NY Times Reviews Dawkins’ Delusion
John on October 21, 2006 at 10:58 am
The reviewer, Jim Holt, appears sympathetic to Dawkins cause though much less so to his book. He notes how Dawkins seems to be flirting with a kind of nihilism:
[T]he objectivity of ethics is undermined by Dawkins’s logic just as surely as religion is. The evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, in a 1985 paper written with the philosopher Michael Ruse, put the point starkly: ethics “is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate,” and “the way our biology enforces its ends is by making us think that there is an objective higher code to which we are all subject.” In reducing ideas to “memes” that propagate by various kinds of “misfiring,” Dawkins is, willy-nilly, courting what some have called Darwinian nihilism.
In the next paragraph, the author of the review deals with some of the book’s other shortcomings:
He is also hasty in dismissing the practical benefits of religion. Surveys have shown that religious people live longer (probably because they have healthier lifestyles) and feel happier (perhaps owing to the social support they get from church). Judging from birthrate patterns in the United States and Europe, they also seem to be outbreeding secular types, a definite Darwinian advantage. On the other hand, Dawkins is probably right when he says that believers are no better than atheists when it comes to behaving ethically. One classic study showed that “Jesus people” were just as likely to cheat on tests as atheists and no more likely to do altruistic volunteer work. Oddly, Dawkins does not bother to cite such empirical evidence; instead, he relies, rather unscientifically, on his intuition. “I’m inclined to suspect,” he writes, “that there are very few atheists in prison.” (Even fewer Unitarians, I’d wager.) It is, however, instructive when he observes that the biblical Yahweh is an “appalling role model,” sanctioning gang-rape and genocide. Dawkins also deals at length with the objection, which he is evidently tired of hearing, that the arch evildoers of the last century, Hitler and Stalin, were both atheists. Hitler, he observes, “never formally renounced his Catholism”; and in the case of Stalin, a onetime Orthodox seminarian, “there is no evidence that his atheism motivated his brutality.” The equally murderous Mao goes unmentioned, but perhaps it could be argued that he was a religion unto himself.
No more likely to do altruistic volunteer work? I’d like to see that study. I think one can quickly look around at the number of atheist charities and see that isn’t true. It’s also interesting that Dawkins refuses to deal with the fact that Hitler and Stalin were atheists who were clearly motivated by their beliefs. Hitler, in fact, had beliefs about science and religion not very different than Dawkin’s own. How this has escaped his attention, I can’t imagine. The review concludes:
Despite the many flashes of brilliance in this book, Dawkins’s failure to appreciate just how hard philosophical questions about religion can be makes reading it an intellectually frustrating experience.
In other words, the great man has failed. Even the largely sympathetic NY Times isn’t buying it.
Hello John,
October 21, 2006 @ 8:43 pmDawkins is delusional??? Is it safe to say that anyone who has an opinion that differs from yours is delusional? Look under your bed tonight, John, there just has to be some demons under there.
The more I read your stuff the more convinced I am that, as nice a guy as you are, you are losing touch with reality. Have you so immersed your self in myth and superstition that you cannot relate to men of science and rational thought.
This post is not the first time you have contended that religious people live longer and are happier. I’m sure you know this because your pastor read it someplace and he told you so. Or maybe some preacher in Gooberville took a survey and all the good old boys told him so. You have agreed with me in the past when I pointed out that a high number of born agains are former druggies, drunks, and generally losers in life. We agreed that religion for many of these losers was the life line that pulled them out of their lives of desperation. In other words, a substitution of one obsessive/compulsive behavior for another.
How do we know they are happy?? Cuz they told me so!!
For every statistic or study you can throw out, I can throw out one of my own. Try this one on for size:
We all know that prisons are Country Clubs and that prisoners really have it made. Maybe that’s why so many Christians are fighting to get membership in these clubs. The Federal Bureau of Prisons had a request in 1997 to give the statistics on the religious affiliation of inmates in prison.
Catholics made up 39.16% of the inmates, Protestants 35.00 %, Muslims 7.27%, and down near the bottom with the Hindus were the Atheists at 0.209 %. I won’t bore you with the percentages for Mormons, Scientologists, Native Americans, and some of the other marginal religions.
