Now safely out of BioLogos and Eastern Nazarene College, Karl Giberson is slowly starting to go after evangelical Christianity, its stupidity, and its unholy alliance with politics. In a piece in today’s Guardian (“Growing up in Michele Bachmann’s world“), Karl bemoans the anti-science culture of Christianity exemplified by Michele Bachmann and Ken Ham, though Giberson still touts people like Francis Collins as examplars of rationality:
There are, fortunately, many evangelical scholars – National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins and historian Mark Noll come to mind – who are quietly raising alarms about all this dangerous anti-intellectualism, warning us about populist gurus who are marketing a “Christianised” version of knowledge that, on closer examination, turns out to be neither Christian nor knowledge.
Unfortunately, millions of evangelicals – and this would include much of the political base being courted by the GOP presidential candidates as well as the candidates themselves – are trapped in an alternative “parallel culture” with its own standards of truth. The intellectual authorities mentioned above – with the exception of Schaeffer who died in 1984 – all have media empires that spread their particular version of the gospel. Millions of dollars every year support the production of books, DVDs, radio shows, school curricula, and other educational materials. Very few evangelicals grow up without hearing some trusted authority – perhaps even with a PhD – tell them that the age of the Earth is an “open question”. Or that scientists are questioning evolution. Or that gays are getting spiritual help and becoming straight. Or that secular historians are taking religion out of US history.
Historian Randall Stephens and I have been interested in this alternative knowledge world for years. We grew up in it and emerged from it unscathed – as near as we can tell – but many of our evangelical students over the years have arrived at college with “truths” from this alternative knowledge world written on their hearts. Harvard University Press has just published our sympathetic insiders’ analysis of the parallel culture of American evangelicalism. Titled The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, we look at how evangelical knowledge structures are exploited by media savvy authorities like those mentioned above.
And, as we watch the GOP candidates enthusiastically promote discredited ideas from this alternative knowledge world, we worry.
Oh, Karl! If you could only go just a few “discredited ideas from this alternative knowledge world” farther! Two of these are God and Jesus.
And do realize that Collins himself purveys a “dangerous form of anti-intellectualism.” Recall that he finds evidence in science for God, and one bit of that evidence is the “Moral Law”: the fact that humans show a sense of right and wrong. Science is making inroads on that, and Collins should simply stop going around proclaiming that morality (whose rudiments we see in our primate relatives) constitutes evidence for God. Yes, our refined moral sense is unique, but so is our ability to write. Is that evidence for God, too?
And recall as well that Collins saw the rape of his daughter as a tool that God gave him to learn forgiveness. Let me recount how, in his book The Language of God, Collins rationalized this horrible act as a gift from above:
As much as we would like to avoid those experiences, without them would we not be shallow, self-centered creatures who would ultimately lose all sense of nobility or striving for the betterment of others?
. . . In my case, I can see, albeit dimly, that my daughter’s rape was a challenge for me to try to learn the real meaning of forgiveness in a terribly wrenching circumstance. In complete honesty, I am still working on that.
The notion that God can work through adversity is not an easy concept, and can find firm anchor only in a worldview that embraces a spiritual perspective. The principle of growth through suffering is, in fact, nearly universal in the world’s great faiths.
Nothing more need be said except that Collins’s faith has led him into the most disgusting of post facto rationalizations. His God is truly a odious one, and he has no business foisting it on the world.
Perhaps you readers can help persuade Karl to become a full apostate instead of straddling the fence.
Collins seems to genuinely have no idea how monstrous this sounds.
Here’s a hint, Francis: a god that has your daughter raped to teach you forgiveness is not a god worthy of worship.
Except for, as Jerry notes, that whole “believing in a god” thing.
Apparently God does this stuff. He snuffed Job’s children and their mates, as well as animals just to settle a bet.
And there’s that worldwide flood thingy.
Yea, using children to teach adults or parents a lesson is unbelievable. Parents kill their children and say “God told me to do it” and they get capital punishment or life in prison. Three thousand years ago they make you a prophet (Abraham).
Hooooo-boy. Now that’s a toughie.
