The Last Debate: ARGH

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

ARGH

Sigh. Some atheists are every bit as smugly self-righteous, arrogant and prejudiced as the religious extremists they decry.

Because "news" in America must have entertainment value, the public faces of religion in this country are loons willing to compress complex ideas into rhetorical soundbytes. I will grant that eloquent voices of moderation are hard to find in this world of infotainment.

I am the last person to claim religion is harmless. I frequently like to quote Bishop Gene Robinson: "Religion is the source of our oppression."

But it is an intellectually dishonest position to say that all religious ideas and all religious people are deluded and harmful. That idea isn't any more enlightened than creationism, or any more supportable by empirical study.

If atheists want to take pride in "reason" and "intellectualism," then perhaps they should take more of an interest in getting their facts straight.

35 comments:

Anonymous said...: i dont mind athiests, generally speaking true honest athiests, but so many of them try to convert God believers with a religious fervor that is intellectually dishonest when examined.

they become so offended at the thought of a concept that they deny has any value, so why are they offended at nothing?
i call them evangelical athiests, every bit 'gospel thumping' as any body who belives in God.; 11:09 PM
Anonymous said...: Over the last 20 years, as the incidents add up, it's reasonable to expect others to have a disrespectfull attitude towards religion and their leaders.
This is NOT a small list and you know that; which shows that its not as small a percentage of the religious community as you seem to be pointing out.
It's totally reasonable for people to judge a group by the behavior of its members and/or leaders.; 12:46 AM
Andy said...: Geez, if you wanted to talk about the dangers of religion, why go back only 20 years? There's some really juicy stuff if you keep going.

But it's intellectually dishonest to say that religion has only ever been a force for evil. Sure you can judge a group by its members. But you should factor in all the members, not just the select few who make your point for you.; 6:47 AM
Anonymous said...: I never said that religion was only ever an evil force, and it's dishonest for you to infer that was my opinion.

The percentages show that these abuses are not few, and then the leadership tried to cover-up the percentage that does stray.

I was only pointing out that your position seemed to say that it is not reasonable (because a few misrepresent) for people to judge religion and religious leaders harshly. I disagree.

Debating religion is useless. Like the neo-cons, you are always right (so you think).

The claim being that the basis of your ideology is so good that it overrides any abuses or misleading the public.

It does not, in fact a higher level of behavior is expected because of what it represents.

The neo-cons are dead.

The superior attitude and and poor treatment of us mere mortals (sinners) by religious groups and leaders should also die.

As an American it's perfectly fine if you and your pals Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, cet..et all....
Get together and pray or whatever, but please leave your ideology in that room - don't bring it out and try to tell me that if I don't follow, I am some how less of a human being than you are.; 9:27 PM
Andy said...: Well, anonymous, clearly you are unfamiliar with me and my theology and my writing, and you are doing just exactly what I've asked you not to do: lump me in with the only Christians you can name, those who appear on TV talking heads shows.

My belief system is not, as you claim, marked by certainty. Previously I have even quoted the Rev. Alan Jones, saying, "The opposite of faith is not doubt, it's certainty."

You're not less of a human being for not sharing my particular beliefs about the very real spirituality of this universe we so briefly inhabit.

But you are apparently a bigot who feels free to make off-target blanket judgments about people and subjects you know nothing about.; 7:13 AM
DJRainDog said...: Gino, you're right; I, too, am tired of the "evangelical atheists" (great term, btw), and their efforts not only to be free from religion (which is their right), but to stamp out faith and to deprive those of us who wish to worship of the opportunity to do so.

Now, Mr./Ms. Anonymous: You, too, are right on some points. Assessing religion harshly, based on the conduct of those who would lead the flock in the wrong direction, is understandable. But just as all Americans must not be judged by the conduct of Prezidont Shrub, not all Christians should be judged by the sins of some. The church is, after all, a human institution, and sadly, as a consequence, it is deeply flawed. And while I would love to believe that the ideology behind it (as I'm constantly pointing out, it amounts to loving God first and foremost and loving everyone else as you love yourself -- and I fail at it, too) excuses the imperfections of its supposed adherents, you're right; it does and should hold us to a higher standard. "Debating religion", as you put it, may indeed be useless, but discussing the finer points of theology and exploring how best to live according to the Lord's will and example is more Andy's (and my) style. Sure, I think I'm right, but my ears, mind, and heart are open to other possibilities. We are ALL human and fallible, and the purpose of religion should not be to condemn us for it, but to inspire us to aspire to the sublime. How DARE you, though, to lump Andy (and by association, me) in with Falwell, Robertson, Swaggart, et al.! I reject them and all of their ilk as exemplars of Christian values, as should anyone with the slightest understanding of what Christianity is about. Because you ostensibly know neither of us, I will merely encourage you to read more of Andy's blog (mine doesn't concern itself much with faith or theology) to get a better sense of his (and some of my -- we do disagree on points) beliefs before you judge, if it's not already too late.; 11:08 AM
Will said...: I've been meaning to reply to this post. I'm reading Sam Harris's book, The End of Faith. Harris gave a speech at the

I'll play the foil in this discussion, even though I'm not an atheist (I'm a committed agnostic if you don't know, that is, I believe not just that humans don't know the truth about god, but also that they can never know the truth about god, any more than an earthworm can understand humans. This means that I think strict atheists are just as deluded as fundamentalist religionistas, and liberal Christians are more rational, or at least more ethical, than most people in our society), just because it's good mental stretching.

