Parabasis

I Am At A Loss For Words... Almost

The Catholic Church in my native Washington, D.C. issued a threat this week. 

Wanna know what the threat is?

Approve gay marriage, and we'll cut off Catholic Church provided charity social services in the District.

I'm not joking.  Here's the article in the LA Times about it. 

Regardless of your feelings about gay marriage, I think most people can agree that there are few things less Christian than deliberately not-helping the poor because of a legislative power struggle, regardless of what the issue is.

Also... Gay Marriage is so important to pull out a nuclear option, but (say) the death penalty isn't?

I am so angry about this I want to throw my laptop through the window.  I think it's time to ask my Catholic friends why they haven't converted to Episcopalianism yet. 

Oh and BTW: This is why the faith-based initiative program is a bad bad very bad idea.  Basically, the Catholic church wants to take government money and reserve the right to discriminate in hiring and benefits. And because they're religious, we're expected to respect that for some reason that escapes me right now.

A Surprising Act of Cinematic Subversion: "The Invention of Lying's" Sacrilegious Secret

by Guest Blogger Prince Gomolvilas of Bamboo Nation

The print ads, commercials, and trailer for the new Ricky Gervais comedy, The Invention of Lying, conveniently omit one of the film's major plot lines. It's a story thread that makes this wide-release movie—which is being marketed to middle America and beyond as a harmless romantic comedy with a fantastical twist—a true act of subversion. It's the kind of subversion that regular readers of Parabasis will recognize as something that Isaac Butler would really dig.

Gervais's character, a pudgy loser named Mark Bellison, lives in a world where people tell the truth to each other all the time—no one is able to even comprehend what lying is. Everyone's brutal honesty in the first act—calling Bellison "fat" to his face, etc.—is the film's primary source of humor.

But soon Bellison "invents" lying and discovers that he can manipulate the world around him for personal and financial gain. For example, when he tells a bank teller that he has more money in his account than he actually does, she believes him and hands him all the money he wants because she simply does not have the ability to understand that he's not telling the truth.

The Invention of Lying is moderately funny and sags in parts, but a remarkable thing happens about halfway through the movie.

[POSSIBLE

SPOILERS

AHEAD]

To comfort his dying mother, who like everyone else is afraid of death because they don't know what comes after, Bellison begins to describe an afterlife to her, one that sounds an awful lot like our concept of "heaven."

The world catches wind of Bellison's vision of life after death and demands more information, which leads to him creating religion (not a religion, but all religion). Aside from inventing "the man in the sky," he presents the rest of his religious rules on the back of two Pizza Hut boxes.

Yup, folks, Gervais, a known atheist, has created a picture about a world in which atheism is a matter of fact and about how God and religion is nothing more than a sham created by man.

How will the God-fearing public, duped into seeing what they think is a light comedy, react when those inflammatory messages smack them in the face? I really don't know.

But I do know that Isaac, who's made made his "lack of faith" known here time and again, is likely to rally around this movie despite its shortcomings. It's difficult to fault a film that's so delightfully daring.

(Admittedly, though, I do wonder how daring Gervais really is. After all, in the movie, lying makes the world a much more interesting place to live in.)

The Absurdity of Christian Theodicy

Andrew Sullivan is holding an informal symposium on the Problem of Pain aka why does a God defined as "good" and "loving" allow pain and suffering seemingly without order or morality?

One of his readers writes him an e-mail filled with the kind of hogwash that made me an atheist in the first place. And it's a very common one. Here's the first part argument:

Pain – the pain experienced by animals and the ineffable pain experienced by those, e.g., swept away in the Indonesian tsunami and those who loved them – is a product of the laws of the physical universe, specifically the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the principle of entropy, which observes that all physical being – our bodies, our cars, our homes, our forests, the entire physical world – is in a continuous process of breaking down and falling apart.

Once you get beyond all the nicey-nice words like "ineffable" and efforts to use scientific words to obfuscate what's going on, this is essentially saying: "Things fall apart, that falling apart hurts".  

What this leaves out entirely is that to Christians (and this e-mailer is a self-identified Catholic) God made the laws of physics and God made it "hurt". If God's all powerful, there's no reason why we need feel pain as a result of the laws of physics. nor is there any reason why the laws of physics have to be as they are.  God chose to make them that way. So this doesn't really get him off the hook for the problem of human suffering.

Next up we get to part two of the argument:

Suffering, the existential consciousness of alienation, on which you are so eloquent, is an extension of human freedom. Those of us, like you, who stand in the faith and view the world (both physical and existential) from the perspective of faith, do not have words to understand why God created the world in the way can has, but we do understand that both the principle of entropy and human free will are gifts of the Creator and that God respects the integrity of Creation.

