Shorter Dan Peterson:
Atheists wonder why we Mormons think our god is the right god, while everyone else’s god is the wrong god. But in fact everyone really worships our god, which is the right god. When people find out they’ve been worshipping the wrong god (which is actually the right god), I have it on good authority that the right god will give them a pass.
How terribly condescending. I wonder if he’d be just as happy to admit that he worships Allah.
And what about polytheism?
I can’t do much better than profxm’s takedown of this drivel from the Mormon Times. A guy named Lane Williams bemoans the fact that some journalists have decided that atheism is interesting and worth writing about.
As disappointing as it is to say this, reporters may not be able to do much better than provide a balanced conduit for atheists in the modern world we live in.
Dontcha hate when that happens? I mean, balance? But have no fear — since journalists are providing a ‘balanced conduit’, he’s going to use his journalistic influence to unbalance the balance, or something like that.
So my point today, really, isn’t so much about reporters; my point is to use the opinion format of this blog to take a public stand because so few news reporters can or do so.
Way to go, Lane. That’s what journalists should do — argue their side, regardless of how true or well-supported it is. And here’s where things go awry.
Mormonism’s last evidence sits in the power of the Holy Ghost that comes to the hearts and minds of those who seek God through earnest, submissive prayer and faithful action. It is an “experiment” successfully repeated millions of times around the world.
Prayer is not any kind of experiment. As I’ve pointed out, it relies on bad sampling, since everyone who doesn’t get a revelation is either struck from the sample, or told to repeat the experiment until they get the “right” answer. Test subjects are told what emotions to expect, so bias enters the picture. And so on.
You can’t use a ‘holy ghost’ to confirm the existence of a god. They’re part of the same story! That’s what you’re trying to ascertain. It’s like saying “I know Santa Claus exists because I prayed to him, and one of his reindeer told me.”
Millions of Mormons, including me, would say that God answers prayers because of their own experiences with the Holy Ghost and prayer. Therein lies our evidence that God lives. I assume other religious believers feel much the same way.
That’s part of the problem. Many other religious believers feel the same way… about their mutually incompatible, multiply conflicting religious claims! Anyone who knows about science has heard that anecdotal evidence is not data. And notice the bandwagon fallacy. If this is the best Mormonism can do, they’d better give up their scientific pretensions.
Then he says, in a hushed voice, deep with portent, “I know.”
I study Shakespeare and have many books that have inspired me for years, but when I read the Book of Mormon for the 30th time or so and experience a deep, almost mysterious reassurance no other book has come close to giving me amid trial, I know.
I have experienced many joys of human interaction at holidays and in evening activities, but when I experience the quiet, soul power of priesthood blessing called down on a dark night, I know.
I am only one flawed journalist, but in the midst of the atheism debate that Gervais and others continue in our public space, I must say something. I know.
No, you do not know. You’re just certain. There is a difference. Even if your claims were coincidentally 100% right, you still would not know that they were true. Knowledge does not come from intuition or feelings. Knowledge comes from observation of real-world phenomena. And this kind of evidence is nowhere to be found.
This is my beef with religion and supernaturalism. It is such a lazy way of thinking (or not thinking). You take your own beliefs and preconceptions, and just assert them over and over again without trying to back them up with any real evidence. You get to feel all spiritual and believing. But it stops you from learning anything.
Today’s inspirational reading for youth is from the 1956 classic, “Choose Ye This Day” by Emma Marr Petersen. Yes, that’s the wife of Mark E. Peterson, an apostle during the swinging 70s. While it’s not quite as authoritative as if Elder Petersen had written it himself — although he might have, who knows, plausible deniability being what it is — I doubt Sister Petersen would have strayed too far from his ideas. (She was known to share the stage with Elder Petersen on one occasion.) At the very least, the book is an interesting indicator as to the kinds of thoughts that were welcome in the Petersen household.