I'll begin with this: we have entered a stage in history where we can easily destroy all life on the planet. It is vital that we understand the reality of our situation as fully as possible.

Religion has as its fundamental element belief in the supernatural: belief in things that cannot be proven. Religious people base their lives around a belief that can never be proven. They affect the reality around them by acting according to this belief.

So at this unprecedented, dangerous time in history, we have a significant number of people running around making decisions based on totally irrational beliefs. George Bush and Osama spring to mind.

If Bushy does indeed believe in the book of Revelations, do we really want him in control of the big red button?

If a high ranking general in the army (Boykin) believes that muslims are satanic, do we really want him making decisions about our policies in Iraq?

What place is there in this new world for people with such irrational beliefs?; 3:52 PM
Will said...: Whoops, left some out from the first paragraph. He gave a speech for the Long Now Foundation. You can find it on this page:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/; 3:58 PM
Andy said...: If Bushy does indeed believe in the book of Revelations, do we really want him in control of the big red button?

A) It's Revelation, singular.

B) There have always been religious fanatics and leaders with messianic complexes. Granted, they now have access to unprecedented destructive power, as you point out. But this is not a new phenomenon.

C) The solution isn't no religion or less religion, but better religion, and the knee-jerk atheist phobia of religion has contributed to a world where perversions of theology are allowed to go unchallenged.

The Bible is the single most influential literary work in the history of mankind; for that reason alone, people should know what it says, not dismiss it out of hand. In terms of its impact on our culture -- and as a key to many of the political problems facing us in the world today -- it is more important to know and understand the Bible than anything else.

I'm currently reading Senator Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope, where he makes the following point, talking about his former career as a professor of constitutional law: "Sometimes I imagined my work to be not so different from the work of the theology professors who taught across campus -- for, as I suspect was true for those teaching Scripture, I found that my students often felt they knew the Constitution without having really read it." I think that statement today is equally applicable to many people of faith, as well as the secular community.

Oh, fuck, I have to do some work now. I'll finish this thought later.

But I want to leave you with this thought: in the 2006 midterm elections, 36% of evangelicals voted Democrat, largely because of global warming, Iraq and Darfur. There is hope.; 4:26 PM
Anonymous said...: How DARE Andy ASSume that I think religion is ONLY evil!

How DARE Andy say that the abusers are only a select few> The list is to long to make such a statement.

Now he calls me a bigot, which from his comments, I could say the same about him.

Certainly both of us are making statements without knowing eachother's views on religion that well.

I don't have the time to read 2 years worth of archives, and the statement I rebuffed him for can stand alone.

If he has a deeper understanding of the problem, how can he make such a general statement?

In just the last 10 years alone, hundreds of religious representatives have been criminally prosecuted or kicked out of their orders because of abuses.

Looking over the centuries, the list is overwhelming. Andy makes it sound like only a handfull are responsible.

I am not a bigot on this issue. I have been educated since 1st grade through religious schools. I have seen 1st hand the hypocrites and the harm they cause to those who give them more respect than they deserve.

It's not just the crack pot TV preachers who think gays deserve AIDS for their sin of homosexuality.

Respected churches were covering up child molestation right up to the top of their administrations.; 4:35 PM
Andy said...: Actually, FG, if you want the tough answer: Satan long ago discovered that one of his most effective tools was the seductive power of religious fervor. He is eminently skilled at convincing people to do tremendous evil in God's name.

Satan is real. Abandoning religion because some people have been seduced by evil will not help the rest of us.; 4:37 PM
Andy said...: I am not a bigot on this issue.

Oh?

it's perfectly fine if you and your pals Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, cet..et all....
Get together and pray or whatever, but please leave your ideology in that room

These men are not my pals. My ideology centers around equality and social justice. If you'd prefer that I take my beliefs about the essential dignity of all mankind, and the developed world's moral obligation to confront global warming, starvation and curable disease, which are killing 30,000 impoverished human beings ever day, and leave it in some room somewhere, then I respectfully decline your request.; 4:52 PM
Anonymous said...: If your so highly educated on religious issues, esp. this issue of abuses by religious members, how can you say that it is a small few involved.

