Creationism, who needs it?

My friend, The Roan is waging a war against evolution on his blog. I've told him that literal readings of Genesis don't seem to be necessary from a religious viewpoint (let alone the problems with their scientific accuracy). Today, I thought I'd put up a couple of quotes on the matter. This one comes from blogger Daniel Larison:

"Fideistic understandings of religion and materialistic philosophies that seek to exploit evolutionary biology to their advantage enjoy a symbiotic relationship, since they both thrive on promoting mutual antagonism between reason and faith. Tell the Christian that he must either endorse evolutionary theory or accept the Bible, and he will typically take the Bible, especially if he is not grounded in an authoritative teaching tradition that tells him that this choice is a false one. Tell the average educated secular person that revealed religion is incompatible with scientific theory, and he may very well conclude that those who continue to adhere to revealed religion must be either ignorant, insane or up to no good."

And from a Jesuit astronomer:

"If you read the Church fathers, going back to St. Augustine, it's clear that they are not what modern people would call literalists, or Creationists.

In a lot of ways, that's a modern heresy that comes from our mechanical world, where more people are likely to be reading owner's manuals than poetry."

Feel free to post your dissent.

John Paul II on the Origins of The Universe

The more I look at it, the more I wonder why this issue looms so large for the Huckabees of the world when a conservative pope like John Paul II was able to see that evolution need not be some massive theological stumbling block:

"The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer."

Perhaps after the bad press that the Vatican got from the whole heliocentric thing, they decided to take a more cautious approach about science. In the meantime, Jason is preparing his dissent here.

Jesus Reaches for the Barf Bag

That's taken from a line by a commenter on this post at Bene Diction Blogs On. It's all in regard to the disbanding of an association of Christian booksellers in Canada. What's wrong with being a Christian bookseller, well nothing really, except the material you have to carry. A sample:

"I had friends that started a religious bookstore and sold it in deep discouragement some years later. They got fed up having to sell Jesus junk and CCM and way to many sappy religious greeting cards and Christianity lite bestsellers like Joel Osteen."

The whole post is worth reading.

Who's Afraid of Environmentalism?

Keith was pointing out a blog to me that he sometimes reads and in it I found this very concerned post. A sample:

"...environmentalism is fast becoming the default religion of our age and of our society. It is a religion that is politically correct and which creates few enemies. It is a religion everyone respects and a religion that is bound to garner attention. It is a religion that is creating its own brand of Pharisees, people who stand on the street corners, so to speak, declaring their religious accomplishments."

What evidence does Mr. Challies have for this? Let's back up, here are a selection of quotes from a local newspaper article about a local woman who is evidently concerned about the environment - this is Challies' evidence:

“I only use reusable cloth bags when grocery shopping.” “When I’ve put away the groceries, I leave the bags on the front door knob so I’ll remember to bring them back out to the car.” “She never buys single serving containers.” “I engaged a diaper service to collect and recycle disposable diapers.” “They hang the annual Waste Management Calendar in their kitchen to that everyone can see it.” “Her twins help compost by putting their fruit peels in the Kitchen Catcher for backyard composting.” “We talk a lot about our earth and how we can help make it a healthier place.” “Our family of four only has a half bag of garbage or less, as most waste is either recyclable or compostable.”

Wow. This seems pretty mainstream to me. My mother is vigilant about separating recyclables and composting and following the waste management schedules but if you told her that her religion was "Environmentalism" I'm sure she would politely but firmly say no, it's actually Presbyterian.

It boggles my mind why someone would try to set up a false dichotomy between environmentalism and organized religion. What's odd about this post is that Challies begins by talking about Oakvilles new composting program and ends by saying he supports it. So how is this different from the lady in the newspaper? And yet, the false dichotomy continues in Challies' comment section:

"For some of the young people he knows, there really are no absolute moral rules except do everything you can to reduce your footprint."

I suppose if you take a crude, inaccurate view of environmentalism you might come up with something like that. Just like if you took a crude, inaccurate view of contemporary evangelical Christianity you might conclude that there are "no absolute moral rules" except that you don't have an abortion or gay sex.

With Friends Like These...