Uncle Karl, I think the time might have come for you to read the Bible.
Start, of course, at the beginning, and ask yourself how you could ever have taken seriously a faery tale about an enchanted garden with talking animals and an angry giant. Then, as you’re tut-tutting about how it’s all a metaphor, try to explain exactly what the meta is really for. Is it a good thing that the deadbeat single father kicked his sick and naked toddlers to the curb after they drank, at the urging of his babysitting loser brother, the paint thinner he had left in the ‘fridge?
Not that much farther in, you’ll come across a talking plant, fer Chrissakes, that gives magic wand lessons to the reluctant hero…so the verbose vegetation can have an excuse to open a can of biowarfare whoopass on innocent Egyptians the likes of which would make even the worst of the 20th Century tyrants blush.
And it’s not like Jesus is any better. Not only did he personally reanimate a fetid corpse; not only did a zombie horde descend upon Jerusalem in protest at his execution; but he himself wandered Jerusalem for a month and a half, wounds still holey, and had his thralls grope his guts through his gaping chest wound.
That, of course, came after he gave his most famous speech…in which he announced that he would personally see to the infinite torture of all men who committed the horrible thoughtcrime of looking at at a pretty woman and thinking, “Yeah, I’d tap that.” Unless, of course, the men immediately, right there on the spot, gouge out their own eyes and chop off their own hands. Another gem in the Sermon is the choice offered to women: remain in an abusive marriage or suffer the same infinite torture. Oh, and by-the-way, Jesus later went out of his way to tell a parable that demanded all non-Christians be slain at the foot of his altar as a blood sacrifice and punishment for failing to submit.
By now, you’re probably shouting, “Parable! Metaphor! Not literal!” But ask yourself an essential question:
Has Jesus read the Bible?
Not, of course, “Did Jesus read the Bible during his tenure on Earth in the first century?” But, rather, “The Jesus who is seated at the right hand of the Father and who will judge the living and the dead — has he read the Bible?” Because, Shirley, he must have, and he must also know that it’s billed as his officially-authorized biography. So either he’s happy that it’s such a revolting pile of shit or he’s powerless to do anything about it.
Lastly, take a moment to review the contemporary historical record in order to get an idea of what Jesus was really like. Read what Philo of Alexandria thought of the human incarnation of the Logos, what the Dead Sea Scrolls record of fulfillment of the Isaiah prophecies, what Pliny the Elder thought of an actual, honest-to-Jesus miracle worker in his lifetime, what the Roman Satirists thought of the juiciest gossip to come out of the Mediterranean that century.
All in all, I think you’ll find the reality of the Greatest Story Ever Told™ to be not quite so great, after all.
Cheers,
b&
+27 interwebs for you.
Indeed, hear, hear, bravo, and all that!
That’s all well and good, but… don’t call me Shirley.
To me the fact that Christians early on had to resort to inserting fraudulent passages in Josephus proves that they never had anything to show in the way of written extra-biblical evidence. Otherwise, why bother to create forgeries? Therefore, the Bible is almost certainly all there is to build a case for Christianity. And as we all know, and as Ben nicely demonstrated again, the Bible opens with nonsense and ends with nonsense, and in between there is still more nonsense.
“To me the fact that Christians early on had to resort to inserting fraudulent passages in Josephus proves that they never had anything to show in the way of written extra-biblical evidence. Otherwise, why bother to create forgeries? Therefore, the Bible is almost certainly all there is to build a case for Christianity.”
But they inserted fraudulent passages into the bible, too – patches where it seemed that Jesus had got it wrong, like no exceptions for divorce (Matt 19:9), or Moses instituting circumcision (John 7:22).
That goes almost without saying. They were patching fraud with fraud. Still good to point this out, though.
… and chop off their own hands
How would you chop the second one off?
That’s what Christian friends are for.
You’d think the creator of the universe could come up with a better way to teach him forgiveness than to have an innocent 3rd party raped. And if it had to be rape (you know, being very mysterious here), why didn’t God just have Collins himself raped? Wouldn’t that have been a better test?
