I’ve learned that Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Tayler is writing an anti-theist piece every Sunday in Salon. Perhaps this is their way of making amends for all the rump-osculation that they’ve done towards faith, and all the animus they’ve shown towards New Atheists. (His pieces are a great substitute for that church sermon.) For Tayler is, if anything, firmly in the New Atheist camp: evidence-oriented, “strident,” and as full of mockery as was H. L. Mencken.
In this week’s installment, Tayler’s invective increases: you can tell that from the title: “Marco Rubio’s deranged religion, Ted Cruz’s faith: Our would-be Presidents are God-fearing clowns.” (Subtitle: “Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton all spout pious religious lies. We must grill them on what they really mean.”) And someone is paying attention: as of a few minutes ago, the piece, only a day old, had 2011 comments.
It’s a long piece, assessing (and excoriating) the religiosity of Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mark Everson (the least noxious in Tayler’s view), Mike Huckagee, Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton, but I’ll summarize Tayler’s three key points:
1. Religion is a character flaw. Tayler mentiones this explicitly several times, and implies it a lot more. He even equates extreme religiosity with “derangement”. Do you agree? I tend to agree with at least the “character flaw” bit, for I see it as a deficit of the intellect to profess belief in a being and code of conduct based on neither rational consideration nor evidence. Here’s two quotes from Tayler (my emphasis):
Professing belief in a fictitious celestial deity says a lot about the content of a person’s character, and what sort of policies he or she would likely favor. So, we should take a look at those who have announced so far, and what sort of religious views they hold. Let’s start with the Republicans. Rand Paul, the eye-surgeon senator from Kentucky, is officially a “devout” Christian, but he has subtly hinted that he really does not believe. He finds it tough to see “God’s hand” in the suffering he encounters as a doctor, citing an example any New Atheist could have chosen to dispel the notion that a benevolent deity watches over humanity: “small children dying from brain tumors.” This gives Paul to wonder if one needs to be “saved more than once,” which implies his faith has failed him at times.
and this:
With the dapper Florida Sen. Marco Rubio we move into the more disturbing category of Republicans we might charitably diagnose as “faith-deranged” – in other words, as likely to do fine among the unwashed “crazies” in the red-state primaries, but whose religious beliefs would (or should) render them unfit for civilized company anywhere else.
Among the faith-deranged, Rubio stands out. He briefly dumped one magic book for another, converting from Roman Catholicism to Mormonism and then back again. (Reporters take note: This is faith-fueled flip-flopping, which surely indicates a damning character flaw to be investigated.
2. Hillary Clinton is as bad as some of these Republicans. Tayler argues this:
Yet Hillary does believe. Not only that, she claims to have grown up in a family elbow-to-elbow with none other than the Almighty: “We talked with God, ate, studied, and argued with God.”
Reporters, to verify her truthfulness, might ask her to be more specific: what type of cuisine did God prefer? Did God use Cliff Notes while hitting the books with you? How was God in a debate? Did he, being God, simply smite with thunderbolts those he disagreed with? If she replies that she didn’t mean to be taken so literally, then what exactly constituted evidence of the Almighty’s presence in her home? Did she actually hear a voice respond as she prayed? Did she have visions? If so, did she consult a psychiatrist? Which was more likely – that she was rooming with God or that she was suffering some sort of protracted, especially vivid mental disturbance? There are meds for that.
The virtual corollary to Hillary’s belief: her “Faith Voters for Hillary” website, which axiomatically tells us her “faith is deeply personal and real.” Sadly, we have no evidence to the contrary.
While what Tayler quotes is true, and she does indeed have a “Faith Voter” website, I think this is a bit over the top. Yes, she’s consistently mentioned her faith, but for some reason—maybe my own Democratic biases—I tend to think that it’s more a ploy to get elected than a genuine immersion in goddiness. And Tayler’s snarky questions seem beside the point. After all, it’s impossible to be elected U.S. President without pandering to faith, and of course Hillary wants to be President really, really badly. That would still indicate a character flaw—dissimulation and pandering for ambition—but at least her religiosity wouldn’t be as much an impediment to her Presidency than it would for most of the Republicans.
3. Religious professions are beliefs about what’s true, and it’s fair game to ask the candidates about them. I agree absolutely, although we’re not going to see that kind of grilling during the Presidential campaign. When it comes to elections, the behavior of the press resembles that at a polite dinner party: religion is simply off the table. Tayler:
Reporters should do their job and not allow any of these potential commanders-in-chief to get away with God talk without making them answer for it, as impolite as that might be. Religious convictions deserve the same scrutiny any other convictions get, or more. After all, they are essentially wide-ranging assertions about the nature of reality and supernatural phenomena. As always, the burden of proof lies on the one making extraordinary claims. And if the man or woman carrying the nuclear briefcase happens to be eagerly desiring the End of Days, we need to know.
Here are some questions journalists might ask the candidates. . . . So, if you accept the Bible in its totality, do you think sex workers should be burned alive (Leviticus 21:9) or that gays should be put to death (Leviticus 20:13)? Should women submit to their husbands, per Colossians 3:18? Should women also, as commands 1 Timothy 2:11, study “in silence with full submission?” Would you adhere to Deuteronomy 20:10-14 and ask Congress to pass a law punishing rapists by fining them 50 shekels and making them marry their victims and forbidding them to divorce forever?
