Parsing an Exorcism

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The latest in my spate of scary movie viewings is The Last Exorcism. The press when it was released last year made claims of extreme fright, but my impression was that I’d seen it all before. The “found footage” fantasy is difficult to maintain—although the camera work in the film is good—and the premise of demonic possession is frightening if the viewer is a believer. The hook for this movie, however, is that the exorcist himself doesn’t believe and becomes a victim of his own unbelief. The pattern overall follows The Exorcist, but without the creepy soundtrack and staged lighting effects, The Last Exorcism relies heavily on the viewer’s willingness to believe. The demonic possession is presented as extreme contortionism and self-destructive behavior, as well as the uncharacteristic violence by the victim. When Nell Sweetzer gives birth to a demonic child, a la Rosemary’s Baby, the role of good Christian gone occult feels a little hackneyed.

I’ve tried to analyze what scares so many people with movies of demonic possession. The core fears seem to come down to two: belief in the reality of demonic possession and the fear of being out of control. Historically the concept of possession was originally relegated to the gods with demon possession apparently arising as a pre-scientific attempt to explain epilepsy. The fact that most Christian denominations no longer recognize physical demon possession (a fact exploited by The Last Exorcism) makes it more frightening still. For a generation of media-saturated viewers convinced that cover-ups are common the credibility of the church, struggling with its own metaphorical demons, is suspect. Perhaps demons are out there—a common enough assertion on the reality show Ghost Hunters—and the church has lost control over them. When Jason and Grant explain what demons are, however, they are pretty far afield from Legion being cast into a herd of swine.

If the Internet is any kind of reliable measure of people’s fears, zombies and demons appear to be nearly on a level when it comes to belief. Both are supernatural and neither stretches credulity to the point of humans growing fangs or matted fur. Both participate in the idea that there is more to be feared beyond death. Both fail in the court of science. The Exorcism of Emily Rose raised the ambivalence of demonic possession to the level of the courtroom. One thing I learned on jury duty last week is that the truth is measured on the basis of the judgment of a quorum of rational individuals. The implications of this are frightening indeed: those who accept the reality of non-physical monsters (the jury is still out on ghosts) are fully capable, in a legal setting, of deciding the truth of the matter. The only corrective to witch-hunts and state-sponsored exorcisms would seem to be education. Today education comes via the media where zombies and demons freely roam.

Natural Born Killers

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Every year I spend some time at the local 4-H fair. I grew up not knowing about 4-H, and the discovery of the organization as an adult has been an education for me. The local university extension that supports 4-H is Rutgers, although on campus you never hear about this rural aspect of the sophisticated world of academia. My daughter has been a member of the cat club for years, and although not a member myself, they are cordial and always offer me a chair (something no university has ever done) to spend a few hours in the shade while the kids showcase their skills and knowledge. Young potential is one of the few sources of optimism I find in a culture obsessed with selfish gain. My daughter’s cat club shares a tent with the alpacas, the epitome of herbivorous tranquility. With wool so soft as to be unbelievable, the alpacas with their long, graceful necks and huge brown eyes, look to be the least offensive creatures at the fair (except maybe the bunnies).

People in crowds, however, often shift dynamics and stress systems that would otherwise find their own balance. While many of the thousands of visitors at the 4-H fair are respectful of the animals, many others seem unaware that loud voices and running children and constant noise can stress even docile animals kept in small enclosures. Kids will find a cat in its cage and bark at it to get a reaction, and we all know the glass-tapping behavior that drives the reptiles wild. The fair has been part of my life for three years now and I’ve never noticed a stressed alpaca. They seem above it all. Yesterday, however, one stressed animal took on a surprisingly human behavior and began to bully a smaller alpaca in its pen. Apart from the caricatured spitting, the larger animal began licking and biting the smaller one, snaking its long neck after the smaller camelid’s head, biting its ears, and generally making its life miserable. The aggression lasted only a few minutes, but it felt to me like the tension of seeing bullies rough up a kid on the playground. The fairgoers felt uncomfortable, with some even wagging their fingers at the larger, aggressive animal.

Club members eventually stepped in to separate the fighting alpacas, and the poor, smaller animal kept trembling for several minutes after the attack. No blood was let; the assault was mostly psychological. I went out to get a snack at the food tent. When I returned I was relieved to see the smaller animal had been removed from the pen, given some space. Later I learned the young animal had died from the stress of the attack. I had seen the incident, and the violence had mostly been of an unrelenting display of dominance with a minimal physical attack. The aura of threat had created the stress. Saddened, I realized that a parable had unfolded before my naïve eyes that afternoon. Like all parables, only those with perceptive eyes may be able to see through the drama and get to the heart of the matter. If only people were as perceptive as even the innocent herbivores, perhaps such parables could finally come to an end. In the meantime, maybe I’ll watch the bunnies and forget what I read in Watership Down.