I’m not sure who would be easier to forgive–my daughter’s rapist or my own (speaking hypothetically). The pain of such an event is unimaginable prior to its experience. The really insane part is thinking that the lesson MUST be taught via rape. Is forgiveness such an important lesson that it couldn’t be learned through, say, a misunderstanding? Or a minor fender-bender? Or a ruined article of clothing? (my wife still can’t forgive me for putting that sweater in the dryer). And why must HE be taught that lesson? Did he have an enormous backlog of forgiving that he needed to do that necessitated one massive lesson?
Oh, wait, that explains the Catholic priests… they’re just tools to teach parents about forgiveness.
Why “teach” forgiveness at all? Why couldn’t the creator simply create man with the forgiveness ability built-in already?
Not sophisticated enough. Try again.
If you consider your question from the point of view of the ineffable ground of all being, outside of space and time, you might begin to appreciate why your question is not worth posing in the first place. So shut up.
Of course when it comes to ailments of the body, Jesus need only say the word and you shall be healed. But to correct ailments of the mind and bad behavior, the Alpha and the Omega has to go through hoops raping daughters, and drowning whole cities.
Apparently the the physical workings of the mind is mysterious even to the Almighty.
It is simply sick for some to find rape as a god given opportunity to learn forgiveness. Sick
a little OT:
The normally annoying Fox cartoon ‘The Cleveland Show’ last night did a rather cutting job on religion in general and Christianity in particular, where the older son declares himself to be a non-believer and the family make complete idiots of themselves trying to convince him otherwise.
I was waiting for the typical ‘soft core’ ending where all is forgiven but it didn’t happen.
Seth MacFarlane has long been an out atheist, and his three shows reflect that pretty well. One of my favorites was in Family Guy, a doctor held up a chart showing the levels of mental retardation which had “Creationists” at the very bottom.
Well, that’s easy for we to say. we who have our bread secured in the secular economy. When I declared apostasy, I left a congregation, and that was it. But we’re asking Karl to renounce his living (he ain’t gonna sell The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age as an atheist) and, I’m guessing, much of his social network.
If Giberson publicly declares himself to be an atheist, I promise to be his friend.
Yes, Karl. I agree with you. Much of … virtually all of … every-bit-of with one or two exceptions of evangelical Christianity is heavily biased against things we like to call “facts”.
And those people vote. Vote for perfect morons. Proudly, fiercely, devotedly vote for people who deny the simplest, most non-controversial facts — like whether vaccines are good for people, or whether the universe is more than 6,000 years old.
That’s something we agree on. We need to work on that.
There’s something else we need to work on as well, one that you might be able to discuss with Dr. Collins, if you’re still on speaking terms. And that’s the notion that your holy book — whether you take it all literally or whether it’s more metaphor than fact — is the source of modern moral thought.
Consider this: The bible does not condemn child rape. The bible does not condemn child slavery. The bible does not condemn slavery.
The bible is not the source of our US (and indeed Western) civilization or our forms of government. There’s nothing in the bible about democracy, multiple co-equal branches of government, universal suffrage, or equality under the law. In fact, the bible tells you (not me, I don’t believe in the thing) not to sue your neighbor, and if your neighbor sues you that you should voluntarily give both compensatory and punitive damages without a fight. It suggests that our response to the 9-11 attacks should have been to open our borders to invite more attacks.
Oh no, the bible is most definitely not the source of our modern morals, ethics, system of governance, or anything else. Except perhaps blind pig-headed irrationalism.
Indeed, most evangelicals I’m aware of seem to be actively working toward a peculiarly anti-Western “ideal” — that of a kingdom with a half-god sitting in judgement of every person in the world. After, of course, an earth-shattering genocide. Talk about a non-Enlightened viewpoint!
Time to grow up, Karl. Seriously. There is no Jesus — if he ever existed as a “real” person (doubtful, in my mind), he was completely human, did not perform any miracles and is just precisely as dead as every other First Century human. Which is to say not just merely dead, but truly most sincerely dead.