It goes on like that, but you get the idea.
I would dearly love to see a reporter ask those questions. The problem is that the public would be outraged—not at the candidate, but at the reporter and her network. Anyone grilling candidates along these lines, which I consider perfectly fair, would herself be branded a nonbeliever and possibly lose her job. The network would get thousands of angry letters. But imagine someone actually asking a candidate this stuff. Those candidates wouldn’t be prepared for it, as they all know that questioning faith is a no-no, and so they’d waffle and stammer in response, giving all of us heathens a grand time.
I do wonder, though, how effective Tayler’s snark has been. I myself see it as one prong of a multi-pronged attack on faith, but some of the comments are like the one below:
SMontgomery42 minutes ago
It’s frustrating to be a progressive Christian, lumped in by not-so-well-meaning-or-well-informed press with the conservative Christians who not only believe every word of the Bible but believe they can read it with no cultural lenses.
I happen to know that Hillary Clinton is a Methodist and about as far from a fundamentalist as one can get. I don’t know her personal faith journey, but perhaps she views the Bible as I do: the history of a people trying to understand their place in the world and their relationship to the divine.
Atheists and agnostics, it’s fine that you don’t want to respect my belief in God. I’m not asking you to come to my garage and see my invisible pink elephant. As William James said, my experience is completely authoritative for me and 0 percent authoritative for anyone else.
But you’re alienating an ally. Like you, I don’t want to live in a theocracy. Like you, I believe large portions of the Bible are abhorrent. Like you, I find a lot of conservative positions to be pandering to bigotry and ignorance.
From my perspective, you’ve tossed out baby with bathwater. From your perspective, I’m still chained in ignorance to worship of a non-existent Deity. We can still be political allies *if* we don’t mock each other and denigrate each others’ beliefs and experiences.
Tayler could’ve counted me as an ally, but instead he opted to mock me, lump me in with fundamentalists, and so he lost me.
I’m not sure how Taylor could “lose” this commenter, as he’s not trying to do anything but criticize the hegemony of religion in American politics. The woman is not going to change her voting affiliation simply because Tayler criticizes everyone!
And I do see “SMontgomery” as flawed, admitting that his/her experience is “completely authoritative for me and 0 percent authoritative for anyone else,” a point of view shared by those who have been abducted by UFOs or have seen Bigfoot. What I would be concerned about were I Tayler is this: “Am I convincing people to not be religious”? I myself am not that worried, as SMontgomery is in the faith camp no matter what, but I wonder what readers think.
h/t: dano1843
Subscribe.
bashfull
the link is not to the Atlantic piece, but to popehat.com, interesting in its own right, but not the Taylor article.
I went straight to the article with no problem.
I’ve fixed it now.
SMontgomery42 should have nothing to worry about. Whatever is real and personal to SMontgomery42 is not up for debate.
But SMontgomery42 should consider that religion was not a character flaw in political candidates thirty years ago, but it is today.
‘Religion is a character flaw.’ is an axiom of the 21st century and SMontgomery42 does not have to believe it nor agree with it.
I agree with the character flaw comment. I have been saying that myself for a couple years. Whether extreme religion is a derangement is something that I can agree with, because of the things those people do and say. Certainly anyone who murders in the name of religion is deranged
As far as SMontgomery’s statement, it is a matter of perception. If he/she sees it as an attack on liberal progressive Christians, then the article is not well written.
Yes and no, but mostly no, for two reasons. One, as you yourself point out Jerry, is that religiosity in national politicians is very likely an indication of pandering rather than it is extreme belief.
Secondly, I tend to think we need to be empiricist and pragmatic about such labels and judge people by their acts rather than what they claim their internal state to be. The deranged people are the ones who try and step off window ledges because they think prayer will support them. If you’ve got someone who claims the world is going to end next week, and they don’t sell off all their stuff, then they aren’t deranged: they may somehow be sincere, but at the same time they’ve obviously got some part of their mind acting as a brake on their more fantastical thoughts.
I think the vast, vast majority of humans are perfectly capable of compartmentalizing their lives and using different methodologies and practices in each compartment…and we humans are so good at this, we can do it for our entire lifetime without much problem and without “exploding.” Religious folk compartmentalize a part of their life away from empiricism that we don’t think they should, true. But as long as the compartments hold up they aren’t much different from a sports fan or lottery ticket buyer, or what have you.
I also think this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. For long-lived animals that raise their young, “practice” and “play” are critical. But those activities would be impossible for creatures that cannot compartmentalize, cannot use different behavioral rules to respond to a play attack from a cub vs. a real attack from an adult. The ability to separate different contexts and behave differently depending on context is an extremely powerful and positive adaptation. The religious have used this adaptation to carve out a safe space for a set of beliefs that there is no rational reason to treat differently, but they aren’t deranged because this carving-out is perfectly normal human behavior, and in fact is generally more positive and helpful than it is negative and damaging.
I agree, and I frame it in a slightly different way: there are different kinds of truth. The mythic truth of the book of Genesis is its statements about our relationship with God, the universe, the world, and other creatures here below. You can agree or (as I do) disagree with these statements, but that’s on a whole different plane from taking Genesis as historical truth and saying that anyone who doesn’t isn’t a true believer. A person who truly believes this and bases their every decision on the Bible is indeed deranged, unable to separate reality from fantasy.