The God of the Bible is an interventionist God. He "hardens Pharos heart" and condemns the Israelites to additional suffering so that he can exact revenge on the Egyptians. He has Jonah swallowed by a Whale. He communicates directly to his creations and rewards and.or punishes them based on their fidelity to his orders.  He continues to perform miracles and interfere directly in human doings after Jesus' death by, for example, blinding St. Paul and speaking to him.  So we have to ask... why didn't god respect his creation until relatively recently? And again, even if it respecting creation to allow them to do as they want-- and I'm cool with that- there's still no reason why pain and suffering are necessary.

For millennia God has been placed in the dock before the tribunal of human misery. The person of faith lacks the wherewithal to make the case for God but knows that Godself does not need the benefit of human advocates. The Christian (or at least the Catholic Christian, I cannot speak for others) knows that God is not insensitive to human misery and that God, in becoming incarnate in the person Jesus Christ, walked with us in our misery and drank the cup of human misery down to the dregs, as the model and price of a life of utter integrity.

And now we get to the whole Jesus thing.  The Catholic theory behind this story is one I've never understood, because from a narrative perspective it makes no sense.  Adam and Eve disobeyed God, so as a result, he cursed all of humanity forever (how good and loving of him).  A few thousand years later, he decides to redeem the human race. But instead of just doing it-- because, remember, he's all powerful-- he decides to sort-of take human form, or maybe have a son, but it's unclear really but anyway he decides that that son/him is going to have to suffer horribly and die as a sacrificial lamb.  Again, this makes absolutely no sense.  There's no reason why an all powerful being would have to do this. He could just forgive us. And he doesn't put us through anything to get our forgiveness. Instead, he goes through it, or anyway makes his son go through it. Who might be him. I just... don't... get... it. I've tried. I know a lot of Catholics. I've studied this stuff. It just-- from a narrative perspective-- makes no sense.

Now here's the thing-- I don't think human misery disproves the existence of God. I don't.  I don't believe in God for other reasons.  What I think misery disproves is the idea that God is either Good or All-Loving, at least from the perspective of the standards that he himself supposedly gave us.  I'd buy the argument that God is Unknowable or Complex or Multifaceted or even Kinda Scary But Also Kinda Awesome Sometimes.  But this is the thing... the unknowability of God only comes up in these arguments when the other person is in a painted-in-a-corner-type situation. You can't assert simultaneously that God is Good and God is Unknowable. Unless you're also saying that God is only Good by God's Own Standards, not the ones he supposedly gave us. At which point, the conversation is meaningless.

Why We Do The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist

(beyond its awesomeness as a play, that is)

Today, Patrick Appel, filling in for Andrew Sullivan, highlights a reader e-mail about atheism that Appel claims makes "many good points". The problem is the entire thing is one giant straw man with a little fig leaf at the end. To whit, the first sentence:

There are so many intellectual and philosophical criticisms to level at the most irritating of atheists, it's hard to know where to start,

Readers (and would be argumentative writers) beware, this is how you know you are engaging with a Man Made of Straw.  When someone flat out says "I am only writing about the worst of the people who represent the opposing viewpoint" you know you're dealing with a fundamentally dishonest argument.  This would be akin to my writing about Catholicism and saying something like "The worst thing about the worst of Catholic Priests is that they rape children" and then extrapolating from that that God doesn't exist. Anyway, to carry on:

Atheists' main core argument, if they are pinned down to one, is about the lack of existence of God.  The problem is that discussions on this quickly devolve into analogies to Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, or whatever.  The far more interesting argument, which these angry only rants seem to spend the least time and effort on, would be whether or not the practice of religion is worthwhile.  This particular class of atheists state rather reflexively that it is not, and get annoyed when asked to back that up.

This is absolute, complete hogwash.  The reader may have run into a few atheists who espouse these viewpoints, but it's worth noting that the main writers on atheism-- all of whom I'm not even huge fans of-- spend considerable time and effort on the second argument he claims atheists avoid.  Christopher Hitchens' Atheist Tome is not called "God Doesn't Exist" but rather God Is Not Great and is largely about how religion is bad for society.  Much of Letter to a Christian Nation is about how religion is bad for individuals and for society.  Dawkins work is more about how searching for meaning and purpose in systems is futile, but he has also done quite a bit of argument about how religion is bad for society.   It's an argument the public face of New Atheism enters into constantly.

The reader e-mail continues with saying that he thinks this a fruitful avenue of discussion. I think it's worth talking about, sure, but I don't think it's going to go anywhere more constructive than the argument over God's Existence. For the record, my own opinion on the benefits of either religion or atheism to society goes a little something like this:  Neither path guarantees or even as far as I'm concerned increases the likelihood that someone is going to turn out a good or bad person.  And when you through into it the corrupting nature of power, things get worse. Both atheism and religion can be bent to horrible ends, and both can be redemptive, healing things that encourage people to do good.