And when you die, that’s what you’ll be, too. No heaven, no hell, no judgment, no grandma waiting for you with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. It’s a lie. A myth. A fairy story. And since the after-death experience is the entire and total reason for your brand of religious belief — it’s time to let it go. It doesn’t exist. It’s nonsense. Nonsense that even my 8-year-old self could suss out. Why an otherwise intelligent, competent adult would believe in such complete and utter horse crap is beyond my ken.
Let it go. Join the grown-ups. Your life will be much the richer for it.
Some parts do. Others suggest we should have killed all Afghan men, women, and boys, and taken the virgin girls for sex slaves.
Well, the part I’m speaking of comes straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
Evangelicals are all about telling us that the OT doesn’t matter when there are contrary instructions in the NT.
Jesus meek and mild is purported to have said the words about no-suing, giving up lawsuits in the favor of the plaintiff, and not retaliating against attack from another. That’s the guy Karl believes existed. He believes that those words came from the man’s mouth. He can apologize for the OT’s violence by proclaiming the existence of Jesus. Which makes little sense, but that’s what Christian apologists do all the time.
Except, of course, when they’re talking about parts of the OT which mention “abominations” that they’re interested in preventing. Like being gay or eating shellfish. Then, the OT is totally the last word on the subject. Even when it isn’t.
On tags, as well.
Nicely done.
Uncle Karl has got to stop pretending that people like Francis Collins are intellectually respectable believers. What he should do is to define what he means by an intellectually responsible believer, and then see if any evangelical beliefs can be beleived by someone like that. If he would do this he’d see in a moment, that the kind of leader he’s looking for can’t be found — otherwise, surely, he’d be it!
Collins shows that being a scientist is clearly not enough. His religion must also make some show of reason. Collins’s belief that his God actually had his daughter raped so that he could learn forgiveness is so contemptible it’s hard to find enough contemptuous names to call him! If God wanted Collins to learn forgiveness, why didn’t something bad happen to him? What a fool!
The way Collins rationalises his daughter’s rape is like the Chief Rabbi in England trying to justify his father’s miserable suffering death. After his father died he even wrote a book in which he speaks of all that he learned as his father died in misery. He calls it Celebrating Life forsooth! Like Collins, a complete idiot. He also wrote a book called The Dignity of Difference, but when he came to polytheists dignity got thrown out. Only one god can provide dignity. So it wasn’t about the dignity of difference at all.
Karl really has got to understand that there is no way to turn evangelicalism into an intellectually respectable form of believing. There just isn’t, and so long as he continues to think that there is, he’ll still be left without a real leg to stand on. The fundamentalists, sadly, know that this is true, but they believe that what is believed is more important that credibility. Indeed, difficulty of believing is a test of faith. It matters not how many contortions they have to put belief through in order to make it seem credible, so that they won’t seem completely stupid. The real test is faith. Hence the GOP presidential candidates. The know that evangelicalism is not really about credibility. That’s only thought up to defend themselves against accusations of being credulous. It’s not about meaning or sense or truth or credibility; it’s all about what provides personal conviction and power.
Karl badly needs to take that next step. And the $64000 question is ….
But something bad did happen to him — his daughter was raped.
Perhaps God was in his Allah persona that day, given that women are raped in the Muslim world to punish their menfolk.
Indeed, why use a third party?
And how does he arrive at the conclusion that his god wanted to teach HIM a lesson?
Maybe this god only wanted to teach his daughter forgiveness (or something else entirely) and not to Collins.
Or he wanted to teach her forgiveness and to Collins to kick some rapist’s butt.
Nah, can’t be. This god only wanted to teach him forgiveness, and that’s it.
Kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Some nice god you have there, Mr Collins.
I think we should keep an open mind about God’s intentions when it was decided that Collins’ daughter should be raped. According to the above, the perceived intent was to show poor, poor Francis the path to forgiveness.
An alternative hypothesis is that the crime was committed as an act of revelation to his daughter that her father is, truly, a dick.
Sophisticated enough for you?
And really, why should he take his daughter’s rape as a time to learn forgiveness of her rapist? I had a friend who was raped, and that was the last thing on our minds. Rather, its a time to learn how to comfort the victim and to help them feel safe again. The last thing on my mind was whether I needed to forgive some unrepentant (and uncaught) rapist out there.