With figures of 8-16 % of the population being Atheists it would seem that they are under represented at 0.209 % of the prison population. Does this have any relevance to religion and happiness. I leave that for you to decide.
Roger,
I have heard many of the same statistics you are using here, but with a slight (or not so slight) difference. Perhaps you were unaware or perhaps you intentionally left off the part of that study (and several others) that indicate that the vast majority of those inmates whose affiliations were Christian/Catholic/Protestant/Muslim/Mormon/etc came to their respective beliefs AFTER entering prison or were “reconverted” to a belief that they had as children but later decided to come back to as adults in prison.
And by the way, you should revise your “8-16 % of the population being Atheists” claim. I’m sure the inflated numbers make you feel like you are in larger company, but most reliable studies that I have seen put the U.S. atheist population at between 4-7% (and that includes the designation of agnostic) and the world atheist/agnostic populations at between 13-17% (this % is of course influenced by communist countries like China whose population is considered to be almost entirely atheist, though internal reports demonstrate that is not true). Let me guess, you got your 8-16% figure from Skeptic Magazine, right? Or perhaps from the Council for Secular Humanism? Maybe Sam Harris provided those numbers? Those are all completely reliable and nonbiased sources I’m sure.
(Next thing you know, you’ll want to use the long-ago-disproved-and-discredited statistic that 10% of the population is gay!)
Anyhow, Roger, the back-side of the prison statistic (and the part you neglect to mention showing how the percentages greatly increase because of the in-prison conversion rates) kind of yanks the rug out from under you while you’re standing on it.
Put aside the philosophical, rational, and scientific evidences for belief in God and against belief in God. There are arguments to make on both sides, so for this particular situation it is a “wash.”
You obviously don’t like the fact that there are BENEFITS to faith and religion and Christianity, benefits that you cannot ignore. Atheism can’t change a life that is in a downward spiral, but faith in God can. You can’t point to one example of a life that is experiencing the “dark night of the soul” that atheism was able to turn around and turn to something positive. You can’t point to a single life that was being destroyed by alcoholism, anger, violence, drug abuse, self-hatred, etc that atheism has helped. But as much as you might not like to hear it, Christianity/faith in God has turned lives around time and time and time and time and time and time again.
In your mind, that might reenforce your favorite myth that “religion is a crutch and opiate of the masses who are weak and needy,” but what you can’t do is argue against the results and the evidence. You might want to try and make arguments that religion has brought a lot of negatives to the world, and I won’t deny that much evil has been done in the name of religion over the last few thousand years.
But THAT evil has been done by men, and men will always turn to evil when left to their own devices. The evil has never been done BY God, only in God’s name. And typically, if you look at the men (and women) who perpetrate that kind of evil while spouting something about God’s blessing , you will find that they haven’t really had a grounded and/or solid view of God and faith in the first place.
If you look to the actual work that has been done in the lives of people by God, work that changes and transforms lives of darkness and confusion into lives of hope and joy with direction and purpose, then it is difficult to explain it all away as coincidence and the power of suggestion.
Putting everything esle aside, if you only look at the evidence as measured by the positive/beneficial impact on individual lives, faith and the existence of God is as inarguable as gravity, whereas the evidence as measured by the benefits of atheism in the lives of people is about as weak and etherial as proof of the existence of the man on the moon.
Sorry, Roger, but no matter how you look at it, you’re standing on weak/shakey ground. Maybe you should consider stepping onto the more rock-solid side of things!
Scott
October 23, 2006 @ 10:15 amSlow down, Roger, and drink in the irony…
The name of Dawkins’ book is The God Delusion. My title is a reference to his title. It is Dawkins who is claiming anyone who disagrees is delusional, not I.
I am only claiming that his book is crap, as even this apparently agnostic NY Times reviewer can see.