“The mythic truth of the book of Genesis…” is to me like the “sport” of playing soccer/football on a PC, in that it isn’t really sport at all, it just looks like one.
Well put. The first answer that came to me, though, was not so elaborate. If I DO equate “extreme religiosity” with “derangement” then none of the nuances and compartmentalizations you bring up would apply. By definition, it’s not extreme unless it’s deranged.
“But as long as the compartments hold up they aren’t much different from a sports fan or lottery ticket buyer, or what have you.”
Yes, but you’ve identified the problem, far too often the compartments do not hold up. Sports fandom and lottery ticket buying don’t often lead to homophobia, misogyny, evangelism, etc, etc.
Furthermore, liberal believers give credence to the to fantastical beliefs held by all in their “church” including the thoroughly deranged ones.
‘Sports fandom and lottery ticket buying don’t often lead to homophobia, misogyny, evangelism, etc, etc.’
Try soccer.
Not sure exactly what you are alluding to. I realise some sports fans become fanatical, and some sports fans indulge in morally questionable behaviour (recall the Soccer War). However I don’t know of anything in the rules of any sports code that promotes morally questionable behaviour (such as the books of the Abramic religions).
I also think this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. For long-lived animals that raise their young, “practice” and “play” are critical. But those activities would be impossible for creatures that cannot compartmentalize, cannot use different behavioral rules to respond to a play attack from a cub vs. a real attack from an adult. The ability to separate different contexts and behave differently depending on context is an extremely powerful and positive adaptation.
I don’t think you need to go that far in invoking evolution to explain compartmentalization. There’s no contradiction between “I’ll playfight with my siblings” and “I’ll properly fight that rival eyeing up my territory”. Compartmentalization is not any old ability to switch behavioural rules according to what’s going on; it’s an explicit defence mechanism against uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.
What you’re describing sounds closer to doublethink, anyway: an ability to believe two contradictory things without any apparent awareness or interest in the contradiction. It seems to me it would make more sense to explain it as simply the effect of taking on a lot of diverse ideas in a mixed pot society when you’re relying on more intuitive judgement that fluctuates according to mood, physical conditions, and who’s around at which time and place doing what.
Or to put it less technically: they just never get around to sitting down and sorting out their bucketload of ideas in any thorough way.
It seems to me that SMontgomery lumped his/her self in with fundamentalists, not Tayler.
Furthermore, she/he has decided to take offense at Tayler’s article and use that offense for justification for not allying with Tayler on all the issues he/she admits they have in common. Tayler did not make that decision for him/her. Does this mean he/she won’t ally with any atheists?
Here’s my comment…
I’m sick to death of the phrase “personal faith journey”, rattled off by believers as if it signifies an honorable pursuit. It doesn’t. It is semantically equivalent to “sequence of delusions”.
So when I read comments like SMontgomery’s I constantly have to translate. “I don’t know Hillary Clinton’s sequence of delusions, but perhaps she views, but perhaps she views the Bible as I do…”
No, SMontgomery, I won’t stop mocking your delusions. We can be allies in social causes but if the price of being your ally is to offer your delusions false respect, no thanks.
and sub.
Yes, I’m sick of it, too.
Because a “personal faith journey” is one which doesn’t overtly attempt to convert or “impose your beliefs” on others, those who
boasthumbly acknowledge following it think they’re being respectful — and assume they’re now owed the same respect.Yes, it’s better when they keep their views private, in a direct comparison to the Christian Nation people. But they’re not really keeping their views private. As you point out, they’re very deliberately framing ‘faith’ in a positive light and elevating Other Ways of Knowing above dispute. How nice they think God can be kept personal. And yet, considering the nature of the claim, how perfectly understandable it is when other people think God is more than a form of individual life therapy.
This bit is sort of interesting: “Rand Paul, the eye-surgeon senator from Kentucky, is officially a “devout” Christian, but he has subtly hinted that he really does not believe. He finds it tough to see “God’s hand” in the suffering he encounters as a doctor, citing an example any New Atheist could have chosen to dispel the notion that a benevolent deity watches over humanity: “small children dying from brain tumors.”
Also, “far-fetched fiction and foolish figments,” gets my praise for best use of alliteration ever.
Excellent. And I find that I agree with every nuance that you say about Clinton. I could not say it better myself. This is especially true b/c, well, I simply could not have said it better.
Jerry
I think you might enjoy, if for nothing else than for the warming tickle of bliss one gets when reading the Hitch at his most provocative, this paragraph from his book “No One Left to Lie to”(2000) about the Clinton family. I certainly don’t agree with everything Hitch says, but he says it with such force that I have no choice but to admire his vigor. Here he speaks about Hillary, and is in many ways creepily prescient:
“Everything about this campaign, and everything about this candidate, was rotten from the very start. Mrs. Clinton has the most unappetizing combination of qualities to be met in many days’ march: she is a tyrant and a bully when she can dare to be, and an ingratiating populist when that will serve. She will sometimes appear in the guise of a “strong woman” and sometimes in the softer garb of a winsome and vulnerable female. She is entirely un-self-critical and quite devoid of reflective capacity, and has never found that any of her numerous misfortunes or embarrassments are her own fault, because the fault invariably lies with others. And, speaking of where things lie, she can in close contest keep up with her husband for mendacity. Like him, she is not just a liar but a lie: a phony construct of shreds and patches and hysterical, self-pitying, demagogic improvisations.”