And really, I don’t think its a virtue to forgive someone who has not realized what they’ve done is wrong, and who has not tried to make amends. I think Collins is confusing the notion of making ones peace with tragic events and actually excusing someone for doing wrong.
Scientists like Collins who (through impressive mental gymnastics pertainting to evolution) claim that orthodox faith and science are compatible are dishonestly ignoring another elephant in the room: neuroscience.
If there is no mind/body dualism, as neuroscientists tell us, that means no soul, no afterlife, no heaven and hell. And no “free will” in the traditional sense means no “sin”, whether you believe in the stupid Adam and Eve story or not. Hence, not point in crucifixion/resurrection.
Curious to see where Uncle Karl comes down on that.
Well, at the moment neuroscience is not yet at that point so his position is relatively safe but as soon as neuroscientists can rule out dualism (similarly as we can rule out geocentrism today) then all that will be a metaphor and it wasn’t meant to be read literally anyway and of course, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
As insightful Ape has implied, neuroscience HAS ruled out dualism. Jeez… anesthesiologists have ruled out dualism. Phineas Gage’s accident and its consequences have ruled out dualism.
If you haven’t read it already, try “Descartes’ Error” by Antonio R. Damasio. This is neuroscience ruling out dualism, by any measure.
Yes, I know and as far as I am concerned dualism has been ruled out a long time ago (even used anesthetics myself in an argument with a theist).
However, what I wanted to say, not very successfully as it appears, is that since neuroscience is still at the beginning of understanding the brain (and not only the human one) the dualists will always find a gap for their dualism.
Of course, every single one of the examples you cited should drive a nail through dualism but I’m afraid that as long as neuroscientists can not explain how the brain works so that even your golden retriever understands it, dualists will always be with us.
I’m afraid that as long as neuroscientists can not explain how the brain works so that even your golden retriever understands it
IOW, ignorant people who like being ignorant will remain so.
shocker.
Ah, right. The book I cited can be a tough one to follow, too (esp. for Golden Retrievers).
We need “Decartes’ Error” as a Teletubbies series, or something. Tinky-winky gets head skewered by iron bar, turns into Cranky-wanky.
And Mr. Sun baby merely looks down, smiles and giggles. I think that would sum it up.
lol
Eric is perhaps too modest to promote his own blog here, so I will do it for him. The best assessment of “growth through suffering” I have ever read is here.
Although god somehow deserves praise for the growth enhancing suffering inflicted on his daughter, I doubt he extends that same praise to the actual rapist. Such insanity is nearly beyond description.
Agreed. He’s on my must-read list. Someone else, please help me convince the man to write a book!
ditto
“Unlearn you must!”
/@
This is absolutely disgusting. Is Collins saying that, if he had been present to prevent his daughter’s rape, he shouldn’t have done it so that he could learn forgivness? He should have sat there and let his daughter be raped for the “greater good”?
Really?
Because that’s what his rationalization of this rape means. What a horrible, horrible belief system that allows people to think in this tortured way. What a barbaric religion.
Imagine there’s a doctor driving down a lonely country road one day. Not just any doctor, but a surgeon — a brilliant ER surgeon, perhaps the best who ever lived. A true miracle worker.
Up ahead, he spots a bright red motorcycle wrapped around a telephone pole, the rider a bit farther down the road, feebly twitching in a growing pool of blood. Long blonde hair streams out from under the helmet and is blowing in the wind.
The surgeon’s daughter has long blonde hair, rides a red motorcycle, and she had left the diner the same time as he, heading down the same road.
The surgeon doesn’t even slow down but instead keeps right on driving down the road, not even bothering to reach for his phone. Things happen for a reason, and he moves in mysterious ways, after all.
Cheers,
b&
That was me! Why didn’t you stop, you jerk?
Hey, you lived, didn’t ya?
Harden up.
😉
Am I missing something? I don’t see where Collins blamed god or that he (Collins) was declaring that god caused the rape specifically to deal with him?