October 23, 2006 @ 11:10 am[...] Jim Holt, “Beyond Belief” (HT: Darwinian Fundamentalism and Verum Serum): The book fairly crackles with brio. Yet reading it can feel a little like watching a Michael Moore movie. There is lots of good, hard-hitting stuff about the imbecilities of religious fanatics and frauds of all stripes, but the tone is smug and the logic occasionally sloppy. [...]
October 23, 2006 @ 12:04 pmI saw this at the bookstore the other day and thought about picking it up.
To me, Dawkins is a sympathetic figure. He’s blinded by his unbelief, but then again so was Saul and look what God did through him.
October 23, 2006 @ 1:56 pmHello Scott and John,
October 23, 2006 @ 3:17 pmWhen you point out how finding God has turned people’s lives around I am reminded of so many of the drug addicts who have crossed paths with me over the years. Any drug addict will tell you that the only way you can survive in that culture is to learn how to lie and to do it convincingly. An addict finds an enabler and milks them for all they can get. They make promises they have no intention of keeping. The most important thing for them is to put on a face of sincerity which is essesntial to lying convincingly. You can not alienate those that you are manipulating, because if you piss them off, they won’t let you manipulate them any more.
When Tom Delay brags about being born again and how his faith has guided his political life, I have to ask myself – if his life is an example of what being born again does to you and how it guides your life, we are in deep trouble. Just look at the crowd over at TBN. Those crooked bastards don’t have a conscience. I probably watch TBN more than you do since my first love is satire and comedy. They literally brag about their former perverted lives and how they dragged themselves up by their bootstraps with the Love of Jesus just oozing from every pore. They have substituted one sickness for another. Oh, by the way, could you help support our ministry with a donation and we’ll send you our latest pamphlet as a love gift.
You made a statement, Scott, that is the most uninformed that I have ever heard from you. You said atheism can’t change a life that is in a downward spiral, but faith in God can. You can’t be serious. How many gay and lesbian Christians have spent a large portion of their lives in guilt and self loathing. When I was teaching the AIDS curriculum to my classes I never allowed any of my students to disparage anyone or anyone’s life style. When you have a teenager who thinks there is something wrong with them because they are not like their fellow classmates, you see self loathing and the risk of suicide up close and personal. I have had students who could not reconcile the conflict between their gayness and their religion. Because I was loving and understanding of my kids it was common for those who were struggling with gender identity to come to me for support. You still have gay and lesbian Christians struggling with who they are, but the ones who have rejected religion and its bigotry are the ones who are no longer in a downward spiral. They have thrown off the self loathing and have learned to love themselves for who they are.
Religions have never been in the forfront of fighting for equal rights, i.e. women’s rights, gay rights, and abolishing slavery. I do believe that your Bible even has admonishments for those who are too harsh on their slaves. Atheists have always been the leaders in the struggles for equal rights. The downward spiral in societies has usually resulted from lack of tolerance for individual differences. Atheists are the live and let live crowd. We are not sinners. We live our lives by treating other people the way we would like them to treat us, and not giving two hoots as to what other people are doing in the privacy of their homes. If you have impure thoughts, sleep with your hands under the covers, didn’t pray hard enough or engaged in some act that only you and your perceived God know about and which you feel guilty about, if you want to call it sin and feel bad about it, go ahead, make yourself miserable. Atheists don’t have that problem and when you guys get off your downward spiral of sin, guilt and self loathing we will welcome you into a real positive lifestyle.
Roger,
Where does the ideal of a ‘real positive lifestyle’ come from?
October 23, 2006 @ 5:54 pmHello Laz,
October 23, 2006 @ 6:20 pmIt comes from within. The human animal has always thrived on loving and being loved. We all want to be loved. Even the simplest mind knows that when we do good we reap positive benefits. Hurtful behavior reaps negative benefits and people will not love us if we hurt them. This is nothing new. Long before Christianity, man was seeking happiness by practicing the Golden Rule.
Roger,
You’re totally wrong about Christianity and slavery. You have it absolutely backwards. Slavery was the norm everywhere in the ancient world, including Greece and Rome.