Pity she’s all we have. And pity she’s better than anyone on the other side, as many if not all of them are ready and willing, brandishing a car salesman’s smile, to send us marching toward the end of the world. Remember, none of them are scientists, and they’ll be the first to tell you that, but the last to trust the people who actually are.
Wow, that Hitch quote hits HARD
I know right? It’s crazy.
I read it every once and a while to remind me what good, hard-hitting writing sounds and feels like.
Yeah, but she is our “phony construct of shreds and patches and hysterical, self-pitying, demagogic improvisations.”
😉
Sigh…
You’re very right.
I enjoy Hitchens as much as anyone, but that’s just a damn long-winded way of spelling “politician”.
I’d extend that and say it’s an accurate description of most people, not just politicians.
On Hilary’s religiousness, “I tend to think that it’s more a ploy to get elected than a genuine immersion in goddiness.”
I completely agree. I always felt the same about Bill too. Anything less than pandering to the godly is political suicide in the US, at least at the level of running for president. If you’re going to play the game, play to win.
I think it’s perfectly possible and very likely that public professions of faith are a ploy intended to ingratiate and pander to herself. In other words, she believes it because it’s so easy to convince yourself that you do. You’re not supposed to think very deeply about any of it or you’re being foolish rather than wise. And it confers automatic credibility to your own self-worth.
Wanting to be spiritual is the golden path to becoming spiritual. It’s easier to kid one’s own self than other people — especially if we’re getting into the loosey-goosey God of Love crap. Conscious lying is more work. Politicians, like most people, are I think more likely to take the path of least resistance.
I was going to say something similar about pandering to herself, but for slightly different reasons.
It seems to me there may be a kind of gambler’s fallacy that goes along with being a politician. On the upward arc of a successful political career, it perhaps becomes easy to believe that you’re meant for greatness, unstoppable, that in some sense you create your own success through sheer force of will. Even temporary setbacks can be seen as failure of nerve or loss of mojo, to be overcome by renewed conviction in your own destiny.
Once you have that mindset, it may not be so implausible to declare a belief in God, and mean it, because in your solipsistic view of the world, God is just another necessary supporting character in the story of which you are the hero.
That is as “hard hitting” as the Hitchens quote Django Ellenhorn provided just above here. It paints an ugly, pathetic picture. And I think it is fairly accurate for many politicians.
It is really a shame that in what is arguably one of the most important and influential occupations in any human society, that the shit invariably rises to the top.
She certainly will shift with the tides. A while back she had come out supporting marriage equality for gays which was a purely tactical shift from her ‘let the states decide’ position of many years.
On evolution, it is interesting and important to note that she consistently supports keeping C/ID out of public schools in any form.
There is substantial evidence that Hillary Clinton is deeply committed to Evangelical Christianity. See this Mother Jones article from 2007 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-hillary-clintons-religion-and-politics?page=1 that points out her membership in the Capitol Hill group “The Fellowship” – along with Brownback and Santorum; the regret she expressed to the United Methodist Reporter that her church had focused too much on social gospel concerns in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, “to the exclusion of personal faith and growth;” the fact that when she first came to Washington in 1993 “one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group;” that she championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; and much else.
My personal concern if I were writing a piece such as Tayler has written is to step across the line into gratuitous insults that would alienate temperate readers. The practical reasons to investigate the beliefs of future presidents is three=fold:
1. Does their faith-based thinking carry over into the reality-based world? I want my political leaders to consider data when formulating public policy. Ideologically-based public policy is faith-based and almost certain to fail. The real world should shape their thinking, as opposed to their beliefs trying to generate a parallel reality.
2. Does their faith-based thinking lead to discriminatory beliefs regarding homosexuality and the like?
3. Does their faith-based thinking make them more likely to want to hasten the ‘End Times’?
For the sake of entertainment, and to get at number 1 above, I would like the press to ask questions about such otherwise inconsequential things as: Mark Rubio: How did you decide between the standard trinitarian view of God versus the Mormon view of God and Jesus? Aggressive questioning might help reveal crazy thinking as well as a lack of connection with reality.
I feel similarly. I’ve been contemplating doing an article about the religiosity of the candidates, so I’ve been thinking about this. I’m a huge admirer of Tayler, but I wouldn’t approach the issue the same way he did.
For a start, I think he’s a bit judgmental about people of faith. My own recognition that there is/are no god/s came fairly late in life, but I never rejected science, I freely criticized religious extremism, I never held any of the bigoted views (e.g. homophobia) that religious people often do, I thought religion was frequently poisonous (including my own) and much more. Basically I was the same as I am now except I believed in God. Most of the people I know well who believe in God are similar to how I was.
Depending on your upbringing, experience etc, it can take time to work it out, especially if you’re working, raising a family, playing sport or whatever – you just don’t have time to think and read about God. If you’re living a secular life with secular values anyway you just get on with it. And in NZ, it’s perfectly possible to live your life ignoring the question of whether God is real. We have extremists, but there aren’t as many, and religion is not worn on your sleeve.