In this chapter, trouble is brewing at a small college when Milo Patterson, a black student, takes a spot on the football team over the protests of students. Some students decide to ask Hank, an older, respected member of their community and a Latter-day Saint, what position he takes on the matter. Hank, who serves as the voice of the author, launches into a frighteningly candid defense of institutionalised racism in the LDS Church and society in general, using the tried-and-true ‘blacks were less valiant in the pre-mortal life’ argument that I heard many times during my Mormon days. At least Hank/Emma doesn’t advocate total banishment of the seed of Cain. He/she only asks that blacks endure partial social acceptance throughout their lives, and then eternal servitude in the highest Mormon heaven — but only if they’re righteous.
This extract serves as evidence that, yes, the idea that Africans were less valiant in the pre-mortal life was well-known and taught at one point in LDS history (note that Hank has been taught these things ‘all [his] life’). But it also shows that Mormon doctrine can change when members draw upon their capacity for fairness and justice, and ignore dogma coming from the many apologists in their midst.
Might a knowledge of evolution have helped Emma Petersen? When you understand that some people have dark skin because of evolutionary adaptation (instead of picking some self-serving supernatural reason, like “they’re evil”), it reduces your need to take scraps of mythology and weave them into a complicated justification of whatever social prejudices are prevalent in the religious community. But then, neither of the Petersens went in much for evolution. Sister Petersen’s book shows a creationist professor giving an evolutionist professor a good thrashing in a debate, while Elder Petersen once opined that evolution was Satan’s way of destroying America via atheism.
Happy reading! Scans at the bottom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HANK’S POINT OF VIEWTHAT night when they went to Hank’s for a snack, a large group of students were watching TV. Hank himself waited on the two boys.
When he brought the order, Kent said in a voice loud enough to be heard by the other students, “Hank, what do you think about this Patterson rebellion over at school?”
Many wished to know what Hank thought about it.
“My attitude on this subject is pretty well guided by my religious views,” he said, “so I hope you won’t mind if I mix a little religion with what I say.”
The other students held Hank in such high regard that they listened respectfully.
“My religion teaches that our existence did not begin when we were born into mortality. We lived before we came to this earth. We were persons then as we are now.”
“Are you talking about reincarnation?” one student asked.
“No, not at all,” said Hank. “I certainly do not believe in reincarnation. We have one existence in mortality, and that is all. I mean that before this earth was made, we lived and worked and played together in another estate.
“We could do as we pleased there, too, just as we can here. Some were not as obedient as others, and naturally they didn’t get along as well.
“We are the children of God, as you know. We were with him. We were his family.
“It is my understanding that at one time our Heavenly Father called us all together and announced that he was planning to send us to this earth where we could be tested and tried under mortal conditions, to see if we would be worthy of further advancement in his kingdom.
“The Lord explained his plan to us at that time, but some of his children did not accept it, and rebelled. This rebellion was led by one of the brightest, but also the most ambitious and selfish of all God’s children. His name was Lucifer. About a third of all the spirits in heaven joined him in this rebellion. They were all driven out, and they became Satan and his followers.
“This fight up in heaven was very much like wars in this life. Some of God’s defenders were more valiant than others. Some were disloyal, but not so bad that they had to be driven out with Lucifer.
“When the time arrived for us to come to this earth, it appears to have been the plan of the Lord to reward us according to our loyalty.
“How could he do that? It seems quite easy, as I look at it, for he permitted those who were most obedient to be born into this life with white skins, and to have opportunities such as are to be had in our country.
“Others were born with dark skins in the jungles of Africa or in the valleys of the Amazon. Still others were born in China or Korea, or India, where opportunities are not as great as here.
“It was a case of reaping what we sowed. I have this same understanding regarding rewards in the life after this where we will be placed in a degree of glory or in other circumstances according to what we earn in this life.”
“Do you mean, Hank,” broke in one of the girls, “that a white person is born white because he was more valiant than others in the life before we came here, and that a colored person was born colored because he was not so valiant?”
“That is exactly what I mean,” said Hank. “How else could all this apparent inequality be explained?”
“Can other races get all the blessings of the Church?” asked another.
“All except the Negro,” said Hank. “He is under a greater handicap than all the others. Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians, Indians, Koreans, and people of all other races may have all the blessings of the Church, including temple marriage, but not the Negro.