Christianity significantly knocked down slavery. It produced the first crusades against slavery. Augustine, Chrystostom and Patrick all forbid it. We have records of many new converts freeing their slaves. Roman emperors actually tried to make this legally difficult. It was a Christian emperor named Justinian who abolished these laws against freeing slaves.
Christianity in the ancient world was also a tremendous improvement for women. Ever heard of Patria Potestas? How about Manus? Google those. Most secular historians recognize that one of the great appeals of the early church was it’s treatment of women.
And even the most hardened agnostics admit that the crusade against modern slavery was largely a product of Christianity. Ever heard of William Wilberforce?
Christians have also led the way in education, founding every university until Cornell and pushing for universal elementary education. Kindergarten was invented by a Christian.
I know you like to read. I would sincerely recommend this book. The author is a sociologist specializing in religion. His work is not “spiritualized” in any way.
October 23, 2006 @ 6:20 pmHello John,
October 23, 2006 @ 7:26 pmYou are grasping at straws. Let’s deal with the real world; your’s and my world. Slavery has always existed and will continue in some form long after you and I are gone. One form is the caste system in India. In parts of Africa slavery is still common.
Enough of this, let’s get to our world. Slavery was a way of life in the early years of this country. In the south the Bible was quoted as justification for slavery. Jesus did not make any pronouncements against it, so it must be OK. I don’t think you would argue that the slave holders were Christians. The Women’s Suffrage movement did not start with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. It began in the early 1800′s with women’s rights and the issue of slavery having equal credence. You can point out a hundred Christians who were abolitionists and a hundred more who were suffragettes, but the power structure that kept women and slaves in their place were male Christians.
I appreciate your recommendations on books and try to keep a balanced approach to both sides. Right now I am reading a sports book (fiction) Red Zone by Mike Lupica. I do read alot of Christian stuff on the internet just so I can keep abreast of right wing insanity. Grant Swank is one of my favorites as he was the guy who mentored my preacher brother. My brother met him in Fishkill, NY and was totally mesmerized by him. My brother is a devoutee of Grant Swank and Rush Limpbaugh. What a crew.
Good answer Roge-o, as always very well thought out. What is ‘hurtful behavior’?
October 23, 2006 @ 8:38 pmHello Laz,
October 23, 2006 @ 9:42 pmProbably the most hurtful behavior is to demean a fellow human being. Unfortunately, the most destructive behavior we observe is to the most vulnerable, women and children.
A great topic for Scott and John to explore would be, should we spank our kids or not. Is spanking hurtful? I think so. Nothing good, and much bad comes from it.
Hmmm… Timely topic. Scott, you’ll have to get a copy of the CD.
October 23, 2006 @ 10:50 pmI’m sorry Roger, but you’re simply wrong. It’s beyond pointing out a few individuals. The entire impetus behind abolition was being driven by Christians on both sides of the Atlantic.
Admittedly, some Christians did keep slaves, but so did enlightened rationalists like Thomas Jefferson.
The indisputable fact remains that Britain would not have abolished slavery were it not for Christians. It was Christianity that ended slavery, not the enlightenment.
And yes, slavery is still practiced in some parts of Africa and asia. The practitioners are almost universally Muslims. It’s a very different religion, as even Sam Harris has noticed recently.
Not much of a sports guy myself. I went to some Lakers playoff games when they were making the playoffs a few years ago. I’m more of a movie-buff. Love the old films, especially 50s science fiction. I have quite a collection of original poster art in my house. I also love illustration art, especially magazine cover art. Harrison Fisher is my favorite.
Never heard of Grant Swank.
October 23, 2006 @ 11:57 pmHello John,
October 24, 2006 @ 6:27 amI do believe that Swank goes by J. Grant Swank. My brother refers to him as Grant. Some of his stuff is really off the wall.
He refers to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates as baby killers because of their financial support of Planned Parenthood. Because I donate money to Habitat for Humanity I guess that makes me a Christian, using Swank’s logic. I’m sure that we both could find something that we agree on with Swank, but I think you would probably agree that he is farther to the right than even the TBN crowd.
I’m with you Roger, but what makes ‘hurtful behavior’ hurtful? Why is it wrong to ‘demean a fellow human being?’ According to what/whom?