One of the more curious trends of the past couple decades is the increasingly uncritical support that more and more evangelical Christians are prepared to give to the most militaristic, pro-settler strains of Israeli society. Why. For a great deal of them this is all about hoping for the pre-millenialist rapture and holy war that wipes out most of the Jews (all but 144 000 according to some of these groups I think).

In other words, some (but not all) of these groups are aligning with the most right-wing, hawkish elements of Israeli society because they apparently want world history to culminate in the wiping out of most of the Jews during a war that wrecks their homeland. Question: is it possible for support of Israel to actually be anti-Semitic?

Edit: Here's the Max Blumenthal video on Christians United for Israel.

Is this a parody?

It's so hard to tell what is and is not satire these days, but it appears that the people at Christian Domestic Discipline are utterly serious. If the meaning of the site needs any illumination, here's the subtitle: "Loving Wife Spanking in a Christian Marriage." Uhhh, has anyone ever heard of this vaguely unnerving fetishizing of Old Testament punishments? (H/T) Sasha writes:

"Not surprisingly, the site is run primarily by women, several of whom blog
salaciously about the discipline they receive from their husbands."

Anyone have a take on this? I suppose that there's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying consensual spanking in a religious context. Anyway if Monty Python does not condemn, then neither do I:

Christian Government? No thank you

Some folks that I read from time to time have stumbled on this site called Christian Government. Mike (among others) said some stuff about them and now the Christian Government types are warning their readers that they are being attacked secular humanists. Apparently all secular humanists are Marxists who contradict what CG calls,

"...the Christian vision for a free and democratic social order and a civil government committed to the rule of law and the principle of equality before the law. Tyranny never could survive against liberty and justice."

Oh boy, I guess the CG people don't do much consulting of their history books. Let's not forget that absolute monarchs used Christianity to justify their rule in earlier centuries. This is one simple example, there are more of them out there for you to find. Christianity and indeed every other religion and some secular ideologies (Marxism, I'm looking at you) have been used to justify every rotten, tyranical government one could imagine. It reminds me of The Merchant of Venice where Bassanio says,

"...In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts"

Maybe appealing to Shakespeare is to secular for the CG types, okay, here's a noted Christian thinker's opinion of theocracy. C. S. Lewis, bring it home:

"I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber barron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme -- whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence -- the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication."

You need not be an atheist to appreciate the value of secular government. I wonder what Tim Bloedow will do with that?

Churches need a lesson from bars

Nathan caught this tidbit about churches that are attempting to reach out to men by being more, uh, manly. The article starts with this:

"No hymnals. No pews. No steeple. No stained glass windows. And no women."

While I don't know about pews or hymnals, I had always thought that the best way to fill a room with men is to put women in it first. Am I being sexist? I don't think so, I'm just observing how many bars and clubs always charge a cover for men while giving women the option of a "ladies night" where they get in free. It may not seem fair, but it is a proven business model.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, but I must confess I don't really *get* this idea of churches trying to appeal to macho men with all these manly men things to do. If anything they are creating churches for boys, I mean, how puerile is a "no girls allowed" rule?
Picture: Buddy Christ doesn't care if you're a manly man, everyone gets a wink and a gun!

Is Atheism a Religion? Convenient Truths from Christianists

One of the most helpful things that Andrew Sullivan has done for political debate was to coin (or at least popularize) the term "Christianist" to differentiate religious belief from a specific political agenda that (in its current form) wants to fuse authoritarian state power with the certainty of evangelical protestant belief.

Anyway, today Sullivan finds another great Christianist quote:

"I don't believe there's such a thing as the separation of church and state. In fact, the First Amendment to the Constitution actually calls on the United States Congress to make sure, to ensure that people are allowed to practice their religion."

Or so says Leo Berman, sponsor of a bill in Texas to create a mandatory bible-study elective in all Texas schools. In this case, it appears that Berman does not consider atheism to be religion, it is the absence of religion in his eyes. At the same time though, one of the more common statements that those pursuing Christianist goals will make is that atheism is just another religion.

It seems in fact that the rhetorical divide is entirely obvious, when attempting to fuse religion with state power, Christianists determine that atheism is not a religion (therefore denying that atheists' rights are infringed by such attempts). When attempting to limit the presence of ideas that they consider proxies for atheism in the public square (most often this means evolution), Christianists resort to declaring atheism "just another religion."