The TV preachers are religious leaders in the eyes of millions of people. Maybe the church should devote time dennouncing them.

Is the church bigoted? They will help suffering from typhoid, but not AIDS.

They will help smallpox victims, but ignoe the greater scurge of STD's.

They will help feed starving children, but will not educate the poor on how not to have more children.

They pick and choose their efforts based on morality not needs of human beings. Is that discrimination?

The History of the church is not based on equality and social justice. It is based on God's justice, which is not the same as modern social justice as we know it. God does not approve of the social behaviors the majority of people live by today, including your own.; 5:18 PM
Anonymous said...: Anonymous, you make very good points. However, I take issue with your comment that "God doesn't..."

The fact of the matter is that we have NO IDEA what god may or may not be thinking/feeling/etc.

All we know is what's written in the bible, and that little bit is full of contradictions. Considering there are NO original copies of any book of the bible in existence, we can't even count on 100% accuracy.

Andy, you are also correct- there are many good things that have occured that can be contributed to religion. However, I feel that most of these things could have come about on their own without religion. In recent years, there's been much more bad than there has been good. You can choose not to examine the bad, but they exist nonetheless.; 5:49 PM
Law Fairy said...: "Respected churches were covering up child molestation right up to the top of their administrations."

"Is the church bigoted? They will help suffering from typhoid, but not AIDS.

They will help smallpox victims, but ignoe the greater scurge of STD's.

They will help feed starving children, but will not educate the poor on how not to have more children."

Anon, it sounds to me like your problem is with Catholics (and only with the politically vocal ones, at that). You don't need to read 2 years' worth of blog posts to know that Andy is Episcopalian. And you need to be living under a rock not to know how different the Episcopal church is from the Catholic church.

So, yeah, you're unfairly lumping him in with people who are very different from him. And denying him an individual voice when he protests that you misunderstand him. Kind of like a bigot.; 5:50 PM
Anonymous said...: kind like lumping all gays with the ACT UP crowd.; 10:43 PM
Anonymous said...: Not that anyone probably cares, but Catholic nuns were among the first people to set up care centers for AIDS victims in at least NYC and I think still are a major force in AIDS care in some third world countries.

Anon isn't listening to anyone, so I'll only say this: Andy's statement about "religion only being a force for evil" was repeating his post--it is normal to say, "I hear your point but it doesn't change my point," in an argument. It didn't mean he thought you thought that. Bringing in Falwell et alis where Andy lost rationality (I have to give him that it would be hard not to).

FG, is that the speech I commented back to you on at your blog a few months ago? If so I'm gonna be a little irritated that you didn't mention some of the failings in his logic--or at least that there are some.; 11:08 PM
Will said...: KR,

It's the same speech. As for the failings in his logic, well, that's your job. Who's the atheist here anyway? ;-); 12:12 AM
Anonymous said...: Nun gets 30 years for aiding Rwandan genocide

POSTED: 4:25 p.m. EST, November 10, 2006

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- A Roman Catholic nun has been sentenced to 30 years for helping militia kill hundreds of people hiding in a hospital during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, an official said Friday.

Theophister Mukakibibi was sentenced by a traditional Gacaca court for helping Hutu militiamen kill ethnic Tutsis seeking refuge from the slaughter in Butare hospital where she worked. She was jailed Thursday.

"She was responsible for selecting Tutsis and would throw them out of the hospital and the militia would then kill them," said Jean Baptiste Ndahumba, president of the local gacaca court in Butare town. "This nun was organizing people to be killed."

She would also hold regular meetings with Hutu extremist groups and denied food to Tutsis hiding in the hospital, he said by telephone. Some 20 people testified against her, Ndahumba added.

Some 100,000 people were killed in the southeastern prefecture of Butare during the massacre.

A number of Hutu Catholic and Protestant church leaders are alleged to have played significant roles in the east African nation's 100-day massacre. More than half-a-million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by the militia, orchestrated by the extremist Hutu government then in power. The genocide ended when Tutsi rebels toppled the government.

The gacaca courts are intended to speed up the genocide trials and are separate from Rwanda's conventional judicial system and an international genocide court. With nine judges from the local community, the traditional courts were also established to help heal divisions. They can impose life sentences.

Some 63,000 genocide suspects are detained in Rwanda, and justice authorities say that at least 761,000 people should stand trial for their role in the slaughter and chaos that came with it. The suspects represent 9.2 percent of Rwanda's estimated 8.2 million people.

A U.N. tribunal based in neighboring Tanzania tries those accused of masterminding the genocide. Three members of the clergy have appeared at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

In 2001, two Rwandan Catholic nuns were convicted by a Belgian court of aiding and abetting the mass murders. A Roman Catholic priest is on trial before Tanzania-based U.N. tribunal, accused of ordering the slaughter of 2,000 people who sought refuge in his church.