So I would focus on beliefs that are potentially damaging, and religious-informed bigotry, and those who clearly have designs on your secular constitution.
Btw, I saw an interview with Lindsay Graham on Fox yesterday. He’s considering a run. They showed an infographic of the things against him; #1 was that he “believed in” climate change.
I wonder what the reaction would be if a candidate said that religion was a personal matter and just refused to answer God-y questions but was still open to answering ethical ones.
I suspect they’d be labelled an atheist and hounded to death. but, imagine if they gained a lot of support! It would be interesting to see.
They might still be labelled Catholic…
IIRC Howard Dean tried to take that route, but was frequently hounded about it in the primaries.
(He also tried to keep his wife out of his campaign, but once more was hounded till they began to feel she had to start making appearances.)
Charles – for an example of someone (even tho long-retired from politics) for whom the answers to 1,2 and 3 are all no, there’s Jimmy Carter. That clearly comes thru in his recent book (2014), A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power.
The book seems to provide a good reference, at the very least, that it’s possible to be progressive within a religious framework. I’m still not done with the book, and there are already many instances where the logical conclusion is that all of these religions are a crock, but he wants to fight the fight from within, and I can’t say I don’t admire that in a way. I guess it’s good that there are still some trying that, even tho it seems a fool’s errand.
I have not read his entire article on this but will do soon as I can. My concern is that he and maybe others of us are getting too deep into this and can make it simpler.
These are politicians wanting to run for office. So they want high end government position. The main thing to me is not getting into all the weeds of their religion but to know how much they are going to let it interfere with government decisions. I want them to say straight up that their religion is not going to affect their judgement in the day to day operation of government. I want them to say they believe in separation of church and state.
I want them to say, as JFK did back in 1960 or whenever, that their religion will have nothing to do with their decision process in office. That is all I want. If they cannot do this, they do not get my vote.
Randy, I’m so sorry to hear that you are so easily satisfied by mere representations from a politiican. Trust well placed?
I suspect what Randy means is that it should be an incredibly low bar for a candidate to make such a statement for the record, but that the majority cannot manage even this much.
So sorry that you are sorry.
Attempting to analyse the religious details of a dozen or more presidential hopefuls in the article or in discussion seems to be mostly a waste of time. Most likely you miss my point.
If you are looking to find what Tayler’s article calls for in the last paragraph I will certainly feel sorry for you.
Let’s just say you have 5 candidates running for the office and all 5 are Catholic. If you are interested in attempting to find out all the details of what each one believes, please do but I could care less. I only want to know if the candidate believes in separation of church and state and will govern without influence by religious belief. Certainly I want to know the position on a number of issues both domestic and foreign but I do not intend to dwell on all of his or her religious specifics. They can save that for Sunday.
Yeah, To insist more than you’ve laid out in you last paragraph is a total waste of time. There are no such candidates. I would hope that in an election in the not-too-distant future we could have a candidate who could answer religious questions with at least, “Really? You want me to make some profession of faith? Ask yourselves – seriously – have the professions of faith of any president in your lifetime REALLY held any guarantee that positively affected his presidency? These are all things that we dwell upon before an election, but after the election, their “faith” yields nothing, nothing positive anyway.”
I’m sure at times I do not always state the position with clarity as I should, but think about this. If Rubio & Cruz both suddenly became Atheist tomorrow I would be no closer to voting for either of them. Their positions on most all issues are still dead wrong and their religion or lack of it, means very little.
Also, think about what we as Atheist would look like if we wanted to analyse and pick over each candidates complete religious ideas as Tayler is doing to a degree in this article. We start looking like the republican right. This is how many of their voters determine which one they will be voting for. The important issues, who cares, we just want the religious stuff.
I think the question about JFK was more along the lines of “will he follow the instructions of the Pope or best interests of the American people?” – he was the first plausible Catholic presidential candidate. In that sense, I don’t think JFK was telling the truth when he said that his religion would not interfere with his decisions in office.
You might ask yourself how that would have played out had JFK been the first Catholic presidential candidate in the 2010s – when the right to abortion, death with dignity, and the like are playing out on the political stage.
I agree. Despite what any person might say when asked a question like that, in reality it is not remotely possible that their religious beliefs won’t influence their decisions. Even if they have the best of intentions. The question really is, to what degree is their decision making compromised by their religious beliefs. And that, in most cases, is a very difficult question to answer.
It is one that is perhaps discernable if the candidate has a record of previous service or what not, at least.
🐾
I wonder what the effects would be if Congress passed a law prohibiting any mentions of faith or invocations of religious doctrine by candidates who have announced their campaigns. Understand there’s a lot of grey-area, but I’m thinking of statements like “Martha and I read the Bible every night before bed”
The effects would be that someone would bring up free speech and that would be the end of that.
Now look what you’ve done, you made me remember this….
http://dailycurrant.com/2015/03/26/ted-cruz-i-masturbate-to-the-bible-every-night/
Since there are always some candidates that know they can’t win the primaries, I’d like to see one state they are an atheist. Once there is one openly atheist candidate others will follow.
It has to happen sooner or later.
You’d better hope the first isn’t considered “viable” by the pundits or pollsters – because their being outed as an atheist will almost certainly doom them, then others won’t follow. Much better for the first to be a complete dark horse who then does better than expected.
