Papa’s got a brand new book, with Papa being NYT columnist Ross Douthat and his new book being Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. Douthat makes the familiar argument that it’s more rational to be religious than atheistic or agnostic, and pushes his own Catholicism as the “right” religion. It’s bad enough that a NYT columnist is deluded in this way, but it’s worse when he proselytizes his faith all over the Internet, trying desperately to make people embrace Catholicism.
Excerpts of this book are everywhere, a form of self-plagiarism and self-aggrandizement that is especially prominent in the deeply pious. I’ve criticized Douthat and his book excerpts several times, but of course folks sufficiently desperate to find “the meaning of life” in religion—to fill their God-shaped hole—will make the book a best seller. The excerpt for today was published in the Catholic journal The Lamp, (characterized by the newspaper The Catholic Spirit “the Catholic version of The New Yorker”), and you can read it for free by clicking on the headline. Here Douthat reveals the extent of his delusion: the things he thinks about Catholic dogma that are actually true.
An excerpt (it’s longer but I can’t bear to reproduce more than this). Bolding is mine:
But isn’t all this talking around an essential question, which is whether I think the tradition I’ve ended up practicing is actually true? Not just true enough, not just pointing toward God, not just generally accurate in its description of the nature of God or the cosmos, but also true in its most important claims about reality? After all, Catholics don’t just stand up on Sundays and proclaim their belief in monotheism, a diversity of supernatural beings, sacramental grace, and the goodness of creation. We profess belief in “one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages,” who came to earth and “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,” who died on the cross in Roman Palestine and “rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,” who will eventually “come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” And that is just the creedal condensation of a long list of specific claims about the way to salvation, the requirements of the moral law, the authority of the bishops and the pope—enough to fill a thick bound catechism, at the very least.
When I say the Nicene Creed, I mean it. I am open to hidden complexities and unexpected syntheses, but in the end I think that God has acted in history through Jesus of Nazareth in a way that differs from every other tradition and experience and revelation, and the Gospels should therefore exert a kind of general interpretative control over how we read all the other religious data. I think the New Testament is just clearly different from other religious texts in a way that stands out and demands attention, that the figure of Jesus likewise stands out among religious founders, that together the sources and the story and the Nazarene Himself all seem God-touched to a degree unmatched by any of their rivals. So where there is uncertainty, tension, a wager to be made, I make my bet on Jesus.
I’d put up $500 against the truths of the Nicene Creed, but of course Douthat has never written a single sentence I’ve seen telling us what would make him reject Catholicm. (In contrast, I laid out in Faith Versus Fact the kind of things that would make me provisionally accept the truths of Christianity.)
Okay, it’s time to look at the Nicene Creed, also discussed in my book. Douthat’s claim that when he says it, he really means it is shared by many Catholics. That puts paid to the arguments of Sophisticated Theologians® that the Creed is either metaphorical or some soothing words to effect a bonding experience. Nope, that’s not why it was written. It was written so Christians could verbally profess the things they actually believe.
There are several versions of the Creed. This one I took from the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, titled “What We Believe”. I was going to put in bold all the empirical things that Douthat accepts, but I would have had to put the whole thing in bold:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
As you see, Douthat has dined on the whole hog from snout to tail: Jesus was the son of God (and himself God), was born of a virgin, was crucified as a way to save humanity, but then came back to life again and shortly thereafter ascended to Heaven. He will return some day, although we’ve been waiting 2,000 years. That apparently doesn’t bother Douthat despite Jesus’s disproven claim that he would return while some of his contemporaries were still alive. And on that blessed day of Rapture, Jesus will judge everyone, sending them either up, down, or in the waiting room of Purgatory.
Douthat also accepts the Holy Spirit, whatever that is, and, of course, the forgiveness of sin and eternal afterlife.
This is what Douthat thinks is really true, and what he wants you to believe (see his book). If he were the only person who professed this stuff, he’d be taken as a lunatic (see C. S. Lewis), but because the delusion is so widespread, it’s considered respectable. But how can such a man not only be allowed to write for the NYT, but to actually publish this palaver in the newspaper?
Coming: the Good News about Xenu.
h/t: Barry
“As you see, Douthat has dined on the whole hog from snout to tail: Jesus was the son of God (and himself God), was born of a virgin, was crucified as a way to save humanity, but then came back to life again and shortly thereafter ascended to Heaven.”
If he’s a Catholic, and believes in divine revelation, which is the assertion that God transmits knowledge to select humans that we would otherwise not be able to discern, then he sort of has to accept the whole hog. Otherwise, on what basis does he accept some revelations and reject others?
In a way, I’m glad Douthat is letting it all hang out. Many people believe as he does, but hide behind “sophisticated theology”. Religious people should be direct and open about their beliefs about reality, and consequently should be held to account for those beliefs.
The myth of the holy haploid zombie should be viewed in the same light as the scientologist story of Xenu, as both have about the same level of evidence going for them.
What a racket!
Crazy in his beliefs, but he is sure good at marketing his book.