Rwanda's genocide began hours after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was mysteriously shot down as it approached the capital, Kigali, on the evening of April 6, 1994. The leader was returning from power-sharing talks with Tutsi-led rebels.

The genocide ended after rebels, led by current President Paul Kagame, ousted the extremist Hutu government that had orchestrated the slaughter.; 7:08 PM
Anonymous said...: Didn't say all Catholics were saints, just said some of them have stepped up to the plate for AIDS, counter to accusations preceeding.

Rwanda: without a percentage of the Hutu population that was clergy and sisters, miscellaneous miscreants (which should always be expected in any group) don't offer much proof of anything, except that people are (properly) more horrified by the failure of publically professed "I'm committed to the good" people (hence the article focuses on the sworn religious).

A much more pertinent argument would be that Rwanda was (as I understand it) the most Catholic of all African nations at the time of the massacres, by percentage and active participation of the population. THAT has me way more worried than the evil of the few on trial in this article.

--

FG, I already spent an hour and a half I didn't have on that speech : P. Since it shows some of the same logical fallacies Andy's post is based on, I just think it should have been better contextualized.; 8:30 PM
Will said...: Tangentially related but parallel to Sam Harris's argument against religion. This won't take an hour and a half: an essay in The Nation by Ellen Willis:

"a serious, long-range strategy against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism must entail open and emphatic opposition to theocracy and to the subjugation of women.... Yet to recognize that the enemy is fundamentalism itself--not "evil" anti-American fundamentalists, as opposed to the allegedly friendly kind--is also to make a statement about American cultural politics.... There is also the tendency of the left and the center to appease the right and downplay the culture war rather than make an uncompromising defense of freedom, feminism and the separation of church and state. It remains to be seen whether fear of terrorism will trump the fear of facing our own cultural contradictions."

What I'm getting at (not necessarily what Ellen Willis was getting at) is that religion has throughout history been a tool of brutality, authoritarianism, and repression. As my favorite quote about religion goes: "Those who believe absurdities commit atrocities."

You can see this tendency in Islam today, in the (formerly) fringe rightwing in America, in the stunningly idiotic new childrearing books (Baby Wise) that are based not on science about human development but on 'biblical truths'. You can see it in the way Africans have Christian names and worship the Christian god - their entire culture stripped from them in the name of saving their freaking souls. The roots of the genocide in Rwanda are to be found entirely in European colonialism, by the way, which was helped right along by the cultural imperialism of the idiot missionaries. The same goes for the Congo and a long list of other 'countries' that were created for the convenience of European slave traders, diamond miners, and land stealers.

You can see it in the history of slavery, the use of the biblical injunction 'servants, obey your masters' to teach slaves that obedience to their brutal and racist oppressors would lead to reward in the afterlife.

I could go on but I'll spare you.

Religion, because of its irrationality, is uniquely suited to this partnership with brutality. The fundamental core of religious belief is something that must be taken on faith - the existence of a god.

This is not to say that atheistic regimes have not committed atrocity, but if we examine Stalinist Russia or the Nazis, again we find irrational beliefs happily marching alongside the storm troopers, commissars, and execution squads.

How much closer to a rational (and thus humane) existence would we be if we eliminated a major source of irrationality - religion?; 11:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Wow, the evil you are willing to accept simply because it is such a small percentage of the population, is sick!

5 million Jews? No matter, there are Billions of people on the planet.

People in fear for their lives go to a church for help, and end up being killed by the religious leaders in charge.

The fact that the killers were priests and nuns is a betrayal on so many levels.

Just how high does the percentage have to be before you would condem the killing of innocent people?

It seems our society IS willing to forgive, if the criminals are religious leaders. They just strayed, they will get back on track. Nevermind the victims.; 3:33 AM
Andy said...: religion has throughout history been a tool of brutality, authoritarianism, and repression

So has government, even governments that claimed to be democracies, even ours, and most especially communist governments which demanded atheism.; 11:18 AM
Anonymous said...: Sonya, I am not "accepting" the evil. The genocide itself was stomach-turning, that horrendous betrayal by sworn religious ... well, there aren't words.

What I am saying is that the question of the relative vaule (or anti-value) of a belief-set should be looked at rationally as well as emotionally.

If 10% of the population is expected to be charged with these crimes but only 2% of the nuns+priests (who are products of that population) are, that's a different thing than if it were, say, 20% of the nuns and priests. The article rightly especially condemned those priests and nuns, but it did not give enough context to condemn their religious compatriots, nor their religion. Neither, in fact, did my observation that I was told Rwanda was very Catholic--I don't know whether the Hutus or the Tutsis were disproportionately Catholic, for instance, so it is unclear how Catholicism (and, yes, FG, European imperialism--now that's some straight-up evil) actually weighs in in the genocide. The anaylses at the time all blamed cultural strife that was purposefully set up by the imperialists long years ago--and it's not like the media are slow to condemn the Catholic Church, even before the rapist priest scandals broke; it makes for great headlines/readership in America and Europe. So if the Church was particularly to be implicated in the genocide, I would have expected more coverage at the time ... or, for that matter, since then, as the trials ran their course. This article citing specific instances of evil (and I use "evil" in the full context of believing in an active traditional spiritual world) without context actually rather implies that the broader context doesn't exist. Or that the reporter(s) was lazy, which seems to be a growing endemic on its own : P.