Maybe some people like being hurt, what do we tell them? Do we dare ‘demean’ them by telling them that it’s wrong (whatever that means) to enjoy being demeaned?
October 24, 2006 @ 7:16 amHello Laz,
October 24, 2006 @ 2:04 pmWe all have a moral compass regardless of cultural or religious upbringing. My formative years were spent in a fundamentalist Christian environment. My brother married a Jew, my kids are baptized non practicing Christians. My grand children have not been baptized and, as far as I know, my oldest (15 year old girl) has never been in a church. We all express our love, anger, sadness and react to hurtful behavior much in the same way.
I’m not sure I would agree that some people like to be hurt. There are people who have lived a life of abuse and expect to be hurt and may be surprised when they are not being abused and hurt. If you know a woman who is the victim of
battered wife syndrome, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
I agree Roger, we all have a moral compass. Where does this compass come from?
As far as the crowd who likes abuse, I was thinking more the s&m crowd, not battered women. Though, it could be argued that some battered women ‘like’ the abuse.
How dare I say that? Some refuse to report the abuse so that leads me to believe that they enjoy it or at the least are content with such a horrible situation.
October 25, 2006 @ 7:26 amHello Laz,
October 25, 2006 @ 8:16 amBattered women do not like to be battered. Usually the cycle is just being repeated since most battered women experienced seeing dad abuse mom, and women generally marry someone just like dad since he was the first male figure in their lives. Also, once you have beaten a woman down and she has lost any semblance of self worth, they have no confidence to face the world alone. I’m sure, Scott, as a teacher, can attest to the fact that domestic violence scars the children as much, or more, as the mother.
As to the S&M crowd – I have no knowledge of their world.
[...] money. And two, the book hasn’t exactly won rave reviews, even from sympathetic outposts like the NY Times. If I want to have my cherished beliefs insulted I’ll pick up Voltaire or J.S. Mill, men who [...]
May 7, 2007 @ 8:38 pmI’ve been working on a theory that the way that battered woman syndrome works is something like this:
The couple attaches to each other. They begin to conflict over control of resources (often sex). He decides to use force to control her as a resource. She is faced with a choice between ending the relationship and taking him back.
This is a dilemma for her. The suffering of bereavement is painful for her, so she decides not to end the relationship and she “takes him back.” Once she decides to take him back, this has two effects.
First it reinforces his behavior – his tactic worked so he decides to do it again. He may even feel a rush of relief as his reward center get’s activated by the violence and/or the fact that she didn’t dump him, starting him on a spiral of addictive violence (I’ve known a few batterers, they describe this mental state).
Often batterers report suicidal thoughts, but these are expressed as a manipulative ploy to control her (“I can’t live without you…”)
On her side, she has adopted a victim stance. Her self-esteem is diminished, which means that she is more likely to take him back next time, and at the same time she is willing to put up with a higher threshold of violence to avoid suffering the loss of the relationship.
This begins a “ratcheting up” of violent behavior in the couple. Each cycle gets more violent and paradoxically the longer it lasts the more attached she becomes to him because each time she takes him back she has to rationalize her decision more and more and her sense of self worth becomes less and less. As a result she becomes more and more dependant on him for validation thus increasing his control over her over time.
Often (but not always) the couple began the relationship with this relationship pattern in mind – because it’s what they saw their parents do. But it’s a pattern that’s available to all of us, because we are all capable of using violence to get our needs met. People brought up in a violent environment have already begun to form some of the neuronal pathways associated with addiction to violence (and addiction in general) as well as the psychology of victimization. So these cultural variables feed into the process.
In answer to the question “where does our moral compass come from?” The answer is natural selection. People who cooperate are generally more likely to survive to pass on their genes than people who don’t. There are cheaters of course (for example sociopaths). Religion can serve to educate and inform the innate moral compass of people.
I think that one of the great moral development resources that human beings need is community, and religion is GREAT for creating community. Religion takes way too much credit for morality however. There is plenty of evidence to show that there are lots of ways of growing a moral person, and the stories of magic and miracles are just window dressing (and hypnotic induction – but that’s another story). The mistake that theists make is that they attribute their morality to their belief.
