Civil Commotion

I felt angry at the religious system that pulled me in when I was a child and robbed me of a more rational process of selecting my vocation. I felt angry at myself for leading others down the same path. I felt angry at the seductive shallowness of what I believed — simple answers that faith taught me to never question, answers that didn’t address life’s complexity.

Tim Sledge, former evangelical pastor

I have to admit I have increasingly complex feelings about our Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.

Suppose you overheard an adult telling his or her child, “You’re no damn good, and you’ll never be any damn good.” You’d be outraged, and rightly so; you might even call a social worker and report abuse. Why, then, should that same parent be applauded for taking the same child to church — nominally, at least, a wholesome thing to do — where a proxy tells the child the exact same thing: You’re no damn good, you’ll never be any damn good, and the only way to avoid the eternity of punishment you deserve is to join our club? Why is the first circumstance likely to be considered abusive, but the second good parenting?

Decades of research have shown that sexuality arises out of a complex of operating-system switches that are set before birth; gays really are born gay. Accordingly, numerous states have outlawed so-called “conversion therapy” for minors; if adults wish to submit to conversion therapy, they are welcome to do so.

Should teaching Original Sin, and the need for ‘salvation,’ also be tabu for minors? I increasingly incline toward thinking so. There is certainly no shortage of adults who have written eloquently, and with great difficulty, about the pain those preposterous and odious teachings have caused them.

I pointed yesterday toward a piece by Bruce Gerencser that takes-up the Biblical explanation of differing skin colors, an explanation used even today to justify racism. What do you know? Discover published today a piece that tells you how scientists think it happened rather than a bunch of Bronze Age anonymities.

Human skin color reflects an evolutionary balancing act tens of thousands of years in the making. There’s a convincing explanation for why human skin tone varies as a global gradient, with the darkest populations around the equator and the lightest ones near the poles. Put simply, dark complexion is advantageous in sunnier places, whereas fair skin fairs better in regions with less sun.

BTW, did you notice the usage error in that paragraph? Fairs instead of fares? It may be finicky of me, but I once subscribed to Discover and cancelled because of the regularity of editing failures like this.

I pointed a while back toward the recent revival of interest in Stoicism, wondering if it might be grounded in the decline of Christianity.

It’s easy to say that Christianity is untrue, that its teachings are degrading, and that its ethics are grounded in cultism … but what then? What replaces Christianity and provides a framework for thinking about the world and our place in it?

[ … ]

If publishing trends can be trusted, a lot of people are looking toward Stoicism, a pre-Christian philosophical movement nearly wiped-out when the Roman church seized control of the western half of the Roman empire following Rome’s collapse.

What do you know? The latest self-help guru seems to be … Aristotle.

Cold showers have their virtues: They prepare an adult for the unavoidable tortures and small indignities of the day. But Hall’s treatment of Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” reveals that true virtue, the inner core of human happiness, is a matter of living in accord with “the ancient Greek proverb inscribed on the Delphic Temple, ‘nothing in excess.’” According to Aristotle, the first Western theorist to develop a moral system tethered to this principle, “character traits and emotions are almost all acceptable — indeed necessary to a healthy psyche — provided that they are present in the right amounts. He calls the right amount the ‘middle’ or ‘mean’ amount, the meson.”

Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, laid the groundwork for Christian metaphysics with the theory of ‘forms.’ Aristotle, with his almost zoological listing and classifying, laid the groundwork for science and, ultimately, the rejection of metaphysics. When the Roman church seized control of the western half of the Roman empire following its collapse, Aristotle was banished. Had his works not been smuggled to Arabic scholars, all of his writings would have been lost; as it is, Aristotle was unknown in the West for almost 1,000-years.

I have a couple editions of the Nicomachean Ethics at hand, and am unlikely to buy a commentary; I’m already familiar with the material. What interests me, as in the case of Stoicism, is the revival of the Classical world as Christianity disintegrates. This, I think, is a wholesome development.

Epicurus knew that the moon travels around the earth, that the earth travels around the sun, and that the earth is a globe. Epicurus had worked-out the essentials of the theory of evolution, too, and allowed women to study at his school. We know those things because denunciations of Epicurus by the early church fathers, especially Lactantius, remain available; virtually all of Epicurus’ writings, save a few letters, were deliberately destroyed.

So the freewheeling intellectualism of the Classical world is having the last laugh, reviving as its tormentor, Christianity — which has never been able to sustain itself without force — staggers toward the dustbin. To paraphrase a modern aphorism, You just can’t keep good ideas down.

Bruce Gerencser has up a post that sets out the Biblical defense of American slavery and racism, and recounts some of his own encounters with it as an IFB/Southern Baptist preacher. Well worth reading.

As a young Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, I was taught that Genesis 4 clearly revealed to any racist who wanted to know why blacks had dark skin. Genesis 4:15 says:

And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. [emphasis in original]

Growing up in Detroit, toward which many southerners migrated in search of work, I also heard Genesis 4 cited as a justification of racism. I didn’t hear it at home, however; unusual for that time and place, my dad outspokenly ridiculed such talk.

There were slaves before there was a Bible, of course, so the evils of slavery and racism can’t be blamed wholly on Christianity. It is certainly the case, however, that slavery in America was defended by quoting the Bible and, as everybody knows, the inexhaustibly odious Southern Baptist denomination was founded in support of slavery.

It puts me in mind of a famous lecture by Robert Green Ingersoll, About the Holy Bible. Here is a portion of it:

Ministers wonder how I can be wicked enough to attack the Bible.

I will tell them: This book, the Bible, has persecuted, even unto death, the wisest and the best. This book stayed and stopped the onward movement of the human race. This book poisoned the fountains of learning and misdirected the energies of man.

This book is the enemy of freedom, the support of slavery. This book sowed the seeds of hatred in families and nations, fed the flames of war, and impoverished the world. This book is the breastwork of kings and tyrants—the enslaver of women and children. This book has corrupted parliaments and courts. This book has made colleges and universities the teachers of error and the haters of science. This book has filled Christendom with hateful, cruel, ignorant and warring sects. This book taught men to kill their fellows for religion’s sake. This book funded the Inquisition, invented the instruments of torture, built the dungeons in which the good and loving languished, forged the chains that rusted in their flesh, erected the scaffolds whereon they died. This book piled fagots about the feet of the just. This book drove reason from the minds of millions and filled the asylums with the insane.

This book has caused fathers and mothers to shed the blood of their babes. This book was the auction block on which the slave- mother stood when she was sold from her child. This book filled the sails of the slave-trader and made merchandise of human flesh. This book lighted the fires that burned “witches” and “wizards.” This book filled the darkness with ghouls and ghosts, and the bodies of men and women with devils. This book polluted the souls of men with the infamous dogma of eternal pain. This book made credulity the greatest of virtues, and investigation the greatest of crimes. This book filled nations with hermits, monks and nuns—with the pious and the useless. This book placed the ignorant and unclean saint above the philosopher and philanthropist. This book taught man to despise the joys of this life, that he might be happy in another—to waste this world for the sake of the next.

I attack this book because it is the enemy of human liberty—the greatest obstruction across the highway of human progress.

Let me ask the ministers one question: How can you be wicked enough to defend this book?

Amen.