“Evidently because of what he did in that other life, he is placed under a ban and cannot have the priesthood, he cannot advance as far as other people.
“But I would like to say this, though. I have heard some of our leaders teach that even the Negro can go to the celestial kingdom if he is faithful. However, he can be only a servant there. But that is more than many white people will receive, for many of them will be placed in the lower degrees of glory in the next world, because they did not live righteously. So in some respects, Negroes, if they are faithful, may receive a higher glory in the world to come than those of other races who defile their birthright.”
“But what about this football argument? How does all this fit in there?” asked one of the students.
“It fits in like this,” went on Hank. “Each race may develop within itself. So far as the Negroes are concerned, we will give them every right and privilege within their race that we claim for ourselves within our own race, but we will not become intimate with them in any way, and we will not intermarry with them. That is my own personal feeling on this question, and it is what I have been taught all my life. I believe that is a fair position to take, and I believe it squares with the word of God.
“Too close association with them might lead to intermarriage and that would bring the curse of Cain upon children born to such a marriage.
“I must admit that one great danger in being as tolerant as we would wish to be is that some of our people lose their balance and forget that there is after all a barrier between white people and Negroes which should never be crossed. It was the Lord and not man who established that barrier. When man tries to break down a wall set up by the Lord himself, he is asking for trouble, and only trouble can come from intermarriage between white people and Negroes.
“You may not know it, but the Lord anciently commanded that His people should not marry the descendants of Cain, just as he commanded that His people should not marry unbelievers and idolators. If we were not faced with the danger of intermarriage with the Negro, we could be much more tolerant than we are. But there are some leading Negroes who advocate complete absorption of their race with the white race by intermarriage and that is something which I for one can never accept.
“Marriage between white and black people, as I see it, is a violation of God’s commands. So we must avoid steps which would lead to such a thing.”
“I take it, then,” said one of the students, “that you would be in favor of allowing a Negro to play on our football team, as long as we did not take him so far into our social life that some white girl might become infatuated with him.”
“That is just what I believe. I support the school president and the governor in what they have done, and I think you students should do the same.”
“Well, if that’s what you believe, I guess we’ll give the idea another whirl,” Steve said. “Pat’s a good fellow and a swell football player. How about it?”
“Whew, quite a speech,” said Kent, “but I’m game.”
I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, the ancient Greek mathematician. So I finally got a chance to see the film ‘Agora‘, which treats her life, her death at the hands of a Christian mob, and the destruction of the library of Alexandria (again, at the hands of a Christian mob) — one of the great crimes against humanity, but considered by Christians to be a victory over paganism.
A theme in the film is the continual warring of religious tribes — what Richard Jeni described as “killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend”. Back and forth it goes, as pagans attack Christans attack Jews attack Christians attack pagans… on and on, in return for perceived insults against their gods. (The gods seem less inclined to deal with such slights directly.)
And I thought: Religion hasn’t changed. Some religions which are considered nice and moderate now had murderous beginnings, and could easily return. The Taliban of today partakes in the same spirit as the Christians of Hypatia’s time. Christian pastors in Africa are calling for the execution of gay people. Meanwhile, Pakistan is considering getting rid of the death penalty for blasphemy, and it’s driving Muslims to violence.
Violence flared Friday as police and protesters clashed during a mass protest strike that closed businesses across Pakistan over a bid to end the death penalty for blasphemy.
Police said protesters near the home of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari in the financial hub of Karachi pelted stones as they shouted slogans including “We’ll sacrifice our lives — we’ll save the sanctity of the Prophet”.
Teargas shells were fired to disperse them, while normally busy town centres turned quiet across the Muslim country, AFP reporters said, following a move to amend a law which permits death sentences for those found to have blasphemed.
Religion isn’t just believing what you believe and leaving it there. It’s this kind of thing that turns me from ordinary non-believer to raging anti-theist.
I could have said ‘Human nature hasn’t changed’, and that would be true, too. But without religion, what would we fight over instead? Resources like food, water, and oil? We fight about that now. No change there. Sports teams? Well, regionalistic fervour is a worry. But these incidents are a direct result of pious people taking on the presumed injured feelings of their deity, and their willingness to kill in order to silence others. As it was in the beginning.