. . . In my case, I can see, albeit dimly, that my daughter’s rape was a challenge for me to try to learn the real meaning of forgiveness in a terribly wrenching circumstance. In complete honesty, I am still working on that.
The notion that God can work through adversity is not an easy concept, and can find firm anchor only in a worldview that embrances a spiritual perspective.
It seems the take from this is that Collins admits facing an extremely hard personal challenge and that somehow his relationship with his God developed through the adverse circumstances (presumably with a result of Collins gaining a better understanding of forgiveness.)
Saying that “God can work through…” is the same as saying “God did this” as far as I’m concerned. That would seem to be the plain English interpretation, no?
…unless, of course, you’re positing that the god saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate his non-omnipotence, non-omniscience, and non-benevolence to Dr. Collins.
I actually think Epicurus had the last word on this subject — some 300 years before the alleged life of Jesus.
What’s with this forgiveness business anyway? Why would I ever want to forgive someone who raped my daughter, except out of some monstrous, depraved kind of egoism? That is to say, because it would make me feel morally superior. How about my daughter? Wouldn’t she think: “How can dad forgive that scumbag? Was it in his eyes not so bad after all? Are dad’s feelings more important than mine? Did this happen so that he can announce to the world what a fantastic Christian he is because he forgave the filthy rat that raped his daughter? Does he see it as some kind of sick test of his belief? How about me? Where do I fit in? Am I just a disposable tool of that horrible god of his?”
Yes, how about her?
Collins actual daughter got lost behind his own cognitive dissonance, and his chance to tell a “good story” to sell his book.
oh, and the waterfall thing?
a complete fabrication. long before he wrote that book, he said his re-conversion indeed centered around his daughter, and a death in the family.
no waterfalls were mentioned before the book.
but the waterfall makes a much prettier story…
A religion based on lies can only be maintained through more lies. Lies attract lies like rotten meat attracts blow flies.
That sounds like some old Chinese proverb, but I just made it up 🙂
well, it is a rather obvious truism, as were most of Confucius’ sayings.
‘Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive’
…which of course is not Confucius.
🙂
The waterfall story has always struck me as being so stupid that I hope he did make it up. Every time I read about the rape story I feel so much rage at Collins that my brain shuts down.
Exactly how I feel. You said it better.
It seems to me that the forgiveness trope in Christianity is one of those many antiquated approaches to adjusting mental states. Anger, and settled anger especially, can be very problematic for the individual experiencing it and also for the society in which such a sufferer lives. But using forgiveness theology is much like using a shepherd’s staff to perform brain surgery. It’s things like this that should cause more liberal Christians to discard or greatly reduce their focus on ancient mental and social change structures.
If experience is any guide, the other evangelicals will be kicking Karl’s ass non-stop from here on out. He may want to remain in their ranks, but unless he’s willing to be a whipping boy forever, he’ll have to seek better places.
Like freethought, where honesty is actually appreciated.
Karl can always use this a god given opportunity for growth through suffering.
“Alternative knowledge”? Isn’t it either knowledge or not? If it is known to be false, how could it qualify as knowledge?
In a comedy sketch, Alexei Sayle once played a man who said of himself, “I’m an alternative comedian. I’m not bloody funny.” In the same way, perhaps alternative knowledge is alternative because it’s “not bloody knowledge”.
Similarly with alternative medicine. If it worked it wouldn’t be called alternative medicine but just medicine.
Exactly.
Oh, I can help with that. “Other ways of knowing” is just a euphemism for making shit up. But of course, if you point that out they will protest to no end.
Assuming that the folks who claim that other ways of knowing are available to them are sincere, it can’t be that they consiously make shit up. It must then be some kind of autosuggestion.
But you’re probably right and the assumption is wrong.
consciously
Why does a benevolent god allow that damned bee buzzing sound to start up every time I log onto this website?
I guess I can help with that as well: Jerry’s post on those bee parasites is still on the first page. And since the embedded video is from ‘arkive’ it starts automatically. He even said so in the first paragraph.
damnit, I was gonna tell him it’s all in his head, and he should be very concerned about these auditory hallucinations!
oh well.