I think that the reverse is true – two of the moral systems in the human brain are the instinctual drive to form in-groups and hierarchical relationships with authority. Religion imagines a divine authority and then attributes moral “righteousness” to this imagined deity. The deity is a byproduct of our moral psychology, not the other way around.
The story you believe in is then used to identify yourself with an in-group (i.e. I’m a Christain or a Jew etc.) which forms the community you use to support your moral behavior.
This also expalins why religious societies tend to be fairly stable – If your identity is built upon belief in God, sin, afterlife etc, there is nothing that can topple your sense of self – since none of these beliefs have any point of reference in reality that can be disproven. As a result, you have nice stable social institutions that last hundreds and thousands of years.
The “delusional” nature of religions is what gives them their social power. Kind of like money – it has power in our lives, even though it’s just an idea.
Anyway that’s my two cents.
May 4, 2009 @ 9:23 amThat’s not what Christians believe. I’ve pointed this out to you at least once already. Apparently anything that doesn’t bode well for your pet theory is ignored.
I’ll say again, Christians don’t believe this. It’s not the Biblical view. Never was. The Christian view of morality is far more nuanced than this.
May 4, 2009 @ 10:29 amEspecially when they cooperate in order to kill off other “in-groups.”
May 4, 2009 @ 11:18 amOh yeah, thanks for reminding me. I forgot that conversation (my bad).
I do think the point stands, I would just need to qualify it as “SOME theists make the mistake of attributing their morality to their belief.”
I think I can safely say this – I have had many people assume that I’m immoral because I don’t believe, as if the belief in a deity is the prerequisite for morality.
Of course many people (theistic or athiestic) are more sophisticated than this.
Still, I’m grooving on this idea of authority-based morality. It just explains so much, and it’s so different from the way that I understand morality that I find it usefull as a way of understanding many of the positions on this blog.
I’m only now “trying it on” so I’m sure it won’t fit to all ideological conflicts. Still, it sure seems like a useful idea.
You know I’m sort of getting the idea that one of the things that you guys do is that you have this sort of moral warrant that comes from belief, and that you then apply all sorts of philosophical reasoning to the specific situation at hand, with the caviate that you stay within the bounds defined by your faith-based moral warrant.
Please understand that I am not trying to define what you do, I’m just trying to describe it to see if I understand how you process information differently than I do.
For me the basic moral warrant is fiarness and compassion, as opposed to relationship with authority. Now obviously I appreciate and respect authority as well, but it’s not primary. I get the impression that conservative christains tend to put more emphasis on relationship with (divine) authority than liberals do. I also get the impression that the more “fundimentalist” one becomes, the more strongly one identifies with the moral warrant offered by relationship with (divine) authority.
Does that seem right to you?
This does seem to be a favorite human approach to aquiring resources, that’s for sure. The problem is that it violates other moral intuitions, such as empathy, avoiding harm and fairness/justice.
Thus it is something that we as a species do from time to time, but we tend to feel badly about it.
We also have a built-in motive to negotiate settlements – after all, It might cost much for my in-group to wage war on yours, and sometimes it is easier and safer to use other methods (including religious conversion BTW -If I can get you to follow my god, I co-opt you into my in-group).
May 4, 2009 @ 2:46 pmFair enough, but on the other side of this…I can say I’ve had more than a couple atheists assume that my position is that all morality is black and white and comes as a download from God only available to Christians. Every part of that is a false take on the Christian view as outlined in scripture.
There’s some truth to that I think. There’s a verse about “binding and loosing” which comes to mind but I don’t recall the citation. The Christian framework says there are some things that are black (the Ten Commandments), some that are white (Fruit of the Spirit) and a whole lot in the middle where the scriptural only rule is “don’t hurt others with your freedom.” Most decisions in ordinary, daily life fall into that broad middle category.