Clearly there is something in human beings that searches for meaning in our existence. I happen to believe that we construct that meaning ourselves but that doesn't make that meaning any less profound.  It's important to make sure that our search for meaning does not make us too manipulatable, and it's important to loudly denounce those who use our searches for meaning to nefarious ends.  

To be a little real about this for a moment here, though... it's worth noting in the above that religion has access to power that atheism does not in our society.  It also claims to speak for a divine authority, whereas atheism does not.  Therefore there is greater capacity for religion to do evil than there is for atheism.  And lots of religious organizations and sects to great harm both to individuals and the world at large with regularity.  That needs to be talked about, just as the good deeds that religious organizations and individuals do needs to be talked about.  

The risk with atheism is that it will make of science and supposed rationality a New God. That's something to be guarded against for sure, and I'm willing to concede that as long as we can start having a more honest conversation about those who claim to speak for the divine and the ways they do concrete harm in this world.

The reader then goes on to complain about the philosophical thinness of the Straw Man Atheists:

one of the most galling things to me about the modern internet atheists is that in my experience, while they talk a big game about Science and Rationality and Learning, they can be remarkably intellectually unsophisticated.  John Gray hit the nail on the head so hard he blew it apart, I think, when he outlined how the framework behind most of the "New Atheists" is really just a crude mix of vulgar 19th century-quality positivism with some reflexive materialism and shallow humanism thrown in.  They ignore a century of rigorous, lively philosophical debate and criticism on ontology and epistemology, preferring instead the staid certainty of Victorian science.  I don't mind having my beliefs criticized, but if you can't at least discuss anything pertaining to the topic since before the Nietzschian turn, go away.

Again: Who the heck is he talking about?  Some random people he knows?  There are a lot of public atheists out there, and a lot of books published on the subject. It would be nice if he could point to one person engaged in the public debate over atheism and talk about them.  

But then again, I'm wondering where he's finding all of these atheists to have arguments with. We're not a huge part of the population.

Finally, there's this brilliant and hilarious fig leaf:

 let me just state for the record that I've interacted with a huge number of thoughtful, sophisticated atheists, both online and offline, which has been incredibly rewarding for me.  However, these conversations generally don't mention Santa Claus.

Perfect!  Right up there with "let me just state I do know some Catholics who don't rape little children"! Or Bill O'Reilly's amazing discovery that black people have table manners.

Or maybe I should just quote the show:

JEN: What is it about Atheists?

DARYL: IT's like, when you're at a party, you can always tell who's the atheist in the room.

ABE: The one who's the loud one.

JEN: The one who loves to talk about politics.

DARYL: They're not happy unless they're in someone's face...

JEN: And then they complain that they don't get any respect.

ABE: It's like, if you're gonna act like that dude, no, you won't. So stop bitching about how no one wants one of you for president.

(beat)

I mean, it's their right of course.

DARYL, JEN, ABE: (ad lib) Sure, no one's saying it isn't his right, everybody's got a right, in fairness, Hitler was an atheist.

Wow.

Just watch what Arizona State Senator Sylvia says in order to support uranium mining in her state...

i know posting has been a little light this week. The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist opens in exactly one week and a major deadline for my writing project is on Friday. I'm doing my best!

Religious Exemptions

I grew up in a religion that would not survive in the United States were in not for religious exemptions. Christian Scientists don't believe in using medicine to cure disease (they also, not coincidentally, don't believe in disease).  Forcing Christian Scientists to go to doctors by, for example, requiring that their children be immunized before they can attend public school, would be a deep and gross violation of their beliefs. 

Of course, the Christian Scientist summer camp I attended was closed down one summer because of a measels outbreak. And I had mumps as a kid. Twice. And every once in awhile a child of a Christian Scientist couple dies because they didn't seek medical treatment.

Which to a lot of people begins to look like neglect at the very best and abuse at the worst.  Which begs the question in their mind... Should religious exemptions protect child neglect and.or abuse?

I'm going to punt on that question because I still haven't made up my mind about it, even though I'm an atheist. I certainly didn't feel neglected or abused as a child (even when I got the mumps) and I still don't. This gets to all sorts of thorny issues, some of which are a little too personal to hash out here, so I'll just say I'm undecided on whether or not Christian Scientists should be allowed to not seek medical care for their children, but if you asked me while I was a Christian Scientist and a teenager I would've told you to go fuck yourself and let us live our lives.