😉
Oh, Karl! If you could only go just a few “discredited ideas from this alternative knowledge world” farther! Two of these are God and Jesus.
Give the man some time… Just over a year ago, he was going after you for your “poor understanding of science” and “pathetic grasp of theology.”
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/uncle-karl-on-the-warpath/
and
http://biologos.org/blog/doing-battle-with-jerry-coynes-army-of-straw-men/
The man has undergone a pretty rapid personal evolution from what we’ve seen in just a year. I’m going to look at the last few writings by Karl as a positive development. For now.
I agree with everyone about Collins and the daughter-rape thing. Only faith can warp a mind so much as to think that the omnipotent, benevolent creator of the universe would use the rape of his daughter to “teach [me] about forgiveness.”
Well, faith and narcissism. His daughter is raped but it’s all about him learning a lesson. Nice of her to help out. Not that Christianity and Islam aren’t essentially narcissistic to begin with.
The sheer narcissism of the idea that a god would have your daughter raped to teach you a lesson, and one which you still haven’t really learned, is shocking. That he is willing to admit to it in public is amazing. When I have childish and shameful ideas like this I do my best to keep them quiet.
I had a friend once who thought her 18 month old baby daughter had been given cancer in her brain in order to bring her (the mother) back to god. I was appalled by this idea but too young to know what to say to her about it. The idea of worshiping a being that would give your daughter cancer or have her raped for your misdemeanors, is really just craven cowardice in the face of cosmic bully.
Very few evangelicals grow up without hearing some trusted authority – perhaps even with a PhD – tell them that the age of the Earth is an “open question”.
Karl, it’s time you became acquainted with the decades of research that have already gone into this subject, and the influence of authoritarian thinking in childhood learning goes well beyond the evangelical cults. It is indeed about “trusted authority”, and it’s clear you don’t yet clearly understand why that’s bad.
Your gradual shedding of willful ignorance at least should not encourage you to reinvent the wheel.
There was a review on this very topic published by Bloom and Weisberg in Science several years ago:
Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science — Bloom and Weisberg 316 (5827): 996
and it’s even available for free:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~deenasw/Assets/bloom&weisberg%20science.pdf
the work on this stuff has been going on for decades, yet appears to be entirely ignored by any involved in the political or educational decision-making processes.
You want to know why the Gallup poll data on the percentage of creationists in the states hasn’t changed significantly in the last 30 plus years?
this is why.
W00t-W00t.
That’s probably because most people involved in the political or educational decision-making processes have a vested interest in promoting authoritarian thinking.
would that explain the American Psychological Association’s and American Medical Association’s refusal to acknowledge that this early cult indoctrination is a bad thing, that we should be addressing as culture/country?
gotta be more than just vested authority, but you’re right that is certainly a large part of it.
The US is a country run on people being able, with authority, to convince others of complete bullshit.
it’s like the marketing executives, uh, won?
An excellent point. And susceptibility to authoritarianism is probably a much more deeply entrenched human trait than we like to think it is…
Am I the only one slightly curious if Francis Collin’s daughter is religious.
Just to see for who God’s supposed punishment was meant by that twisted immoral logic of his.
All Unky Karl has to do is just sodding well go ahead and -write- that atheist book that’s been simmering away in his subconscious, ever since he realised that theism as he knows it is a string bag of empty promises and hollow threats made by a fictional vapourware deity. He won’t have to worry about pissing off his faithful/faithiest audience because he’ll have a new income stream: atheists & seekers who like atheist books! He’ll also get to keep the faith-sellers & fence-sitters because they’ll buy his book (or have their masters buy it for them), read only the blurb and proceed to write scathing & highly-detailed reviews & op-eds and entire books rebutting what they think he said (and, of course, making a bad pun on his title).
Karl, I promise I’ll buy one. And READ it.
Addendum: I would hope that if something as awful as rape happened to my own daughter, she’d slap me silly if I went and proclaimed it some kind of fucking personal opportunity for ME to learn something about forgiveness. It’s not an episode of the fucking Smurfs, mate, and it’s NOT all about you.