If an evil is endemic accross a society, then the degree to which the religion should be implicated/held at fault should be readable by comparative statistics.

My Church did an interesting but highly incomplete study during the biggest years of the rapist priest scandals, that showed that (as far as there was data available) the incidence of rapist male clergy was comparable across denominations. What is missing is the comparison of non-Christian society (either leaders or general), so we cannot tell if this should be seen as a condemnation of Christianity or of American society.

People took that study as an attempt to exonerate the priests through dry numbers, when we were all (of course) feeling rage. It was not to exonerate the priests, it was part of examining the problem, and to show the public that they were working to understand the problem. Random facts, however horrible, do not a complete picture make.

"Forgiveness," in the lingo of my Church, by the way, does not entail a washing away of the consequences, as people seem to think it does (and as, admittedly, the Church seems to occasionally forget, itself). And from all the Catholics I talked to at the time (or since), clergy and lay, "forgiveness" for the rapist or priests and nuns was not forthcoming. (The genocide was not at the time presented to me as Catholic-related, so I can't speak to that, but I'm personally still disgusted and horrified.)

-----

FG, plenty of people around the world think Scientism is leading to it's own horrifying atrocities; abortion and embryonic cloning topping the list. As I have stated here before, however much my religion supports me in that belief, my spiritual sense of the babies within the first week makes me see people who ignore my "data" (experience=empirical observation, albeit not easily quanitfiable) as the ones who cling to their beliefs because it is convenient, or intellectually more pleasurable.

I have seen a lot of things that tell me that "science" left behind a lot of realms of legitimate world-study a long time ago. The proposition that all of those choices were "rational" is ridiculous--they were comfortable or convenient or intellectually simpler.

We are all human, and all muddling thorugh as best we can, I hope. Catholicism is much more coherent to my experince than other cosmologies I have thus far run into. I won awards in science in high school, was raised by two scientists, and I don't discount science. I discount assumptions that call themselves "scientific," which at different times support(ed) things like eugenics and the testing of medical evils on Jews and other "non-people," the complete discounting of women's actual experience in childbirth (so much for "empirical" medicine ... fuckers), the clear-cutting of forests, the industrial revolution, slavery ...

and as I make that list I note that many of those sins/evils would be laid at the feet of religion by secularists.

Which, then, supports the theory that they are in fact indemic in society's development and not the "result" of the religion, or the "scientific" assumptions ... but that humans take what they have and make it what they want, in thought as in the physical world.

My guess for universal "redemption"? We all need to keep moving toward respect for all life, human and environmental (sorry FG, I do still see a break, albeit a small one, between humans and everything else).; 5:12 PM
Will said...: Andy:

So has government, even governments that claimed to be democracies, even ours, and most especially communist governments which demanded atheism.

Well, that's why I like to say I'm an anarchist.

The point is that religion dovetails nicely with the brutal aspects of power. If you believe that you are eating the flesh of god when you eat a cookie that a priest gives you, how far is that from believing that Jews must be evil because they killed Christ? How much of the Nazi's antiSemitism was due to historically religious antiSemitism? Why didn't the Pope ever condemn the Nazis?

KR:

I discount assumptions that call themselves "scientific," which at different times support(ed) things like eugenics and the testing of medical evils on Jews and other "non-people," the complete discounting of women's actual experience in childbirth (so much for "empirical" medicine ... fuckers), the clear-cutting of forests, the industrial revolution, slavery ...

How much of this is due to the hierarchical worldview: god above humans, humans above nature, whites above blacks, Christians above Muslims and Jews, men above women? And how much of this worldview is thanks to the medieval church?; 8:27 PM
Andy said...: If you believe that you are eating the flesh of god when you eat a cookie that a priest gives you, how far is that from believing that Jews must be evil because they killed Christ?

Well, I actually don't believe that, that's why I'm a Protestant. In our tradition, the emphasis is on the phrase, "Do this for the remembrance of me." Yes, we sanctify the bread and the wine (cookie? I wish, it's like styrofoam), but Episcopalians don't generally believe that the substances themselves are sacred (let alone the actual flesh and blood of God), but rather in the eating and drinking and sharing of a communal "meal," we remember that the body was broken and the blood was shed so that all might have forgiveness and salvation, and in that collective state of reverence and reflection, there is great holiness. The wine and bread have only as much power as you spiritually invest in them.