Just look the other way...

Why Islam

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Radical ideas emerge in the most unlikely of places. In the world of religion the rule is generally to criticize first and then attempt to understand later. This is the burden of revealed religions where the only evidence to test is subjective experience. Lessing offered us the parable of the three rings: God gave humanity three religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) without indicating which one was the correct one. Even before Lessing attempted to provide some kind of resolution to this intractable dilemma, proponents of each of the monotheistic traditions had already made up their minds. The divine buck stops here. Our society places little emphasis on learning about religion. Religion is something we do, not something we have to read about. Given the tremendous motivational force of religious belief, this situation would seem to be a set-up for disaster. Read the headlines and judge for yourself.

I was pleased, therefore, to come across the website WhyIslam.org. Written by Muslims to answer questions by non-Muslims, this non-judgmental, informative website seeks to educate. Despite its rapid growth in the western world, many people are poorly informed about Islam, what it stands for, and how it relates to Judaism and Christianity (especially). The media tends to focus on extreme cases of religious believers; unfortunately they are often the most newsworthy, capturing the limelight in the name of their faith. Whether or not religion was the motivation for an act of terrorism (certainly not limited to Muslim believers), once such an act is perpetrated the religious beliefs of the guilty parties are also suspect. Instead of trying to understand a different religion, the knee-jerk reaction is to fear it. WhyIslam.org is an attempt to counterbalance that fear. Education is the St. George to the dragon of fear. Instead, however, our governments often try to cut back on education and the trench only grows deeper.

If we are to survive the world of competing religions, open conversation is necessary. I’ve been ensconced in institutions where discussion was viewed as compromise and vehement hatred against the foe was considered the only legitimate response. This passed for education. Many seminaries are too busy indoctrinating students in the minutiae of their own tradition to open them to learning about other religions. What are they so afraid of? If a religion is really real, it should never quail in the face of competition. What is the danger in learning about fellow believers? Religions make many assumptions about their own priority—natural enough with regard to core beliefs. If they all encouraged learning about each other, perhaps religious violence would transform into religious education. Islam has much to teach the rest of the world, if the rest of the world would visit sites like WhyIslam.org and be willing to listen.

Honest to God

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“A lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can’t touch any more”–these words come from a minister of the Protestant Church of the Netherlands, according to a report yesterday on the BBC. The title of the article, “Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world,” touches on a theme mentioned earlier on this blog about the church in Sweden: clergy often live with their own doubts about God. Showing similar results to the Swedish study, the Protestant Church of the Netherlands hosts one in six clergy who are agnostic or atheist. I would suggest that the specialization of labor–as well as the persuasiveness of science–stand behind this phenomenon. In modern societies far removed from human roots, we really don’t pay much attention to the training others receive to take on their professions. We assume that higher education is doing its task and that professional bodies like the American Bar Association put up tests to deter those who make false claims. Seldom do we reflect that our off-the-farm lifestyle is a very recent human development and that we haven’t really had time to sort out whether all this complicated training ever really works.

Don't rock the boat...

When I was a seminary professor, I saw the dilemma this way: seminaries crave, indeed require academic respectability. Accrediting bodies insist that a substantial portion of faculty hold terminal degrees. Seminaries, however, are run by confessional groups that insist on certain unscientific worldviews and premises. Doctoral students, unless indoctrinated at faux institutions that block scientific evidence, are educated in a worldview that contradicts their religious training on several levels. Seminaries require educated faculty, but education itself undermines traditional beliefs. Some conservative groups have been aware of this dynamic for years and have begun establishing “universities” that intentionally bar subjects that challenge their worldview. In other words, they want clergy with false credentials who are willing to fight for the cause, while still receiving academic accreditation. Few insiders will blow the whistle since the modern church is built on this shaky foundation.

What is being discovered in northern Europe likely pulses beneath the surface of many developed nations (again, with their specialization of labor). After a person spends three years of training beyond college to receive a “Master of Divinity” degree there is high financial motivation to see the process through to the end. The faithful in the pews, far removed from the realities of theological education, expect the same old show. With employment options nearly nil outside the church, smart clergy know the score. It is better to live a life of quiet desperation, mouthing the party line, than to be thrown into that swirling maelstrom of survival called the job market. Organized religions began when people lived on the land, very few people were educated, and priests were left alone to do their job. Education is costly in far more than college tuition bills. As they are learning in the Netherlands, growing up is never easy.

