sensation which is probably similar to that which I feel on witnessing an upper middle class white Oxonian telling Muslim women that what they're wearing disgusts him. In relation to the Pope's visit, he described his Romanness as the head of the second most evil religion in the world. What, I wonder, might come first? Buddhism? Judaism? Hinduism? Jainism? Zoroastrianism? No? Ah, right - so it'll be Islam again. One form of religious intolerance informs another prejudice, one which is bound up with race-making processes across the 'white' world. Such a ranking of religions according to alleged harm is not really to do with atheism.

This reminds me of Andre Pichot's book The Pure Society, which contains some excellent criticism of evolutionary psychology generally and of Dawkins in particular, and which I also learned about from Lenin.



P.S. Looking again at that weird photo above, of Ratzinger's robes being held open to reveal the lacy garments beneath while he holds rampant a crucifix on a stick, I wonder if I shouldn't have titled this post "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes." I guess I'll save that one for another day.