Maybe in some cases, certainly with regard to the Gospel and salvation that would be true. But I find that the atheist picture of “fundamentalist” is very different than my own. My brother in law falls into that category. He has about a 140+ IQ, speaks Russian semi-fluently, went to Cornell as an undergrad and then got his Ph.D in theology. In short, he’s a fundamentalist, but not a dummy. Very often I find atheists use these words as synonyms.
I find that the Christian faith is often lived out in ways that contradict this sort of thinking. The message of Jesus was one of sacrificial living for God and one’s neighbor. Every part of this winds up being a net cost on the balance sheet. All of the fruits of the Spirit are things that cause one to expend energy on behalf of others with no promise of reward. Christians are to do things for others but unto God. None of this makes sense when a purely materialist calculus is applied. And this is why the Christian faith is far and away the most charitable organization of any kind in the world. They are living by faith, rather than making a simple calculation about what benefits them.
This is the example of Jesus, to humble oneself and lead as a servant to others. It’s a very different view than the kind of top-down authority you have in mind. A spiritual mentor of mine once said to me that leadership in the Church meant “more tables to bus.” Not very romantic, but I think it’s very true to the core of the faith. The proper org chart in any Christian group or ministry is an inverted pyramid. The greatest saints in the church are not the powerful or the outspoken but those who serve others the most and do so with the least recognition.
May 4, 2009 @ 3:39 pmI don’t know about this. What you are describing (quite well I think) is the idea of “servant leadership” an idea that Christ exemplifies as well as can be imagined. He is in fact the ultimate icon of servant leadership – the most powerful being imaginable who sacrifices himself for the least of us. This is a great moral lesson – one that takes the example of Moses to a whole new level.
The thing is that I don’t think it IS a negative on the balance sheet. I think that there are two evolution-based brain systems that are being both exploited and developed by the story of Jesus.
The first is the human capacity for self-sacrifice. Remember, genes don’t care how they get passed into the next generation. If they get passed by having my relatives carry them then that’s good enough to warrant my own sacrifice if it gets the job done. This fact alone accounts for the self-sacrifice that is found in all cultures to some degree.
The second is empathy. EMPATHY is one of the moral systems that evolution has equipped us with. The story of Jesus not only provides the example of servant leadership but it also elicits huge empathic responses in the audience. These empathic responses are tied into the idea that one should obey the Gospel and spread the religion. Which is exactly what you find people who identify with this text doing.
I recently wrote a paper for my philosophy class in which I showed that the Gospel of Matthew (GoM) is a very skillfully crafted series of hypnotic inductions that use metaphor and empathy to elicit a tightly orchestrated series of emotional responses in the reader. I believe that GoM was designed as a tool for eliciting and managing trance-states in audiences as part of the dog-and-pony show that is at the heart of most religious services. This is certainly how I see it being used today – I can’ imagine that the author didn’t know what he was doing when he wrote the thing.
Given that humans have a capacity for self-sacrifice and empathy, it is easy to see how the story of Jesus can be used to educate and inform the moral responses of a person within a strong cultural context. And hence we hundreds of churches, and fundamentalist movements and tele-evangelists and this website.
This is not because Christianity runs counter to evolutionarily-based emotional systems, but rather because it skillfully uses them both to manipulate the minds of believers (Matthew ends with a post-hypnotic suggestion to obey the gospels and spread the religion for example), but also to educate and inform the moral systems of practitioners. I think that this is actually pretty cool (I am a psych nerd after all). It is also a (usually positive) consequence of the “technology” of religion. But like any technology it can be and often is misused.
People need to rationalize their own behavior (both good and bad). Nothing helps us to do this like a good story, and the story of Jesus has been called “the greatest story ever told.” What makes it great is the way it speaks to our human need to identify and define the best in ourselves. I think it does this amazingly well.
I say all this as an atheist, because one of the great things about mythology is that it doesn’t need to have ever actually happened to say something true about who we are as people. Some mythology is true, of course, but in the case of the story of Jesus, well, people die. Coming back from the dead is magic. I don’t believe in magic.
May 21, 2009 @ 4:00 pmI’m not surprised to find you deconstructing Matthew. Atheism is hostile to story and in my view ultimately incompatible.