Robot Ethics

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One of the benefits of being affiliated with Rutgers University, if only part-time, is keeping a finger on the pulse of the future. No, I’m not on any admissions committees. Rather, this week, now available on YouTube, the university is advertising its robotics ethics program, geared mainly toward high school students. Perhaps reading Robopocalypse is not the best introduction to robot ethics, but it does raise a very serious issue—how do robots and ethics fit together? We haven’t even figured out human ethics yet! One of the principal concepts behind any ethical system is intention: did a person (or rarely, a higher animal) mean to do what it did? If an action has brought harm to a person, we need to know if it was intentional or not. In a world where artificial intelligence is just around the corner, we need to sort out how this will apply to mechanical minds.

Perhaps—if human minds are just soft computers—when robot minds are created they too will have a god concept. Neurologists and philosophers and theologians debate when the human concept of god originated and no consensus has emerged. It may be a by-product of “mind,” however we define that. If computers are eventually assigned true mind, will they also believe in God? According to Wilson’s fictional construction in Robopocalypse, Archon thinks “he” is “god.” Humans tend to project God out there somewhere. None of us has the power ascribed to God, and even if individuals claim otherwise, we don’t actually believe we are divine. Would a computer know?

Pressing just a little further on this, human ethics are always subject to corruption. It is clearly seen, almost advertised even, in politics. Not only do we find government leaders with their trousers down or with dirty money in their hands, we also find the same in ecclesiastical settings. Would robots become corrupt? Wilson calls the corrupting agent a virus, a real enough phenomenon. According to the Rutgers video, within two generations every home will have robots in it. The question is: what will their ethics be? I probably won’t be around to see it happen, but I do have a profound hope. My hope is that whoever fabricates robot ethics will be well aware of the failure our governments and religious institutions have made of the attempt.

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

Religion Al Dente

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I first learned of the Flying Spaghetti Monster while teaching a course on the Bible and Current Events a number of years ago at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Being freed from the confines of my humorless seminary teaching post, I was free to explore innovative ways to approach my subject matter. When discussing evolution, it was helpful to bring in Pastafarianism as an example of how some highly intelligent—and very creative—people deal with the ridiculousness of Creationism. Lest I be accused of unfairness here, Pastafarianism is also ridiculous. That is precisely the point. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) was formed to demonstrate that any inane idea might pass as a religion and should be given equal time with those who use ultra-conservative views on the Bible to effect public policy.

A friend sent me a link to a BBC story of an Austrian man who has finally been successful in his attempt to wear a pasta-strainer on his head in his driver’s license photo. Claiming the headgear to be demanded by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Niko Alm wished to have his official ID photo taken with the symbol of his faith. I sense an evolution taking place here. The Church of FSM has gone mainstream in many respects; there is a Bible available, you can buy a bumper-magnet to rival a Jesus fish, adherents have designed a slick website, and it boasts many, many followers. While the website of the Church of FSM defiantly refuses to be taken seriously, it makes legitimate claims—religions do not require literal belief, and therefore Pastafarianism is a true religion with believers not being held to any particular doctrine.

The outcry against the FSM movement (which began roughly early in the new millennium) demonstrates its effectiveness. Are there really people who believe this religion? A tour of the website should be proof enough. The claims made by the group have analogues in traditional religion; many major religions teach events and doctrines that are equally unbelievable in the confines of the physical world in which we find ourselves. It is difficult to believe that Niko Alm actually takes this seriously, but who are we to judge? The FSM has moved from making fun of Intelligent Design to casting the very definition of religious belief into sharp relief. Who’s to say we haven’t all been touched by his noodly appendage?

Touched by his Noodly Appendage

Cherry Pie

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It is one of those days when it is too hot to move. The heat is the kind that gives you a headache, and the Internet beckons. Thus I came across Cherry Hill Seminary. Having been a seminary professor in a previous life, I’m always interested in the craft. This particular seminary, however, is unlike any other. Advertising itself as “the first and only graduate-level education for Pagan ministry in the world,” Cherry Hill offers pastoral education for those who identify themselves as Pagan. I find the concept fascinating. In an age where the standard offerings of the religious marketplace are experiencing their own kind of recession, the alternatives seem to be flourishing.

