Random Reflections on Religion – 2

My wife and I have been digging into the lectures and writings of noted philosopher and atheist Peter Boghossian over the past few weeks, especially his idea that religion is a delusion and a “mind virus”.  It seems that anyone who is any way religious is mentally ill.  As devout Christians, that applies to my wife and me.  Now, my wife may have good reason to accuse me of mental illness, but I must protest against Professor Bogghossian diagnosing me without the benefit of an examination.  Standing thus accused, or perhaps diagnosed, I offer up the following in my defense.  

It must be granted that religion has been around for a very long time, long before written records could preserve the origins of religion.  Since religious writings must be the result of delusion and illness, their account of their own origins cannot be trusted.  Therefore the origins of religion are lost, leaving us to speculate.  So let’s speculate a bit.  If religion is a delusion or a “mind virus” where did the delusion or virus come from?  Who was the first person that suffered from these maladies and why or how would those maladies be passed down?  Is it reasonable to believe that such maladies would be embraced by a pre-historic, pre-religious society?  I confess that I have my doubts.

Going back to the previous random thought on religion, let’s consider the first moment when pre-historic man might have been able to conceive of and communicate religious ideas.  Thag, Gronk, Snorg, and their fellows are huddling in the cave against the elements, watching a thunderstorm.  Thag, in a feverish fit, suffering greatly from hunger, thirst, fleas, and any other number of ailments, finally snaps and becomes delusional, creating from whole cloth gods of thunder and storm, not to mention fleas.  He cries out in his anguish, beseeching these gods to cease their persecution of him, begging them for relief, offering them anything if they will let him be.  Do Gronk and Snorg look on him, amazed, seeing wisdom in his wild words, asking him to elaborate on these strange ideas, and choose to offer with him some sacrifice to appease the god of fleas so they can sleep soundly?  

Hardly.  Gronk and Snorg are much more likely to pick up the nearest rock and crease Thag’s skull.  This is weakness, surely, and a danger to the tribe.  It cannot be allowed to spread.  They have seen the herds of buffalo or mammoths.  They have observed the wolf pack.  They know what a weak member of either means, and it’s not good.  The delusional Thag, suffering from his mind virus, will be thrown to the fore-mentioned wolf pack and good riddance to him.  So much for religion.

This is a tongue-in-cheek examination of the concept, but the idea remains.  How would something as radically new to humanity as a god and religion, something that was delusional or symptomatic of a “mind-virus”, arise and spread.  Is it contagious?  Did all of humanity suffer from a mass delusion simultaneously?  And were there no skeptics?  Even if Snorg did not hurl Thag from the nearest cliff, would he have accepted the god of thunder and the accompanying restrictive religion without question or without evidence?  Why would he be more credulous than Professor Boghossian?

Granted, the topic is more complicated than can be addressed in a blog post, which is why the good professor has dedicated whole books to it, but I don’t think he has addressed the underlying issue here to my satisfaction.  Until he does, I will stick to the rational, intellectually consistent, absolute truth of Christianity.

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Random Reflections on Religion – 1

Being Christians, the topic of religion is rarely far from our family’s conversation menu. During one recent discussion, a new idea came to me that we batted around for a while. It’s an extension of C.S. Lewis’ argument that it is impossible for human imagination to create God if He does not already exist and has not revealed Himself.

Let’s take the atheistic explanation that man created God and religion as given for the sake of argument. With that in mind, what it would mean for man, a man, a prehistoric human male, to create a god and a religion to go with it. What would that god and religion be like, and what would it require? I doubt it would bear any resemblance whatsoever to the Judeo-Christian God and religions.

Why not? Put yourself into the shoes of a prehistoric human male at the time when reason, imagination, and language have progressed to where the idea of religion can be communicated, but man is still at his most barbaric. Next, consider just one aspect of the moral code derived from religion: specifically, what do men want with regard to women? Do men naturally desire monogamy? Do they naturally desire commitment? Left to himself, without external constraints, what man or group of men would devise a religion that would even conceive of those notions, let alone a god that would enforce them? The shot is just not on the board.

Look beyond the Judeo-Christian traditions to the religions, gods, and goddesses throughout the world and the history of mankind, and what do you find? For the most part, you find marriage, monogamy, and commitment. Greco-Roman, Norse, Babylonian, indigenous American, Pacific island, what have you, all of these traditions honor monogamy, chastity, and fidelity in male-female relationships. Their myths dwell at length on the behavior of the gods and goddesses, especially the jealousy of the goddesses if their husband-gods stray. Hera/Juno is a particularly vivid example. She is the goddess of marriage and the hearth. Her reactions to infidelity are, quite literally, the stuff of legend. What man would have invented that? Would he not rather have created stories of how women should not be jealous of men who stray?

If we’re honest with ourselves, we will admit that, if human men were to create a religion free from external revelation, it would be one that celebrated full sexual license, placing no constraints on men and no consequences. One that freed him from the responsibility of children. It would look very much like what is observed in the non-religious world today, only with the endorsement of whatever gods man had created. How odd that men did not create it sooner. All of this only in the context of just one aspect of religious morality. Expand that beyond sexual behavior and the principal holds. Most of the ten commandments would be very nearly turned on their heads.

So, the next time someone suggests that man created god in his own image, or something along those lines, ask whomever said such a ridiculous thing what a man-made god would really look like. It’s not a pretty thought, but it might be enlightening.