And that is a VERY long way from believing the Jews must be killed because of it for a couple of reasons: one, Jesus, as he was being crucified, said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Well, if Christ has already interceded for them on His behalf, who the hell am I to hold a grudge? Furthermore, without going into too much detail: sure Jesus ruffled a lot of Jewish feathers, but he was actually put to death by the Roman occupiers.

Why didn't the Pope ever condemn the Nazis? Do you mean during the Holocaust? Because I believe John Paul II apologized on the church's behalf for its inaction. But let me also say here, I'M NOT A CATHOLIC and however much common ground there appears to be between me and KR, we have some pretty big disagreements on fundamental issues. (The simple existence and role of the Pope being one of them.) So please don't ask me to defend a tradition of which I am not a part and don't understand well.

Are you at all familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer?; 8:44 PM
Andy said...: PS, as I understand it, the Nazis weren't advancing religious arguments about Jews, but rather "scientific" arguments about their genetic inferiority. The holocaust had less to do with Jesus than it did with a) finding a scapegoat on which Germany could blame its numerous social and economic concerns, especially following WWI and b) a belief that "Jewish" blood was a threat to the more highly evolved and "pure" Aryan blood. Obviously religion played some part, but in this case the Jews were identified as a "race" more than a religious group.; 8:55 PM
Andy said...: Let's also remember that the United States did not enter the European theater of WWII until 1942, after millions of Jews were already dead. Should we blame Americans? Or just Democrats, since FDR was President? Or, can we all just grow the fuck up and not hold people who were born in 1974 responsible for the events of 1938?; 8:58 PM
Will said...: Or, can we all just grow the fuck up and not hold people who were born in 1974 responsible for the events of 1938?

Slow down. I'm not holding you responsible for anything. I like you. I'm just arguing for the sake of a little mental exercise. If you want me to lay off I'll go harass somebody else.

as I understand it, the Nazis weren't advancing religious arguments about Jews, but rather "scientific" arguments about their genetic inferiority.

But how much were they aided in their scapegoating by beliefs that were already held by the Germans, beliefs that were nurtured by the church for centuries?

Should we blame Americans?

What did the Americans have to do with the roots of the holocaust? That's what I'm talking about here.

As for John Paul II: that's a couple decades late, isn't it?

As for protestants: there were some interesting anti Catholic riots in my current home of Louisville back around 1900's. Protestantism also played a large role in the KKK's worldview.

Atheism (defined here as the belief that there is no supernatural and n god, I know that's not a totally accurate definition of the word but it's the commonly held meaning) has the same problem religion does: it claims to know the ultimate reality. I detest evangelicals of all stripes, atheist and religious, politicians and salesmen. Your personal belief system is really only a problem if it begins to impact the lives of others - if you deny them rights purposefully or inadvertently.

Everyone in on this discussion, whether you are religious or areligious: it is enlightening to stop and consider how your own beliefs might be as flawed as the people you denounce. How much of your attachment to your personal belief system is due to emotional dependence? (Frankly, the idea of the Christian god kind of scares me.) How much does your belief system skew your perspective on reality?

Was that old guy in that book on to something when he said: 'consider the beam in thine own eye?'; 9:51 PM
Anonymous said...: FG, The myth that the leadership of the Church and specifically the Pope were in some way aligned with the Nazis, or did not speak out against them, was created out of whole cloth.

Here is an article (yes, it's from a Catholic source, but it quotes extensively from Jews):
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9702fea1.asp

Here are some pertinent quotes:

1) Much of the impetus to smear the Vatican regarding World War II came ... from a work of fiction ... by a little-known German Protestant playwright named Rolf Hochhuth.
The play appeared in 1963, and it painted a portrait of a pope too timid to speak out publicly against the Nazis. Ironically, even Hochhuth admitted that Pius XII was materially very active in support of the Jews. ... Today, after a quarter-century of the arbitrary and one-sided presentation offered the public, the word ‘silence’ has taken on a much wider connotation. It stands also for ‘indifference,’ ‘apathy,’ ‘inaction,’ and, implicitly, for anti-Semitism.
... If there were any truth to the charge that Pius XII was silent, the silence would not have been out of moral cowardice in the face of the Nazis, but because the Pope was waging a subversive, clandestine war against them in an attempt to save Jews.
The need to refrain from provocative public statements at such delicate moments was fully recognized in Jewish circles.