Is the “w” in the title of the piece on purpose or should it be candidates?
There are a lot of SMontgomery’s out there. He/she is particularly articulate. Taylor’s piece compelling casts the candidates’ in a deserved light. But accept the reality that pieces like that *will* alienate a significant group having 99% overlap with a progressive politics.
My preference would be to save the “mocking” aspect for when the debate is focused on theism/a-theism. Save it when going after a common enemy. (Though I hope Taylor keeps at it…)
Generally, I think some atheists just need to get out a bit more.
I read the article, and I have to temper my comment. I think Taylor’s tone is appropriate, as he is mostly railing against extreme views of Christianity, in the context that they have to be so expressed to enable a viable candidacy. A truly execrable state of affairs. For the SMontgomery’s, I’d ask them to consider how terrible this situation appears to us “rationalists.” Taylor’s last paragraphs are eloquent, and while diametrically opposed to the pablum quoted by the candidates, reads as entirely tempered and reasonable. That says a lot in itself.
I read the article. Sigh. Several comments: I agree with most of what he says, although the actual test for politicians should be how they will act on religious beliefs, not which ones they’ll embrace in public.
A comment though, about ‘deranged’ and ‘delusional’ thinking. These terms suggest that the person described has a brain disease that alters the brain’s ability to accurately assess the salience of percepts and leads to bizarre, personalized beliefs to describe those perceptions. Furthermore, delusions are almost never the only symptom of a psychotic illness; there are usually other behaviors that help differentiate sick individuals from people who assert erroneous or (to us) unlikely beliefs.
People brought up in a religion have the support of their co-religionists (and Tonya Luhrman) and much of society for their beliefs. And while religious folks often report ‘transcendent experiences’ (non-religious folks have these, too, they just label them differently), those ineffable moments are qualitatively (and quantitatively, I suspect) differnt from the hallucinations and referential ideas experienced by people with a psychosis.
As far as a quiz for politicians goes, the important thing to pin down is ‘what would you do about it’? The candidate may think that gay folks are condemned to the 7th circle of hell for their transgressions. But, does the pol support gay marriage? Laws barring discrimination?
I could go on…
You’re making a false distinction. Embracing religious beliefs in public IS acting on them. Your hypothetical pol who believes gay folk are condemned to hell IS making it harder for gay folk if he utters those beliefs out loud. Even if his/her vote is in favor of same-sex marriage (unlikely), publicly denigrating people for sexual orientation is a form of bigotry that should not be trivialized.
As for “delusional” implying brain disease, I disagree. It IS delusional to believe in things that don’t exist. The delusion enforced by social convention but it is still delusion.
sub
A person running for office at the national level, Congress or President – takes an oath to the Constitution I believe. Now, he may swear to it on some bible but that is just show.
What he or she should understand and do if elected to office is make decisions based on what is good and best for the people they serve and the country. I do not want to get lengthy with this but if the person comes right out and says, I cannot vote for any bill or proposal on rights to abortion or on rights for gay folks, that is it for me. When they do this they are admitting that the faith controls their decisions. I am sorry but that disqualifies them for the position.
” These terms [‘deranged’ and ‘delusional’ thinking] suggest that the person described has a brain disease”
One definition of delusion: Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact.
By that definition some religious beliefs are delusions, and although it is not explicitly so, religious faith could be classified as a brain disease. Perhaps the real problem is the stigma that has been attached to mental illness, and people of faith are by no means innocent there. Religious people often described homosexuality as a disorder.
The Wikipedia disambiguation page says “Deranged may refer to psychosis, a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a “loss of contact with reality”” which could also be accurately applied to some religious belief.
While it may sound impolite to describe someone’s beliefs as a disease or disorder, it doesn’t mean that they are not so.
I am specifically suggesting that we not use the terms ‘deranged’ and ‘delusional’ to describe religious belief and just call them ‘wrong’. I think that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and for human induced climate change substantial (although not quite overwhelming). But people who deny the truth of these ideas are probably not delusional. They are wrong, sometimes willfully so, but I would reserve the term ‘delusional’ for people whose beliefs are based on perceptual distortions due to brain disease rather than erroneous conclusions derived from religious upbringing, peer support, etc. It’s possible to change the mind of a person who has come to an erroneous conclusion, but nearly impossible to persuade a delusional (mentally ill) person of the error of their belief.
Let me see if an example can illustrate the difference between the delusions of a mentally ill person and erroneous religious beliefs. We were called to see a woman in the OB-GYN clinic who had gestational diabetes and had previously had to have a C-Section because the baby was too big to be born vaginally. This woman stated that she did not need a C-Section because she was a priestess of the flying saucer church and had been taken to the other world where aliens removed the scar on her uterus. They also gave her ‘god’s insulin’ so that she was no longer diabetic. Her husband disagreed with her and she started assaulting him. She agreed to be admitted to the inpatient psychiatry ward.
She told us that she regularly received verbal instructions from the aliens on the higher plane. They showed her signs (mostly how rocks were arranged) that indicated that they were watching over her. She often made stereotypic or bizarre movements with her hands which she described as ‘tropaic touches’ that would bring the aliens into our life. Other than high blood sugar (300 mg/dl), she was in good health. She declined further workup or treatment. We thought, based on her presentation and clinical history, that schizophrenia was the most likely diagnosis, although there was a list of other possibilities we wanted to investigate (drugs, cerebrovascular disease, mania, others).