For the record, a query of atheist websites reveals that most atheists do not consider what they believe to be religion (I guess my little business idea of selling Richard Dawkins icons is a bust now). I thought about this and remembered that many protestant Christians are also fond of making the claim that they have a relationship with Jesus, not a religion. I suspect that neither group though would want these assertions to undercut their legally defined religious freedoms.

Monopolizing Jesus

This morning I came across this post on the word "Christian" and how it is used. The problem is that the media has tended to pretty much go along with the evangelical protestant vision in which evangelicals get to own the word "Christian" and therefore exclude mainline protestants, Roman Catholics, et cetera.

Rome has always claimed that it's the one true church, but it hasn't got the sort of uncritical press support that the evangelicals have gotten:

"It made news when James Dobson said of Fred Thompson, a baptized member of the Church of Christ, that 'I don't think he's a Christian.' But his spokesman explains Dobson's point: “We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians.” So it's not just Catholics and Mormons: now all of mainstream Protestantism is "non-Christian" in the view of the Republican ayatollahs. It would be nice if political reporters made that clear to their readers."

There is a real danger here that evangelicals with their politcal clout and their media savvy could make a new protestant orthodoxy that would become increasingly unrecognizable in mainline churches. All this would be aided by press whose ambivalence about understanding (not necessarily endorsing, just understanding) religion allows it to take everything that Dobson says at face value.

A Good Friday Thought

I'd like to think that we've progressed in significant ways over the past couple millenia. Slavery is mercifully constrained, women are no longer considered property. Nonetheless, I can't help thinking that, as Christians comemorate the subjection of an innocent man to a show trial, torture, and execution in the middle east by an occupying army, so very little has changed.

Changing Narratives

It seems as though the Prayer Palace is bringing in a forensic accountant to fix the slight image problem that the Star gave its millionaire pastoring team. I imagine that the church can probably spin the audits whatever way it wants - and I suspect unless someone is blatantly caught with their hand in the till, that the leadership will declare the problem solved.

Why? Well, it appears from the above articles that the Melnichuks have the congregation believing that a pastor is sort of like a CEO - complete with the compensation package. So an audit will turn up that the Melnichuks are getting paid an outrageous sum - with the full knowledge of the overseers of the church's financial affairs - and the congregation will accept it.

What needs to be challenged in this situation is the underlying notion that church leaders are entitled to ridiculously wealthy lifestyles on the backs of a poor congregation. Meanwhile the church cannot meet even a minimum of charitable obligations. This may not be illegal or even in breach of GAAP and so an audit may well be a clever way to hit back for the church. They are attempting to change the question from one of morality to one of legality.

Bush's Doctrine of Infallibility?

Maybe I'm overstating it, but David Kaiser reports on a conversation that Bush had with historian Andrew Roberts:

"The president confided to Roberts that he believes he has an advantage over Churchill, a reliable source with access to the conversation told me. He has faith in God, Bush explained, but Churchill, an agnostic, did not. Because he believes in God, it is easier for him to make decisions and stick to them than it was for Churchill."

While Christianity does promise believers quite a bit (eternal life, et cetera) I was unaware of any scripture or church tradition that says believers have an easier time making decisions or that the decisions believers make in their jobs are inherently more likely to be correct. Of the many consolations offered by religion, I am not aware that "making decision is easy" has ever been one of them.

Not a great day for Jesus

First there was the wealthy pastor and his impoverished flock, now this pithy observation from Andrew Sullivan:

"The religious right base actually seems to believe in torture. Along with making lots and lots of money, and losing weight, torture is now apparently a one of Jesus' core teachings."

There is no limit to how human avarice and cruelty can contort any philosophy - be it religious or secular - to satisfy the basest of desires.

Do As I Say...

It's a statistic that I've seen in a variety of places, and repeated yet again here. Those in the Bible Belt of the US and those who identify as evangelicals are more likely to be divorced. For what it's worth the stats cited in the above post were compiled by George Barna, a born-again Christian. All the focusing on the family and the attempts to "defend" marriage seem to not have been paying off. Why?

I have a few ideas of my own, but for now, it's too late to get into them.