2) Pius XII ... took a public stance concerning the Jews of Italy: "The Pope spoke out strongly in their defense ... The Fascist press came to call the Vatican paper ‘a mouthpiece of the Jews.’ "

3) [T[he Pope was ... hiding them in the Vatican itself and in his own summer home, Castel Gandolfo.
His success in protecting Italian Jews against the Nazis was remarkable. Lichten ["Dr. Joseph Lichten, a Polish Jew who served as a diplomat and later an official of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith"] records that after the War was over it was determined that only 8,000 Jews were taken from Italy by the Nazis—far less than in other European countries.
In June,1944, Pius XII sent a telegram to Admiral Miklos Horthy, the ruler of Hungary, and was able to halt the planned deportation of 800,000 Jews from that country.
The Pope’s efforts did not go unrecognized by Jewish authorities, even during the War.
[quotes from such follow, in the article]

4) In _Three Popes and the Jews_, Lapide ["Former Israeli diplomat and now Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapide"] estimated the total number of Jews that had been spared as a result of Pius XII’s throwing the Church’s weight into the clandestine struggle to save them. After totaling the numbers of Jews saved in different areas and deducting the numbers saved by other causes ... "The final number of Jewish lives in whose rescue the Catholic Church had been the instrument is thus at least 700,000 souls, but in all probability it is much closer to . . . 860,000." This is a total larger than all other Jewish relief organizations in Europe, combined, were able to save. Lapide calculated that Pius XII and the Church he headed constituted the most successful Jewish aid organization in all of Europe during the war, dwarfing the Red Cross and all other aid societies.
This fact continued to be recognized when Pius XII died in 1958. Lapide’s book records the eulogies of a number of Jewish leaders concerning the Pope, and far from agreeing with Jack Chick [an established anti-Catholic and one of two major propigators of the Nazi Pope theory] that he deserved death because of his "war crimes," Jewish leaders praised the man highly:
"We share the grief of the world over the death of His Holiness Pius XII. . . . During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people passed through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and to commiserate with their victims" (Golda Meir, Israeli representative to the U.N. and future prime minister of Israel).
[more quotes in the article]

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Pius XII was a major if not the major anti-Nazi voice at the Vatican before his Election, long before the War started (his predecessor was also vocal in his condemnation of Nazi claims to Christianity, rationality, and morality). Although, as the article states, Pius XII chose (mostly) not to specifically publically call attention to the Jewish persecutions for worry of aggravating them, he/the Vatican (which followed him) did continue to condemn Naziism as a thought system and as a power structure throughout the war.

Book length recent defenses, listed at catholic.com:

Bottum, Joseph, and Rabbi David G. Dalin, eds. The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004.

Dalin, Rabbi David G. The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2005.

Rychlak, Ronald J., and Michael Novak. Righteous Gentiles: How Pius XII and the Catholic Church Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis. Dallas: Spence, 2005.

FG, you will please not repeat again, to me or in any other context, the factually ridiculous claim that "the Pope never condemned the Nazis." He condemned them vocally and vociferously and constantly, _and_, as a bonus, did everything he and his people could figure out to do to save the Jews.

And he even did a measurably good job, apparently.

And that's mud in yer eye, Mister Rational ;).

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FG: That said, obviously, yes, everyone's preferences/comfort zones affect what they believe and what they hear. Science recently made another Amazing Discovery to that effect (I know it's important to scientifically test "obvious" assumptions, but it always makes me laugh when it's presented as if it is New and Amazing Information), when they tested what devoted political partisans heard and perceived watching the same factual video presentations. (Speaking of which, I think I saw a headline the other day that said most Americans don't believe in global warming--WTF??)

As I've told you before at your blog, though, there is a lot of this world we live in that is flat out purposely not only "ignored" but consciously, determinedly _dismissed_ by that paragon of "rationality," the Scientific Community. How exactly does not admitting that I see (and interact with and affect and am affected by) spiritual energies and beings (including but not limited to other people) improve the value of my thinking on the "rationality" scale? Should I choose a cosmology that in my experience covers its eyes and ears and denies inconvenient data? Now, _that_ doesn't make sense.

I figure most of us are at this blog in an effort to 'discern the beams in our own eyes.' I notice that the only people who stay are those types, anyhow.

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can't argue with the heirarchical world view underlying-problem, except to point out that it culturally preexisted the church and so can't be blamed entirely on the church; which is rather the point I was trying to make.
yes, the church undoubtably propigated it.
the church is a product of its culture, whether or not God is involved.
the church has been mitigating its support of the general concept of heirarchical power for some centuries now (the church's own heirarchy, not so much, yes), and at least by the 20th c (fuzzy on a lot of church political history, sorry) was purposefully algined with democracies rather than despots

too tired to be more coherent, sorry

---

not going to here defend Transubstantiation or the Papacy.

But Andy's point is the right one, and the one the church had already come around to dogmatically (admittedly many individual Catholics still were and probably still are anti-Semetic bigots) before WWII: Jesus, in his agony, _said_ to forgive them. Anti-Semite "Christians" need to get over themselves, duh.

beliefs that were nurtured by the church for centuries?
beliefs nutured by members of the church are not the same as "beliefs nutured by the church," due to the heirarchical, non-democratic nature of the Cathlic Church. This differentiation is less applicable in communal or congregational churches.

