Civil Commotion

Franklin Graham explains that Godly Folk shouldn’t be letting those gay people into their churches because, you know, you really can’t be too careful.

“We have allowed the Enemy to come into our churches. I was talking to some Christians and they were talking about how they invited these gay children to come into their home and to come into the church and that they were wanting to influence them. And I thought to myself, they’re not going to influence those kids; those kids are going to influence those parent’s children.

What happens is we think we can fight by smiling and being real nice and loving. We have to understand who the Enemy is and what he wants to do. He wants to devour our homes. He wants to devour this nation and we have to be so careful who we let our kids hang out with. We have to be so careful who we let into the churches. You have immoral people who get into the churches and it begins to effect the others in the church and it is dangerous.”

Forty per cent of the homeless children in America are LGBT, and 68% of them say they are on the streets because their parents rejected them because of their orientation.

Think about that: 68% of 40% means that more than one of every four homeless children in America is homeless for the reason that their parents listen to the Bronze Age claptrap peddled by ignoramuses like Franklin Graham.

Seriously, then: No more deference. Enough.

Albert the Pious’ daily radio broadcast from Monday, January 25, is well worth your time; not because it is especially smart, but because it illustrates how utterly debased the devout Christian mind actually is. But first a few quibbles.

• Every single worldview has to start by answering the most basic question of all. Why is there something rather than nothing? Nothing would need no explanation; the existence of something does.

  This is an unbearably tedious old chestnut; it puzzles me, frankly, that theologians don’t recognize how meaningless the question actually is. For starters, define ‘nothing.’ And then explain why ‘nothing’ should be the assumed default state of the universe.

  And, by the way, modern physics has shown that energy and mass are the opposed end-points of a single continuum, and the discovery of the Higgs Boson provides a mechanism for the conversion between mass and energy. In other words, physics has answered the ex nihilo complaint without resort to magic. (Without energy there is no Big Daddy doing magic tricks, either.)

• The Christian worldview, like every other worldview, has to move from why is there something rather than nothing, which Christianity answers with the doctrine of creation, to what’s gone wrong with the world, which is where the Christian worldview answers with the doctrine of the fall and the doctrine of sin.

  The next question is, can anything be done to rescue? And that is where the Christian doctrine of redemption, the doctrine of atonement through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ to the whole doctrine of salvation, plays such a central role. And then every worldview has to answer the question, where is all of this going?

  What basis does Mohler have for saying that something has ‘gone wrong’ with the world? Besides, I mean, the Inerrant Bible says so? And what basis does Mohler have for saying that rescue is needed?

  Is there any objective reason to think that something has ‘gone wrong?’ Not a scintilla.

  There are no good grounds for thinking anything has ‘gone wrong.’ Physics does know where this is going, by the way; the sun is going to burn out, and earth is going to become a cold dead rock transiting eternal darkness. I don’t suppose that’s so charming a prospect as lolling around for eternity in the land of milk and honey and nubile cuties, but there you go.

• Mohler confuses secularism with unbelief throughout today’s broadcast, though they are not the same thing. Secularism is merely government neutrality toward religion; unbelief is rejection of god(s). It is entirely possible to be a believer in some god or another while believing that government governs best which is indifferent to religion (What do they teach about American history at Southern Seminary, anyhow?)

It gets worse:

We can either believe that the world is as the Scripture reveals, made by God, by a sovereign act, by his Word in order to display his glory and in order to present the theater for the drama of redemption, or we can understand that the world is merely an accident that somehow matter and time and energy intersected in such a way that through a “Big Bang,” as it is called, or by some other means, nothing simply became something.

Read that passage carefully, and notice the implications:

• “… in order to display his glory and in order to present the theater for the drama of redemption …” Really? The world exists as a display of His vanity? And some people will burn for eternity because He failed utterly to make a plausible case for His very existence?

  Perhaps Mohler will be moved to explain some day why he thinks such a self-absorbed and amoral Being deserves to be worshipped.

• And, No to the claim that belief is a choice. If you are intellectually honest, you do not have a choice. Facts are facts, and if you are intellectually honest you go with the facts. You do not ‘choose’ to believe in an Invisible Friend who does really cool magic tricks because the alternative is metaphysically scary. And you don’t believe garish nonsense because it offers a complete soup-to-nuts narrative that defies the established facts.

Keep this in mind, too: Mohler runs a seminary for America’s largest Protestant denomination; he graduates several hundred yahoos every year, and the overwhelming majority of them believe all this witless gunk.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Virginia Woolf

This means, for starters, the cessation, in public and private life, of respect for all faiths, including Islam. Nonbelievers should stop pussyfooting around the Abrahamic creeds’ manifold absurdities – including, inter alia, a metaphysical despot siring a kid with a hapless earthling virgin, the notion that our morality derives from a message supernaturally chiseled on slabs of stone, and that a member of our species soared heavenward on a winged ungulate – and let believers know what they really think, recalling, always, that they are helping them become the atheists of tomorrow.

Jeffrey Taylor, Salon

I’ve been insisting for as long as I can remember that most of the turmoil in the world arises from a sort of fundamentalist rebellion against modernity, and that there is no answer to it but the end of deference — the refusal to accord religion any privilege. That is necessary as a matter of survival, for religious fanaticism is an existential threat both domestically and internationally, and it is inherently right; the Abrahamic faiths are false, one and all, and an inexhaustible engine of human misery. Enough.

The Nation takes-up the intellectual dishonesty of sectarian schools, an old bugaboo hereabouts.

When it comes to academic content, it’s hard to argue that a college that makes faculty adhere to Christian fundamentalist tenets, or that refuses to let its students engage with pro-choice speakers even when they’re talking on another subject, is providing an intellectual toolbox for the modern world. Wheaton College in Illinois (not to be confused with secular Wheaton College in Massachusetts) suspended Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science who donned a hijab in solidarity with harassed Muslims, for writing on her Facebook page that Christians and Muslims “worship the same god.” Well, as theology it’s debatable, but that’s the point: Debate has no place at Wheaton, which requires faculty to sign a faith statement declaring their belief in the literal Adam in Genesis. (Don’t laugh—in 2011, John Schneider, a professor of theology at Calvin College, was forced into retirement after publishing an article that questioned the story of Adam and Eve.) When Darwinism — the foundation of modern biology — cannot be taught, what kind of an education are students getting?