Just last night I was explaining to my class how the difference between the religious and the pagan is simply a matter of perspective. Used pejoratively “pagan” means any non-Christian, generally. “Infidels,” “heathens,” or “godless fill-in-the-blanks”—religions crave the handy moniker to make those who are different into “the other.” It is easier to detest a person with a label. Cherry Hill Seminary, however, offers a respectful view towards religious education. The school, which offers its program online, has the goal of educational accreditation. From some of the seminaries I’ve experienced, the bar should not be too high. My only concern is that the uniqueness of this program might fade into the background against some of the weirdness that ATS accredits among the mainstream schools.

Starting at least as early as the Bible, religions have looked upon each other as dogs straying into a bigger dog’s yard. Each one wishes to be the strongest one, the most respected and applauded. Why should paganism be excluded? Requiring a bachelor’s degree for admission, Cherry Hill offers courses in Text, Tradition & Interpretation; Nature, Deity & Inspiration; Pagan Pastoral Counseling; Public Ministry & Expression; and Pagan Advocacy & Leadership. Some of these offerings sound more informative than various seminary classes I suffered through. And on days when it’s hot like this, fantasies come easily. It is not too hard to imagine, especially based on my own experience, being treated more humanely by a pagan than by one who claims my own religious heritage.

When the cherry tree blossoms...

Contriving the Rapture

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In the light of last month’s failed rapture attempt, I decided to read a book that I picked up some years ago that had been written in the wake of the millennial scare. Having grown up with nightmares of the rapture, I learned during my first college class on the book of Revelation that it was relatively modern meme, invented in the nineteenth century. Barbara Rossing’s The Rapture Exposed seemed a good way to refresh my memory without having to go through all those boxes of books in the attic to find my original textbooks. Rossing, a Lutheran minister and New Testament professor, brings to light some very important facts beyond the historical roots of this theological fabrication—facts that should concern religious and secular alike. The rapture was invented by John Nelson Darby, a founder of the Plymouth Brethren and convoluted biblical scholar. Basing his roadmap of the future singularly on Daniel 9, he concocted the rapture to make sense of his apocalyptic epiphany. Drawing diverse sections of Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, the Gospel of Matthew, and the book of Revelation together, he mixed thoroughly, half-baked it, and pulled the rapture out of the oven.

The idea caught like wildfire. Today young people who’ve never read the Bible and who’ve seldom attended religious services know what the rapture is. What they do not realize is that nearly all of the Christian tradition rejects it, seeing it for what it is—a Johnny-come-lately of amateur theology that sees the Bible through the lenses of dilettante-sensibilities like those of Michael Drosnin (The Bible Code man). Instead of seriously reading the Bible and trying to understand it, society prefers to see it as a little bit of magic in the midst of our scientific and technical world view. It is a safe place where bits of the supernatural are preserved and that defies rational explanation. Rossing’s book does a good job of exposing the wrong-headedness of LaHaye’s Left Behind conclave, but she overlooks an important feature of this coterie: they have an unconfessed agenda.

The unspoken agenda is best summed up by Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad when he says, “blowing away a fleeing suspect with my 44 magnum used to mean everything to me. I enjoyed it, well who wouldn’t?” Rossing misunderstands Fundamentalism when she expresses surprise at the bloodlust present in the Left Behind novels. What she doesn’t take into account is that, as a collective, Fundamentalists thrive on self-righteousness. Feeling the same violent urges that others do—all humans experience violent emotions—they sublimate that aggression and save it for the unrighteous—God’s enemies. When the gloves come off in the apocalypse, that hatred bursts out in good, old-fashioned bloodletting—albeit with combat helicopters and high-tech weaponry. Of the Christians I know who own guns, the Fundamentalists are most avid in their rights to do so. In college I met my first Christian survivalists and I learned that the rapture was a ruse. It is a deadly mix, especially when this warped theology makes it into politics. Although Rossing’s vision of a new earth in the second half of her book may not appeal to everyone, Americans should read at least the first few chapters to learn why the rapture will never occur.

American Haunted

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Serendipity, although rare, still occurs in university life. As an adjunct instructor whose livelihood revolves around the number of courses that may be squeezed into a limited number of days, I have been considering online courses. As an avid watcher of horror movies—excellent preparation for adjunct life these days—I have attempted to sample the genre widely. It is therapeutic to see people in fictional situations worse than my own. While attending a training course on constructing online courses earlier this week I was surprised to find out my instructor was Brent Monahan, a versatile and talented individual of whose presence at Rutgers I was unaware. Most famously Dr. Monahan wrote the novel and screenplay for An American Haunting, a movie I had written a post on back in January.