Yes, often high-up clergy (and probably popes, I haven't looked into it) were active anti-Semites, and the Spanish Inquistion was a particularly egregious example ... but I'm pretty sure at no point was it Church Doctrine to kill Jews, much as groups like the Nazis would prefer we believe otherwise.

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Hope I stayed "rational" ;).; 4:36 AM
Andy said...: FG, I'm sorry, I wasn't angry at you, just exasperated, because in my discussions about faith, I am constantly asked to "defend" the Holocaust or the Inquisition or the Crusades...and it's rather maddening.

A better response would have been to borrow from Evangelical pastor Jim Wallis, when he was asked by an angry atheist, "But what about the Inquisition?!?!?!" He said, after thinking for a moment, "I was against it then, and I'm against it now." : P

I also did not mean to imply that Protestants were in any way less culpable for violence or misdeeds than Catholics, merely just to say that -- especially with KR hanging over my shoulder -- I'm not in a position to accurately explain Catholic doctrine.; 7:21 AM
Anonymous said...: (ah, now the question is, am I the little red devil or the little white angel ;) ? )

lu ;).; 1:50 PM
Will said...: Well, I've just about used up my passion for defending atheism/attacking Christianity.

I will say that Harris doesn't completely discount the spiritual aspects of human existence, and neither do I. I've had a few weird moments myself, and these sorts of things are universal to human experience (William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, or Rudolf Otto, writing about the 'numinous.')

Of course, real problems start when you say that your particular interpretation of the 'numinous' is correct and everyone else's is bunk.

Andy and KR, you do a wonderful job attacking fundamentalists and defending your faith. The first part, attacking fundies, is vitally important for the coming century, and you good thinking Christians actually have common cause with atheists like Sam Harris in eradicating that sort of backward thinking.

The second, well, how much of that is simply saying A. "my god is better than your god" vs. B. "this is my personal interpretation of my relationship with god, and it's a good one, and your interpretation of your experience is ok too?" Too much of B and your faith loses something... you might as well give up Catholicism or Episcopalianism and go to the Unitarian church, or just skip over that and make up your own religion... but too much A and you are just perpetuating the worst aspects of religion.

See, that's why I don't like to say how things are. You should all become agnostic like me.

(ah, now the question is, am I the little red devil or the little white angel ;) ?

Depends on your perspective, doesn't it?; 3:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Ah, now, FG ;), I wouldn't say I attack fundamentalists; I like engage in deep debates, is all. I think the only people I have been directly disrespectful of here are the other two Catholics.

And I'm disappointed, you were supposed to tell me I was being close-minded in my dialectical question ;).

--

Saying spirituality exists (Harris, MANY others I've dealt with) is a good step. Having no theories or ideas to test against one's spiritual experience, because one believes (and it is a belief) such theories lead universally to evil/conflict, seems to me ... strange.

Why do we have less right ... no, less responsibility(!) ... to deal directly and in intellectually coherent ways with these parts of Reality, just as we should (many people don't, of course) deal directly and in intellectually coherent ways with chemistry and physics--and philosophy, if reality is in fact directly affected by our thinking, as more and more people are starting to believe?

Admitting a spiritual aspect to existence is not sufficient: to me, stopping there seems just as weak-minded or fear-filled as proselytizing atheists think my choice to believe in God is. There are patterns. There are interactions. These things affect us; the more we ignore them the less we can account for the effects--or try to, as necessary/possible, fix or change them. Lots of people like to stick their heads in the sand about fossil fuels and global warming (not to mention poisoning) ... if you disrespect that choice (and I know you do), how do you respect the other?

Personally, I am glad to see energy healing finally gaining acceptance. It seems the most likely route for a meeting of the minds on functional examination of the unseen.

Pity these things take years and centuries to develop.

[Misc., the Church expects this millenia to be focused on discovering more about and living more deeply with the aspect of God we call the Holy Spirit. (The first millenia was focused on Jesus, the second on the Father, apparently ... I wasn't around, so youknow, I can't speak to that ;). ) Anyhow, it would be coherent with general world spiritual trends, to my impression.]; 6:10 PM
Anonymous said...: not that anyone will ever see this, but FG, your A and B are wrong.

I am not arguing my God is better, I am finding out whether my God makes more sense (when arguing with other theists) and whether it remains reasonable for me (and potentially others) to believe in my God.

This does not negate others' right to believe otherwise (your option B) ... but if _they_ claim _I_ am unreasonable (which sin of disrespect non-theists constantly claim against theists but rarely hold themselves accountable for), they had better be ready to back it up, and to listen to my side.; 7:12 PM

The Last Debate

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

ARGH

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