You can of course do this sort of meta-analysis of every book, a history of World War II as well as the Gospel of Matthew.
Once you pull that thread I think you’ll find the whole garment will fray.
May 21, 2009 @ 4:21 pmCould you say more? I’m not sure what you mean by:
and what to what garment are you referring?
May 21, 2009 @ 5:43 pmSusac, your understanding of Matthew’s gospel is pitiful – very consistent with the rest of your moronic musings on this post.
May 21, 2009 @ 8:28 pmJim, your opinion is unsupported as usual. If you are going to toss insults at least back them up with some facts. While I wouldn’t think that you agreed with me (you rarely do), why should I care? So far your whole worldview can be boiled down into 3 boring axioms:
1) Jesus is good
2) Abortion is bad
3) Anyone who disagrees with me about anything is evil.
So what? Everyone has an asshole and an opinion. Why should I give a damn what your opinions are? All you ever do is state your opinion, and give no reason why you have that opinion.
Are you:
A) Simply parroting what some brain-washing priest has told you to think?
B) a scholar who has studied theology for decades and developed well-informed opinions that you just don’t like to talk about?
C) a guy who forms opinions without thinking too much because it makes your head hurt?
I mean REALLY! Why do you think what you think? All I ever read from you are:
“I think X! Therefore X is TRUE!”
I have literally had deeper conversations with mentally retarded people. Seriously – if you can’t tell me WHY you have an opinion, why should I care what your opinion is? Your posts are USELESS.
May 22, 2009 @ 11:06 amMy graduate degree is in theology. Matthew’s main purpose in writing his gospel was to convince Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. Go to an introductory book on the New Testament and you will see that my opinion fits nicely with the scholarly consensus. Your viewpoint is utter hogwash.
May 22, 2009 @ 12:13 pmMy thesis is not incompatable with your position. The question of WHY Matthew was written is a seperate issue as to HOW it was written and what effect it is designed to have on the audience.
The whole point of preaching is to influence the minds of the audience. Why would it be surprising that there are hypnotic inductions routinely (and perhapse unconciously) used in these performances? Can you think of ANY church service that did not result in some level of trance-induction in the churchgoers? I mean – even just boredom will put a person in a trance.
Why would a public speaker NOT want to “enthrall” his audience. In fact, as a rule, the MORE tranced-out the audience gets the BETTER they will feel the sermon was. People LIKE to be hypnotised. It’s entertaining.
In any event, can you say more about your position? What “introductory text” would you recommend?
May 22, 2009 @ 1:50 pmPaul, the other day you were talking about how insubstantial theology is and how it is “just making shit up.” Then you bring psychology in here? Is there anything in science that fits the bill of “just making shit up” any more than the field of psychology? Hypnotic induction? Come on. Are you serious? If you admit that boredom is good enough to illicit hypnosis than you have completely destroyed the value (and your argument) of using hypnosis as a means of communication/manipulation. Psychology is so freaking pathetic, and I’ve written papers on that too. OOOOHHHH, SNAP!
The whole point of TALKING is to influence the minds of the audience. WOW, SPOOKY!
May 22, 2009 @ 6:55 pmLOL
Resolved: Talking is a plot to influence.
May 22, 2009 @ 7:31 pmFYI, as someone who has written a few sermons, numbing the mind and putting people into a semi-comatose state is not the goal. Getting them to recall God’s view of the world in general and of them in particular is.
In my experience, this isn’t accomplished by hypnosis but by logical argument which connects to people’s real experience. Good preaching (like good books of any kind) usually invokes some emotion but it’s not based on emotion.
May 22, 2009 @ 7:44 pmSusac, your “hypnotic inductions” nonsense illustrates your profound ignorance relative to homiletics. It’s best to keep your asinine pop psychology pablum out of an area you know little about – theology.
For an introductory work on the New Testament try Donald Guthrie’s, “New Testament Introduction”. You probably won’t understand most of it but it will highlight just how “in over your head ” you are when you mix pseudo-psychology and your bizarre theories with sound biblcial theology.
May 22, 2009 @ 8:52 pm