UPDATE: I’ve just remembered this recent story about the bombing of a Christian church — in Alexandria, of all places.
Egyptian investigators say they may have uncovered a number of people with possible links to Saturday’s church bombing in Alexandria. Meanwhile, Egyptian religious leaders are working to maintain a precarious calm between Christians and Muslims after several days of angry demonstrations.
Eyewitnesses say a fragile calm prevails after overnight clashes between Coptic Christians and police in front of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, which is the headquarters of Coptic Pope Shenouda III. Dozens of police and protesters were reportedly wounded in the clashes.
Pope Shenouda is urging the government to take steps to prevent further violence.
He says everyone should reflect on what to do now in order to come to terms and prevent such events from repeating themselves. He stresses that such violence is new to Egypt.
In the light of history, this claim is cruelly and ironically absurd.
The Grand Mufti of Egypt speaks out.
There is no religion worthy of the name that does not regard as one of its highest values the sanctity of human life. Islam is no exception to this rule. Indeed, God has made this unequivocal in the Quran by emphasizing the gravity of the universal prohibition against murder, saying of the one who takes even one life that “it is as if he has killed all mankind.” Islam views murder as both a crime punishable by law in this world and as major sin punishable in the Afterlife as well. Prophet Mohammad said, “The first cases to be decided among the people on the Day of Judgment will be those of blood-shed”
…
Terrorism, therefore, cannot be the outcome of any proper understanding of religion. It is rather a manifestation of the immorality of people with cruel hearts, arrogant souls, and warped logic.
While it’s encouraging that he’s condemning violence, he’s picking an orchard-worth of cherries here. The verses he’s picked out about murder contradict others in the Koran that command the killing of unbelievers. On what basis does he think his peaceful interpretation of his religion is more correct than an equally scriptural violent interpretation?
If terrorism were really incompatible with ‘proper’ religious understanding, then we should expect such incidents to be fairly rare. Unfortunately, they’re not. Such acts form a part of religious understanding for a good many people.
The Provo Tabernacle burned down. It’s a real shame. I went to church there a couple of times in my Utah days, and I remember it as a good old building. It would have made a nice library in 100 years.
One might wonder, of course, why the Mormon god would allow a church building to be destroyed by fire as he watches, pitiless and indifferent to human affairs. One might even wonder what message he intends to send. Perhaps an Old-Testament-style message of anger and vengeance! The fire and destruction symbolic of the wrath to come. A Mormon might get a sense of divine disapproval, and that would never do.
But wait! It’s a Christmas miracle!
As the four-alarm fire raged at the Provo Tabernacle, firefighters and those watching helplessly from the sidewalk observed something truly remarkable. Some are even calling it “a Christmas miracle.”
A painting of Jesus Christ burned in the fire, save for the image of the son of God [yes, that was the wording chosen by Fox News], which was left unscathed.
Yep, the church burning down isn’t the real takeaway here. It’s the painting. That’s the ticket.
This is the Argument from Incomplete Devastation, one of many ways to creatively interpret events in order to sustain a narrative that you already believe. Religious folk are quick to use this one because in the face of disaster, there are only two possible outcomes — either your faith is boosted, or your faith is boosted more. You have to admire their optimism, at least.
Here’s the scorched painting. Coming soon to a fireside near you.
Wait a minute! Forget about Jesus — that outline around it looks strangely familiar! Could it be the hunched figure of…
Nah.
If anyone wants to convince me that a god exists, prayer studies could be one possible avenue. So I noticed this headline:
Prayer May Help Victims of Domestic Abuse
And how ‘may’ prayer ‘help’? By preventing abuse? No, nothing quite so concrete.
Prayer can help victims of domestic violence deal with their situation and emotions by using coping methods such as venting, a small new study suggests.
It included dozens of people in abusive relationships who were interviewed by Shane Sharp, a sociology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The racially diverse participants came from different regions of the United States, were mostly from Christian backgrounds and had varying levels of education.