I’d also like Karl to please explain why Collins’ mysteriously-moving god would inflict misery and pain on a third party in order to teach Collins a simple lesson (he seems to have a habit of doing that). Perhaps the frozen waterfall wasn’t enough of a “sign” and the only way the Omni-God could further get into Collins’ head was to engineer a brutal attack on his daughter.
This is why we attack false beliefs, religious lurkers: not because of the belief in falsity per se, but because of what false beliefs can lead to. In this case, Collins’ false belief in an Omnibenevolent God lead from a vicious attack on an innocent party to a completely self-centred, insensitive and narcissistic rationalisation from an ostensibly intelligent person.
Faith corrodes. Not just your reason or your grip on reality but your morals & your empathy as well. And being highly educated is no guarantee of inoculation; even a gifted and accomplished mind can still fall prey to its own wishful thinking and self-involvement.
How sad that Collins is as nasty as most other Christians. They have the ignorance and arrogance to think that others should suffer so they can ‘learn’ something that will get them their magic present after they die. I would rather die and yes, go to the magical hell rather than have *anyone* suffer in some delusion that it is to my benefit.
Of course, I’d hate to go to heaven. It means you change into a really nasty person that laughs at the suffering of those in hell, even other family members.
Tribe Member: “Why, oh leader, has big hill made fire and go bang and kill many in tribe?”
Tribe Leader: “umm … ” [thinks quickly for an answer that doesn’t implicate himself] ” … umm … Our god want us to learn obedience and grow in his love”.
I was raised in the Christian fundamentalist environment. I was told the Bible was literally true. Because my parents, friends, teachers and ministers were Biblical Literalists, my knowledge of science was dismal.
At a young age I began to take piano lessons. But I reached a point where I could not master a simple piece of music, like Frank Mills’ “Music Box Dancer”. I cried in frustration as I could perform this simple piece of music. My mother accused me of being either lazy or having a secret sin in my life that was holding me back.
I one day talked to a parent of a musically talented child. I asked her what she believed was my problem. She asked me if anyone in my extended family had musical talent. I said “no”. She told me talent like eye color was genetic. If no one in my family had musical talent, chances were I would not have musical talent either. What she told me was both sad and also liberating. My dream of being a musician would never happen, but it was not my fault. My parents and their friends refused to believe “the genetic excuse”, but it was the first time in my life where I found truth in science and not religion.
Many of my fundamentalist friends had high IQs. But the censorship of science caused by Biblical Literalism held many of them back from their full potential. My friend Scott had almost perfect SAT scores. He was set to go to Johns Hopkins on a full medical scholarship. But his pastor and teachers knew they would lose him if he went to JHU. They convinced him to go to Bob Jones University and become a Bible Translator. Scott graduated from BJU, but never translated the Bible; he never learned second language or traveled outside of the USA. Today he is salesman. If my friend had become a doctor, he may have found the cure for cancer, but we will never know, his beautiful mind wasted in the name of Biblical Literalism.
Biblical Literalism is why America, a country of 310 million people, still needs to imports scientists from other countries. I work for an environmental agency and about a third of our engineers come from India. Biblical Literalism is a cancer on America, and America will never reach its full potential until our leaders stop pandering to ancient myths. Plus a better educated workforce could help us out of this recession.
It seems that you succeeded where your friend Scott failed. You may not have been as ‘smart’, you may not have had the right genes to become a musician, but at least you have wrestled yourself out of the morass of religion. Under these circumstances that deserves a big compliment. Or you can thank your genes. Whatever.
“I’ll teach you a lesson!” says God, twirling his moustache.
That reminds me of the famous poem by Osip Mandelstam about Stalin, of which the following is a fragment:
His thick fingers are fat like worms,
And his words certain as pound weights.
His cockroach whiskers laugh,
And the top of his boots glisten.
See here for the full poem (translated from Russian).
And Stalin was a pathetic amateur compared to Francis Collins’s god. The Gulag a holiday camp compared to god’s Hell.
Why do people worship such a monster? There must be deep and troubling psychological reasons behind that.