“We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.”
— Christopher Hitchens
As the Western World becomes less and less religious Ross, and other believers, desperation to convince themselves of their beliefs becomes more and more intense.
I bought Ross’s book and hope to have time to read it. I hope to publish some information soon generally addressing “10 reasons to reject Christianity”, but not focusing on Catholicism.
I can’t help noticing the funny semantics of the word “believe”. Imagine how the Nicene Creed would sound if the word “believe” was replaced by the word “think”.
I think that there is God the Father Almighty in Heaven. I think that He created the heavens and the earth. I think that Jesus is His only-begotten Son, I think that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and blah, blah, and blah.
Even a hardcore fundamentalist would gag on the words. On some level they understand that their “belief” in these things is not the same as thinking those things are true.
If you hear me say, “I believe X” I mean that I think X is true. I might be wrong, of course. I occasionally use the word “believe” to indicate a bit of doubt. I sometimes say “I believe X” meaning I think X is probably true, but only probably. But whatever religious people mean by their use of the word “believe” puzzles me. My brain doesn’t swing that way.
I think the ambiguity of the word believe is a shortcoming of the English language.
Take the two questions
1) Do you believe in God?
2) Do you believe in evolution?
Both sentences are used in common conversations.
I answer to 1) I see no evidence for the existence of a God or Gods and 2) I accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution and no belief is required.
I wish there was a word for reject because of lack of evidence and one for accept because of evidence.
Any suggestions?
To Christians, the words “belief” and “faith” mean “trust.”
“I believe in the Bible” means “I trust in the Bible.” I have read that this is the original meaning of “faith.”
I try to say ‘accept’ rather than ‘believe’ – it seems much clearer to say ‘I accept the Theory of Evolution’ because that (to my mind) includes the possibility of further facts refining The Theory. ‘Believe’ tends to build a wall around existing opinions.
“Coming: the Good News about Xenu.” 😂😂
I feel the exact same way about Xenu as I do about catholicism. If they provide science based evidence then I’ll believe. Until then I’ll pass.
The speaking of catholicism, i highly recommend the film Conclave. It’s fascinating on multiple levels, including seeing how the cardinals etc are just as duplicitous, self serving and manipulative as any other big business.
“. . . that the figure of Jesus likewise stands out among religious founders. . . .”
That’s almost a tautology. Of course he believes that. If he thought that about Mohammad, he’d be a Muslim.
The Council of Nicea was convened to resolve disagreements between church traditions about what their flocks should be required to sign up to. We even know when the Council opened: on 19 June 325. And, like all such gatherings, it consisted of a lot of elderly bachelors sitting in a room and arguing about words and concepts for which there was no evidence, other than the words of a bunch of mutually contradictory texts that had anyway been re-edited many times over the years.
One thing’s for sure: the Nicene Creed would never pass independent peer review if it was published for the first time today.
Indeed. It doesn’t even mention Intersectionality….
Wasn’t there six different versions of Xianity at the time? And the version that won out was what we now call The Roman Catholic Church?
Bertrand Russell said an open mind is often an empty mind. Douthat’s article supports Russell’s observation.
Douthat never figured out that the people he observed were talking to themselves about their relationship with their own emotions and society. Far from being supernatural, their experiences were anti-natural. Reality is determined not by feelings of certainty but by agreement with reality testing.
The direct experiences of his parents and many others impressed Douthat to seek an indirect system to make sense of their strange encounters. That he failed to do so was not a failure of secular education but his own lack of effort.
Douthat misuses words when he says the big and important religions also tend to harbor real diversity. They don’t. They harbor uniformity.
Diversity refers to ideas. The big religions oppose ideas that disagree with official doctrine. People are kicked out of churches every day for failing to submit. Having a membership that includes people of different races or sexualities may seem like diversity, but if all must uniformly bend to doctrine the diversity is imaginary.
BTW, IMHO the Holy Spirit is prejudice personified. Spirits are emotions, and since a “Holy” spirit is to be neither questioned nor disobeyed, it fits the definition of prejudice like the proverbial glove.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I died. I was in an ambulance on the way to hospital when my wife saw my head roll over and shouted at the medic “whats happening”?
They pulled into a space at the side of the road (rather muddy), made my wife exit the vehicle, and placed electrodes on me. Fortunately they restarted my heart but for at least two minutes I was for all intents and purposes dead. There was no bright light or any other voices from beyond, nothing at all, so when anyone tells me about what is beyond this life I tell them my experience tells me they are talking nonsense.
I died about 50 times in one year. On stage…I tried stand-up comedy.
While many Christians view the Second Coming as a forthcoming event, it is correct that Jesus and others predicted that it was imminent – to occur within the lifetimes of his contemporaries and their children. This was preached by him (I do believe in the historical Jesus) and was taught and believed by others, yet here we are still waiting.
There are numerous examples which can be provided to show the belief and teaching of in an imminent return – below are just a couple which pertain to the grammar employed by Paul the Apostle.