I wonder if the abuse victims were mostly Christian because of availability. Not the greatest track record on gender equality or anything.
One finding was that prayer offers “a readily available listening ear” to people who were boiling with anger.
“If they vented their anger to their abuse partner, the result was likely to be more violence. But they could be angry at God while praying without fear of reprisal,” Sharp said in a university news release.
Prayer also offers domestic abuse victims an opportunity to see themselves as God views them.
“During prayer, victims came to see themselves as they believed God saw them. Since these perceptions were mostly positive, it helped raise their senses of self-worth that counteracted their abuser’s hurtful words,” Sharp said.
Is anyone else underwhelmed by this? Say you’re the all-powerful creator of the universe, and one of your beings (or believers) is suffering horrifying abuse in a relationship. You’re capable of doing anything to help. What will you choose? Maybe — stop the abuse? Turn the abuser’s heart? (The god of the Bible can change people’s feelings, you know.) How about a mysteriously vague heart attack for the abuser?
Or will you… give the abused spouse vague positive feelings? Until the next cycle of abuse. Thanks a lot.
I don’t suppose I’ll be getting many gloating messages from believers about this study. It’s interesting about prayer, just like other studies are interesting about placebos, but in order to believe that a god was behind the effects, you’d have to believe that God is watching case after case of abuse while doing nothing real. How many cases? Surprisingly many, according to this estimate from the Australian Department of Statistics.
approximately one in five women (19 per cent) have experienced sexual violence at some stage in their lives since the age of 15 and one in three women (33 per cent) have experienced physical violence at some stage in their lives since the age of 15.
If prayer helps abuse victims, then this is a strange definition of ‘help’.
When people talk about the power of prayer, let’s remember that the only benefit we observe is the kind of stuff that people could imagine up anyway, even if no god existed. If this god does exist, he could surely do better. But for some reason, he won’t. Skip the god. Better to talk to people who are there to help this kind of thing.
One day many Christmases ago, the erstwhile Mrs Daniel and I went to an Anglican Church. (We went seeking pomp, but were disappointed.) While there, we saw some parents we knew from Hippy School.
“So, are you Anglican?” I asked.
“No,” they replied. “We do Yoga!”
The quondam Mrs D was irked. “Yoga’s not a religion!” she later fumed.
Well, no, it’s actually a method of torture, but that’s coming from me, with the shortest hamstrings in the Pecos.
And yet, the Hindu American Foundation would like to take yoga back.
Yoga is practiced by about 15 million people in the United States, for reasons almost as numerous — from the physical benefits mapped in brain scans to the less tangible rewards that New Age journals call spiritual centering. Religion, for the most part, has nothing to do with it.
But a group of Indian-Americans has ignited a surprisingly fierce debate in the gentle world of yoga by mounting a campaign to acquaint Westerners with the faith that it says underlies every single yoga style followed in gyms, ashrams and spas: Hinduism.
At first, I was thinking: fine, but this won’t improve yoga. Doing asanas is fine as a form of exercise, but dragging in a bunch of religious muck won’t make it any better.
Then I realised: Silly me! They don’t want to improve yoga. They just want to piggyback on yoga’s popularity. Which is all right, I suppose. Look at Christianity. They’ve been allowed to piggyback on
So I guess the least we can do is let the Hindus have yoga. Though later on they might try to claim all exercise.
On the other hand, I have no objection if people who practice Christian Yoga are tied up into a knot and rolled over by a thousand fitballs.
Having seen what governments get up to when their secrecy is assured, we should all be welcoming the WikiLeaks age. (And if you’re a signer of petitions, you could do worse than this one at avaaz.com — h/t nikki)
In the wake of the cable leakages, right-wing authoritarians like Newt Gingrich and Fox News haven’t been shy about using terrorism accusations, and calling for assassination. Seems like they think the only way information should move is from the top down. They hate it when anyone tries to make the information move laterally.
I mention Wikileaks and Fox because it follows something of a pattern I’ve noticed with right-wing authoritarians — a very strong tendency toward hierarchy, as opposed to a more collaborative style of exchange with no centralised control — a configuration I’ve seen associated more often with liberals.