The next day, several people came to visit her. They were all members of the Flying Saucer Church and were concerned that their priestess was in the hospital. I interviewed these people and they all stated that they believed their priestess had direct contact with the aliens, but all admitted that they did not. None of them heard the voices of the aliens or received signs. They fervently hoped that they would be blessed by these occurrences in the future.
The priestess suffered from a mental illness. She had hallucinations and referential ideas and these had led to a delusional interpretation that aliens were communicating with her. Her followers were not mentally ill (in the serious sense), but had religious beliefs based on the ‘prophecies’ of the priestess. They were wrong, but not delusional.
I’m aware that many people use the term ‘delusional’ to refer to people who hold beliefs that are contradicted by (overwhelming) evidence. I am suggesting a more restrictive use of the term.
We all, I think, understand you. Some of us simply think you are wrong. Not delusional, but wrong.
To hold obvious fantasies about the universe as truth in the face of overwhelming evidence is more than being wrong, be the ideas about alien visitors or talking snakes. That sort of willful ignorance is beyond simple error, which is how you prefer to frame it. We have a word for that sort of “more than simple” error. That very useful word is “delusion”.
Thanks for your comments.
As to there being little supporting evidence to go on, this may well be true, but also true of pretty much all of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, in the early days, many dismissed the subject for this very reason. When Eco Psyc was shown to explain more and more features of human behaviour the subject gradually gained acceptance. My point is that lack of supporting evidence does not, of itself, prove the theory wrong.
Sorry, I should have posted this under comment no. 26
squidmaster, under your definition, the woman who heard alien voices was delusional, but her followers who did not hear those voices were not.
So if religious believers claim that God speaks to them directly during prayer, if they sincerely believe that the inner voice they hear is the voice of God, why should we not call that a delusion?
This does not entail that we view religion as a mental illness or a disease of the brain. Healthy brains are capable of talking themselves into delusional beliefs — such as the belief that you’re in telepathic contact with a supernatural being. Religion enables such delusions in the absence of mental illness by making them socially acceptable.
It is, of course, not true that there is no religious test for candidates, despite what the US Constitution states.
Yes and that is the sad reality in which we live. If you had thought this back around 1790 or so they would think you were a little nuts.
But then they thought it was quite crazy to openly campaign for office too. Today they start doing it two years before the next election.
Or if your name is something like, I dunno, Bush, or maybe Clinton, they might start two years before the candidate is born.
They thought that as recently as 1960 (Kennedy promising to leave his religion out of his politics) and throughout the 70’s IIRC. I suppose an out atheist wouldn’t have stood a chance, but otherwise questions about religion were mostly off the table.
I think Jeffrey Tayler is pushing harder against religion than he has to. However, since most people aren’t pushing as hard as they ought to, it probably balances out.
As for the liberal and moderate believers, I’m curious about their answers to the following question: if the Religious Right WERE right about God — would you join them? I mean, assuming God revealed itself to you so that you knew you’d been wrong to be so liberal, so moderate.
Whatever the response — yes, no, or I don’t know — it rather clarifies Tayler’s concern. He’s not just shooting wildly at tangents.
Sub
I appreciate good, clear writing for “our side”, since it seems to be seen so rarely in sources other than “ours”.
However, I’m not comfortable calling all religious believers “deranged” as there are as many different “flavors” of religiosity as there may be perceptions of what real, true science and rationality are. I do not want anyone trying to force a particular belief system on all the rest of us; especially the most radical and weird. It may not be possible, but I’d prefer that we live and let live, with respect for each other (assuming that none of us are proselytizing and killing).
“Here’s two quotes…”
Jerry Jerry Jerry.
“Here are two quotes…”
But you’re alienating an ally. Like you, I don’t want to live in a theocracy. Like you, I believe large portions of the Bible are abhorrent. Like you, I find a lot of conservative positions to be pandering to bigotry and ignorance.
So why would anything that us atheists and agnostics do matter on these issues, then? I don’t understand what this dangling of allegiances is supposed to mean. If it’s your agenda to oppose theocracy, say bits of the Bible are abhorrent, and criticize conservative positions, surely the fact that we’re criticizing and mocking you is, at least here, immaterial? So what’s the threat? Either we shut up, or you cut off your nose to spite your face?
I think someone’s strategy needs rethinking. Or are we just that much of a “threat” that theocracy, bible whitewashing, and political cynicism are worth smacking us upside the head?
I am somewhat puzzled that on an evolution website no explanation of religion as an evolutionary construct has gained any serious consideration, (unless I missed it that is). I have posted on this possibility before but I get comments that dismiss the notion, either as it looks a bit like group theory or simply that there would not be enough time for the phenomenon to have evolved. As to the latter, there is no reason to assume that religion could not have had its roots way back when speech first began to emerge some hundreds of thousands of years ago.