I was reminded of this w/r/t to the Gay Marriage question and religious exemptions.  Because the issue to some extent once you stop dressing it up Do you believe religious organizations should have the right to discriminate against gays because their religious beliefs dictate that they should?

And I think it's worth pausing with that question.  My first immediate answer is "of course not" but then I think "well why would it be okay for someone to potentially expose a child to deadly disease but not okay to turn away two gay people who want to get married in your gazebo?' And I can't answer that question.

I do not think religious discrimination against homosexuals is okay.  I'm certainly not saying that. But I can't answer the question in the above paragraph. I don't know where the limit is. My gut feeling is that Catholic Charities should not be able to discriminate against gay couples seeking to adopt (and given the Catholic Churches record with children lately I'd think the institution might want to approach the issue with some humility) and I don't think in my heart of hearts that the Methodist church should have a right to discriminate against a gay couple acting in good faith and seeking to rent out a venue. But my gut could be wrong from a constitutional perspective.

I Guess We Need to Define "Service"

This is Isaac here folks, breaking in real quick to discuss something... Barack Obama has called for Americans to participate in a day of service today, and to that end has set up a website where you can find service-related events in your area to participate, but it cleaning up trash, working at a soup kitchen or whatever tickles your service-related fancy.  Sounds good, right?  Right!

But here's my question... in what world is going to a church and praying to God for "devine [sic] intervention" to help "renew America" service? 

Religion and Politics

Those of us on the more secular humanist side of the spectrum have a habit of saying that we fervently support the separation of Church and State (or to take it even further, religion and politics) not only to protect the State from religion, but to protect religion from politics.

Often when we say this, I think most people think we're being insincere or maybe to put it a little more mildly self-serving. After all, many secularists aren't religious, what do we care what happens to religious communities etc.? Aren't we just saying that to get more people on our side?

Well, frankly... no, we're not.  The early history of secularism in the United States is generally the history of religious groups and people fearing persecution (many of whom were Catholic of Jewish).  The ACLU, which gets branded an "atheistic" organization for its firm belief in a separation of Church and State has argued many landmark religious freedom cases on behalf of religious people. 

I bring this up in the wake of the Prop-8 mess, and the resignations by prominent artistic leaders who were Mormons who supported Prop-8 because they were told it was their religious duty.  This is exactly the sort of thing secularists like myself worry about in terms of religious organizations involvement in politics.... I don't think in the long term the Mormon Church's experiment in intervention is going to be positive for either California or the Mormon Church or its members. People are losing their jobs because they obeyed a religious directive from an organization that abused its authority (and I would argue tax exempt status) and the trust that people put in it.  That's bad all around for everyone.

And by "abused its authority" what I mean here is that I think there's a real difference between the Church of LDS saying "we believe marriage is between a man and a woman and shouldn't be changed" and saying "it is your religious duty to work and contribute money to make sure Proposition 8 gets passed". Similarly, there's a difference between the Catholic Church saying "life begins at conception" and saying "we will not offer communion to people who voted for Obama because he's pro-choice". The former in both cases is an action that reflects a point of view that I strongly disagree with but is well within the bounds of what is appropriate, the latter is using one's religious authority to create a very real threat (of hell for example) to compel people to do something. Which is, you know, abusive.

No, Seriously, Let's Focus on the Family

As stories like this make clear, it really is gay marriage and not, say, organized religion, that rips families apart.

(...adding in case you don't get the point: I don't think that organized religion will always or even in most cases rips families apart, I'm merely making the point that there's a lot more substantive evidence out there of religious disputes fucking up families than there is of gay marriage fucking up families)

I almost don't know what to say

Other than that this is outrageous:

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama. The Democratic president-elect supports abortion rights, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil," the priest said.

This is really really really wrong, and an abuse of authority.  Obviously,this is not the first time this has happened. Catholic Priests have made this threat towards pro-choice politicians before.

I think it's worth it for those of us who aren't Catholic to pause for just a moment and understand the gravity of what's being threatened here from a Catholic perspective.  It's easy for us to just go "oh this is just bullshit, it's a cracker who gives a fuck!" but from a Catholic perspective, parishoners are risking social ostracism, and eternal damnation because of how they voted.

Think about that for a moment. Think about eternal damnation from the perspective of actually believe in Hell.  Now you are faced with two decisions: (a) either your Priest is full of shit and abusing his power- which calls into question all sorts of things about a major part of your identity that you whole dear- or (b) he's right and you're going to Hell.

The other thing- social ostracism- is important as well. A lot of the way the Catholic Church functions is socially. Excommunication for example is the ultimate punishment not only because the chance of repentance is lost but because you are banished from your community. It is disgusting that a Priest would manipulate these fears and use his power in this way.

Hopefully, his parishoners will have the decency to find another priest, even if it means going to a different church.