This pattern shows up in the way the two groups get information. The right currently dominates the radio dial — Limbaugh, Beck, Savage, and so forth — where an announcer disseminates information down the channel. The liberal attempt to duplicate it was not a success. It’s just not how liberals communicate. Liberals talk to each other through a loose confederation of blogs, where comments flow between participants and multiple writers are likely to work together on the front page. Righties have their blogs too, but it’s not their main channel. The political discourse on the net skews leftward (at least on the xkcd map).
This pattern also feeds into stories of origin. For conservatives (much more likely to be religious), truth comes from on high, and the diversity of life was caused by a god creating it from the top down. For liberals (more often secular), the story is evolution, with no central controller. Science works by peer-review.
I think collaboration is much more likely to give good answers than a top-down hierarchy will. The success of science is evidence of this, but there’s also Wikipedia, where content always has lots of eyes poring over it and is always being updated. Wikipedia’s not necessarily liberal, but it is true that some conservatives felt it wasn’t serving them, and their attempt to create their own is a farce. Or there’s the terrible Knol, where single authors write what they want, no one has to agree, and good information is very hard to find. Give this liberal a good collaborative effort anytime.
The Kongressional Krayzee Korps has decided that President Obama doesn’t talk about the Sky-Fairy enough.
President Obama doesn’t mention God frequently enough in his speeches, a group of religious House Republicans said in an open letter to the president, chastising him for skipping over mention of the “Creator,” especially in a recent overseas address.
Forty-two members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus complained in a letter sent to the White House Monday that in a speech delivered last month in Indonesia, the president substituted the U.S.’s religious-themed national motto for a more secular alternative.
The letter suggests the speech was not an isolated incident but part of a series of remarks that “establishes a pattern” of the president intentionally excluding talk of God from his public remarks.
Republican crazies have made a demand, so you know what that means. Expect the number of god-references in presidential speeches to jump sharply.
From the Journal of Obvious Results: Little kids will believe anything you tell them.
In one experiment, an adult showed children a red and a yellow cup, then hid a sticker under the red one. With some children, she claimed (incorrectly) that the sticker was under the yellow cup; with other children, she placed an arrow on the yellow cup without saying anything. The children were given the chance to search under one of the cups and allowed to keep the sticker if they found it. This game was repeated eight times (with pairs of differently colored cups).
The children who saw the adult put the arrow on the incorrect cup quickly figured out that they shouldn’t believe her. But the kids who heard the adult say the sticker was under a particular cup continued to take her word for where it was. Of those 16 children, nine never once found the sticker. Even when the adult had already misled them seven times in a row, on the eighth chance, they still looked under the cup where she said the sticker was. (At the end of the study, the children were given all the stickers whether or not they’d found any of them.)
“Children have developed a specific bias to believe what they’re told,” says Jaswal. “It’s sort of a short cut to keep them from having to evaluate what people say. It’s useful because most of the time parents and caregivers tell children things that they believe to be true.”
Useful, yes, but then some of us have religious parents — good people who love us, no question — but who give us hours and hours of religious indoctrination, filling our heads with appalling rubbish. It short-circuits our logic and makes us believe things are true if the group says they’re true. Our thinking skills now subverted, we’re sitting ducks for all kinds of crazy ideas. Or as Dawkins said in ‘The God Delusion‘:
Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.
But eventually the influence of parents diminishes. Then you believe it, not because your parents keep telling you it’s true, but because you keep telling yourself it’s true. Your own mind takes over the work that your parents began. At that point, it’s very difficult to escape.
Jesus (that jerk) knew what he was talking about when he said you’d need to be like a little child to be a believer. Undeveloped reasoning skills, and complete reliance on authority figures. Yep, that sums it up.
Even now, when I think of the time I spent on superstition, I feel quite cranky. How much farther ahead I’d be now if I’d been taught (or taught myself) to reason well.
And then every once in a while, I’ll see someone who says, “Even as a little kid, I knew religion was crap.” I look on these people with a kind of awe and envy. It sure wasn’t me.
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