So what evidence is there that religion is adaptive? Well, look at ISIS and how shockingly successful it’s recruitment success has been. Brain washing and fundamentalist religious indoctrination of the young, bright and educated seems depressingly effective. If there is “god spot” in the brain (call it what you will) which overrides intelligence and normal survival instincts, how devastatingly effective would this be in times of war? The use of human soldiers in adopting the strategies of ants and termites in providing dedicated fighting machines, caring little for their own survival, is so successful that these creatures now comprise about 10% of the planet’s biomass. (Yes I know their strategy developed by having non-breeding worker ants acting almost like mobile limbs of the queen).
Now, as to the charge of invoking group theory, this thesis is usually dismissed as failing by “defection from below” where the cowardly foot soldiers survive and the brave are snuffed out, bodily and genetically. Adding culture, language and ruthless intelligence to this mix, what happens then? If now, cowards are identifiable and ruthlessly punished, similar to the war machine tactics that existed under Ancient Rome, then this becomes a game changer. Where is religion in all this? As an additional spur to bravery and a strong disincentive to desert. An unseen but all-seeing god would tally all actions on the battlefield and dispense reward and inescapable punishment in the hereafter.
When the battle is over, the bravest survivors would get the girls, the shirkers would get their dues and evolution would do what evolution does. Those with the deepest belief would probably be the most effective fighters in this warring strategy.
It could even be argued that religions themselves could undergo some form of meme driven evolution. To be successful a religion must strenuously avoid any evidence of untruth or non-performance of reward. Thus, from first principles, promises must be delayed until the afterlife and be the most glorious and everlasting imaginable. All threats of punishment would deliver agonising torture without end, never mind how trivial the offence. All tenets must be strictly non-verifiable so that every fortune would be evidence for divinity, every misfortune evidence for the devil etc. etc.
It must be admitted that human beings are infinitely nuanced in their cultures and show great variances in behaviour patterns, so no one explanation can give the whole story. All I would say is that when otherwise intelligent people stubbornly hold on to the most ridiculous and unprovable beliefs, look for an explanation in our evolutionary past. I will leave the final word to Seneca.
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful”.
So that’s how the rhinoceros got his horn!
Perhaps the reason a biologically-driven website doesn’t spend a lot of time arguing about the evolution of religion is that there is precious little supporting evidence to go on. And reasonably decent evidence that biological models don’t apply well.
There is clear a biological basis for religion given that brains are biological and brains produce ideas. But one might as well consider clothing fashion in the same way. Or sport competition. Or airline flight scheduling. Some tools don’t apply well outside the contexts for which they were designed.
Thanks for your comments.
As to there being little supporting evidence to go on, this may well be true, but also true of pretty much all of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, in the early days, many dismissed the subject for this very reason. When Eco Psyc was shown to explain more and more features of human behaviour the subject gradually gained acceptance. My point is that lack of supporting evidence does not, of itself, prove the theory wrong.
It’s not much of a theory if it doesn’t have supporting evidence is it? I mean, a theory being a unifying framework around a body of evidence, if you don’t have the evidence, you don’t have a theory.
Nor does lack of supporting evidence lend any credibility to an idea.
Whatever biological basis there is for humanity’s ability to create delusional descriptions of reality, there is considerable evidence that people are perfectly capable of abandoning these sorts of ideas. Many of us here have done just that.
As to Seneca, there is an article in Der Spiegel in which it is suggested that ISIS’s success is due in large part to the organisational structure it was given by disgruntled and out-of-work (due to the splendid post-war of Paul Bremer & his pals) Baathist army officers, who are cynically exploiting those highly evolved religious tendencies that robin ducret, who seems to lack them himself, points to.
‘splendid post-war work of restoration undertaken by Paul Bremer…’ – don’t know why that meant missing.
bugger! went missing!
I have to admit that I had to read this comment a few times and am still not yet sure if it was in praise or being a bit snarky. I am pleased not to have highly evolved religious tendencies but the sentence construction seems to subtly suggest a twist of the knife. Anyway, I think I had now better let the subject drop.
Incidentally, not being within the scholastic field, I was musing on the possibility that I have committed some sort of academic faux pas in presenting ideas that have no supporting evidence. Perhaps I should I have used the term conjecture or whatever, just to see if anyone else had any relevant thoughts either in affirmation or refutation.
I think your latter interpretation is probably the better.
But more kindly, there have been a number of books on religion and the brain by such as Pascal Boyer which are well worth reading. But those who try to tie religion to biological evolution are usually the religious themselves, and in particular the Christian religious, who think that if a connexion can be found, or invented, then somehow God must be at the bottom of it all.
Well I’ve just downloaded “Religion Explained” by Pascal Boyer so I’ll see how this goes.
Oh, and Bruce Hood’s ‘Supersense: Why we believe the unbelievable’ is a very good book, though it is on how the brain works, and how, as Richard Dawkins lamented, it is ‘almost as if the human brain is designed to misunderstand evolution’ – and no doubt there are good evolutionary reasons for this: Hood suggests that we are naturally inclined to a creationist view of things since we are ‘naturally inclined to understand the world in terms of patterns, purpose, and causality’.
Religion in Politics is a very dangerous thing, remember the deranged Endtime wishing Michelle Bachman was at one time leading the Polls for the Election of the Republican Party Presidential Candidate, just think if SHE was walking about with the Nuclear Codes. Let us have some Honesty for once and stop pandering to the deranged beliefs of the Voter Base.