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It Didn’t Happen Overnight

Looking at the current state of affairs in America, the riots, the protests, the general social unrest, the divisiveness and lack of even a modicum of civility or courtesy, a lot of people find themselves asking “how did we get here” or “what can we do about this?”  I have heard friends and strangers ask them, often with a sense of futility, and have asked them myself.  How did the situation in America deteriorate to the place we find ourselves in now?  We vote faithfully, we write our congressmen and women, we contribute to campaigns, and we pray, but our political and societal issues rarely, if ever, seem to change for the better.  Now and then, a more conservative President or congress comes along and it looks like things might really change for the good.  Sadly, it is usually just a temporary reprieve and we are left asking why didn’t it last?  Didn’t we do what we were supposed to do?

Though the questions themselves are simple, the answers are multifarious, nuanced, and complex.  But I think it’s possible to pick a single thread, summarize it, and even begin to arrive at a couple of answers.  

How, then, did we get here?  My wife and I were discussing this question with some friends over dinner a couple of years ago.  One of them, let’s call him Tim, looked at me and said, “you have to understand that this didn’t happen overnight.”  His answer stopped me dead in my tracks and forced me to re-think a few things.

His immediate point was that, politically and socially, we have been straying from the straight and narrow for a long time and there is no quick fix.  Though we occasionally succeed in electing a good president and/or a good congress, the trend in politics has been steadily more progressive or Marxist for generations.  There can be no question that, for decades and with few exceptions, we have suffered from bad leadership at all levels of government.  

Having said that, it is important to remember that we get the leaders that we, the people, all of us, elect.  If we suffer from poor leadership, it is because we, the people, chose poorly.  The next question to consider, then, is why do we, the people, elect poor leaders, leaders we know to espouse a political philosophy contrary to the ideals on which our nation was founded and which made our nation great?

Consider for a moment: What is the predominant political philosophy of those who teach American children at the primary, secondary, and collegiate levels?  Do our teachers and professors believe that the ideals on which our nation was founded led to its greatness?  Do they teach children that they can be proud to be American?  Do they instill a sense of pride, self-control and self-reliance?  Or do they believe that America was corrupt from the beginning and continues to be, that we must be ashamed of our nation and its achievements, that they need to look to government for their aid and support?

 A survey of recent events and the people behind them should be all that is necessary to illustrate that many of America’s children have been taught by people who believe the latter, that America is not a great nation, that American republicanism is not a good form of government, and that capitalism is an evil, predatory economic system. 

This leads to yet another important question: how did they get there?  That answer seems easy enough; they were hired by the administrators of their school districts.  “Fair enough,” one might answer, “then who hired those administrators?”  The answer to that question is even easier.

We did.

Most conservatives want little more than to be left alone to make an honest living, raise their families with little to no interference, worship as they see best, and see to the general business of life.  Those who were educated in the 70s and 80s came up through an education system that still taught that it was good to love America, that our founding principals were noble, and so on.  Why should they have been suspicious of newer generations of teachers coming up through the ranks?  So we who graduated in the 80s or so set about the general business of life, trusting the education of our children to the same publics schools we grew up in. 

But while we were about the good and vital tasks of making our livings, raising our families, and seeing to the general business of life, we failed to properly vet those running for the state and local school boards that set the direction of public education.  We elected the school officials who, in turn, selected the curricula and hired the teachers that instructed our children.  

Certainly, there have always been brave and vocal conservatives who were on the lookout, and who sounded the alarm, but not enough of us believed them or paid attention.  The progressive left took advantage of distracted conservatives with the result that, over the past few decades, the left has succeeded in a near complete takeover of the American education system.  Many of America’s students are now wholly indoctrinated with leftist, or even Marxist, ideologies.

With students spending more time with their teachers and peers than with their parents, those parents have little time to discover the indoctrination, let alone fight against it.  We are now faced with at least one generation of students that has graduated believing that capitalism is evil and that socialism is the cure.  Is it any surprise, then, that this generation elects candidates who reflect those beliefs?

Which brings us back to the question of “what can we do about it?”  

The first thing is not to be discouraged.  No, this did not happen overnight, and there is no quick fix.  But understanding the problem is the first step toward arriving at the solution.  

Next, we must continue to vote, write, and pray, as we have for years, and we must continue to earn honest livings, raise our families, and take care of the general business of life.  But we must do all of this with a new focus on reclaiming education.  

We, as conservatives, must run for and win seats on local school boards and state boards of education.  We must search for and hire conservative school administrators and teachers.  As parents, we must demand factual, patriotic curricula.  We must discard the notion that school boards are non-partisan entities.  And when our children graduate from high school, we must vote with our wallets and send our children to conservative colleges and universities.  

It must be stated that recovering education in America is not a cure-all, and it’s not for everyone.  Some are called to fight other battles.  As I said earlier, the problems facing America are multifarious.  Many media outlets are openly hostile to conservatism, Christianity, Judaism, or anything remotely traditional.  Many large corporations are champions of open borders.  These and other problems are just as critical to our survival.  But no lasting change for the good can be realized without removing progressive ideologies from our schools.  

There is no question that this is a daunting task.  We cannot expect to see results in a year, two years, or a decade.  The progressive left has been working on this openly for at least forty years, and clandestinely for even more, and it took all of that time for them to succeed.  It will take the same vision, grit, and determination to reclaim our children, our education system and our country.  But our nation has faced greater challenges in our past and triumphed.  

This is one of the great challenges of our time.  We are, and must be, equal to it.  Future generations will have every right to judge us by our actions or inactions.  It is not just our country’s future that is at stake, but that of our children and grandchildren to come.  We owe it to them to act.  

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