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, (i)n a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (I Corinthians 15:51, 52). “We” here is first person plural, indicating that he and/or some of his readers would be alive (not sleeping) when the Return occurred.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord (I Thessalonians 4:15-17). Again, here Paul used a first person plural “we”, thus indicating that he and/or some of his readers would be alive at the Second Advent.
You can pretty well pinpoint, based on the Olivet discourse, that the Return was to occur when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans (70 CE).
One more reason that the Return was not an event to occur millenia away – John 21, Jesus predicts to Peter the type of death he will suffer. Peter asks Jesus about the fate of his beloved disciple, to which Jesus replied, If I decide to keep him alive till I Return, what of it? (That’s my version of it). In other words, the Return was to occur relatively soon, unless Peter was expecting this disciple to be alive for hundreds or thousands of years, which view seems unlikely to me.
I’m so tired, really exhausted, by the need of some public intellectuals to proudly proclaim their personal spiritual beliefs. People like Douthat are welcome to their superstitions and all power to them to share it among friends and colleagues. But here it is being promulgated in a presumeably for profit format to a mass audience for ( I’m guessing $49.95 plus tax). Remember, Hitchen’s seminal masterpiece, ”god is not Great” was not proselytzing a set of polemics on the one true and unassailable truth of any one religious dogma, but with wit and logic, exposing the hypocracy and irrationality of any of the revealed faiths in general. I have many friends from Jehovah Witnesses to liberal Jews and Catholics, and they do not feel in any way compelled to enlighten me on the truth of their faith any more then I am to enlist them to embrace the rewards of non belief. Miracles you want? …those first accidental replicators four billion years ago; thank them retrospectively.
One reason Christians in particular feel the need to evangelize is the doctrine that non-believers go to Hell and suffer torment for all eternity. The idea may sound preposterous to outsiders, but it is an essential tenet of traditional Christianity. ” If you can go to Heaven by being good, then Jesus died for nothing.” These people really believe that they are saving you from eternal damnation. They are doing you a favor. And yes, they are sincere. (In case you can’t guess, I was raised a Christian.)
Douthat refers to Jesus being crucified in “Roman Palestine”. Except it was called Judea back then, and was only renamed Palestine much later, after Emperor Hadrian drove out all the Jews.
When fundamentalists try to push their beliefs on everyone – or worse yet, remove the heads of those who disagree – it betrays an inherent lack of confidence. It shows that on a deep level they know their beliefs are nonsense, but if only they could get everyone else around them to believe in it too, then that cognitive discord would be removed. I mean seriously – does anyone even bother trying to spread the word that the earth is round not flat?
I am also most sincere in doing Christians an equal favor by having them consider the possibility that Jesus did indeed die for nothing if he thought it was saving me from eternal damnation. As Dawkins would graciously concede that it is not that the premise is outright impossible, but the odds are vanishly small, maybe a million billion to one if he is right. Because you are sincere does not accord you the privllege of infallibity. I was raised Jewish and right from the beginning as a child I was suspicious of a god who had favorites; a chosen people. It seemed so petty for the ruler of the universe
I should have said, “They sincerely believe that they are doing you a favor.” Just to be clear, I no longer think that way.
It is funny to think that flying up into the sky would get you closer to heaven. I suppose it could be a typo and it should have said, “He ascended toward the kingdom of klingon”. There is actually some supporting evidence for this idea to be found in the holy book of Brian. See Youtube video, ” Life Of Brian by Monty Python – Random Aliens Save Brian Scene” on Sharif Matar channel.
Were the people supposedly risen from the dead after Christ’s resurrection actually aliens from a Startrek spaceship. And were Christ’s healing powers from advanced alien medicine or abilities ? He arrived on a UFO seen by the “Three wise men”. Sort of fits but fits better the hypothesis that the stories are mostly fiction.
“maker of heaven and earth”
“he came down from heaven”
“He ascended into heaven”
When the Creed was redacted, the heaven was literally the sky above. When Douthat says the Creed, I don’t think he means the same thing.
I find that those who believe in religion of any sort have no concept of how Looooong eternity is. It goes on forever. They have no idea about what infinite means. That means the few thousand years ago their particular religion started is a split second in the billions and trillions of years they keep talking about. And those billions and trillions of years are a split second of infinite time. This so-called eternal afterlife they wish for will get incredibly boring reeeeaaal fast, and they will all really wish they were dead. I’m sure any god, should he/she exist is every day wishing for death. Eternal life would actually be hell.
Another issue I have with Douthat is his reliance on “evident design” (mainly of life) as evidence of the existence of a creating god. But take an energy source, and a replicating molecule, and through natural selection you will get billions of delicately “designed” organisms. It’s been calculated, for example that at a fairly low rate of mutation, it takes only a few hundred thousand generations for a fully-developed mammalian eye to evolve from a barely light-sensitive molecule. These religionists have no idea of how long a million, much less a billion, years is. So they see evolution as some sort of miracle, when in fact it’s pretty inevitable.