Compulsive in my desire to be on time, I generally show up to all appointments early. For this particular session I was the first person present, so, not recognizing my teacher, we struck up a conversation about my field of studies. (He asked; I try not to lead with my chin.) He was nonplussed about the fact that I am affiliated with the religious studies department—in general this is a conversation stopper since, along with politics, it is a forbidden topic in polite company. Before I realized who he was he suggested that perhaps people go into this field because of their internal struggle with good and evil. It was a perceptive statement and it made sense when it came out that he was a writer of horror films and novels.

Since I’ve been exploring the nexus between religion and horror I have wondered what the deeper connection might be. Clearly fear of the unknown, the overly powerful, and the randomness of life in an uncaring universe play into it, but perhaps it is also the struggle of good and evil. Horror films often present the “what if” scenario: what if the side of evil were allowed free reign? Often the fount of that evil, in horror films, is religion gone awry. Certainly in An American Haunting a pious man is driven by inner demons to the abuse of his own child. That he is a religious man is made plain from the near-constant presence of a clergyman in his house once the haunting starts. While the exact relationship remains to be parsed, it is clear that fear and religion reside very near one another in our brains, perhaps as near as good resides to evil.

A Tribute

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Judith Mills Gray, 2009

The death of a friend always covers life with a hazy gauze of disbelief for some time. In my fitful career I’ve taught several hundred students, and of those several hundred a handful have become friends. When the painful debacle of Nashotah House took place and I was reduced to a weeping mound of incoherent impulses, those who were friends tried to console me. Some had fortunately moved on by that point. Judith Mills Gray was one of those who had become a friend although she had made it to safety before me. Readers of this blog will likely not recognize her name—she never earned lots of money, the measure we use assess a person’s importance these days—but she was an artist, a deeply spiritual woman, and one of the kindest people I have ever known. In a day when the seminary actively discriminated against women, she managed to hang onto a place among the boys and did so with good humor. After my short stint as Registrar, she came along to lift that burden from my shoulders. When she left the seminary, my tiny family sat in her tiny house and wished her the joy that Nashotah could never offer.

Just two years ago we went to visit her in her native West Virginia. She was proof to me at that point that recovery from institutional abuse is possible, but I could see there were still scars. Many of those who suffered through years at the seminary left very bitter—I count myself among them—but Judith rose above it all. She was not perfect—none of us are—but she was a person determined to leave this world a better place than she found it. That is a tall order when the church, the putative bastion of good, turns all its guns on you. As Judith and I shared what would become our final reminiscences together, I sensed that ultimately she had come out the winner.

We are all born into a life with far more questions than answers. Jesus seemed to have had the idea that it was good to console those in difficulty, heal wounds, and try to make your fellow sojourners happy. Judith followed that path without the benefit of having the answers. Along the way we shared many laughs and quite a few tears. We both had experienced the face that the church carefully hides from the wider public, the face that finds Jesus a little too idealistic and hate and revenge a simpler and more effective option. Judith never returned hate for hate. She continued trying to find a path where, although not ordained, she could still minister to others. For those few of us fortunate enough to know her, she was an example of how to make gold out of lead. In my case, I know that there will be lead in my life for quite some time now that she is gone. I also know that lead can, and sometimes does, turn to gold.

I Can Haz Edukashun?

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Myths are alive and well. One of the most pervasive myths, along with the one that says clergy only work on Sundays, is the concept that educators take the summer off. Undoubtedly some do, but the summer is traditionally the time for professors to conduct research without having to break up their concentration with several classes a day. Those were the halcyon days. This morning’s newspaper slapped me like a fistful of razors as I read the story of Rutgers University’s president’s resignation. I knew about the resignation, but being fumblingly employed part-time by his mighty university, and having to take annual ethics training for the pittance I’m allowed, I blanched as I read these two sentences: “McCormick earns $550,000 a year as president and is eligible for a $100,000 yearly bonus, though he hasn’t taken the money in recent years due to the university’s budget troubles. Ralph Izzo, chairman of the board of governors, said he thought McCormick would be worth his [continued] $334,000 professor’s salary.” A few pages later the headline tells how Chris Christie, New Jersey’s cut and bleed governor, took a state helicopter ride to get to his son’s baseball game. Also, he wants to prevent state employees from making a viable living.

In this twilight zone of an educational nightmare, a guy with professional ethics training just wants to close his eyes and make it all go away. For what are we educating our young if not for greed? What professor is worth more than 100,000 dollars to any university? In the old days, back with ethics had intestinal fortitude, the term for such folks was “sell outs.” Is there really any drive for excellence at such pay scales? It is no wonder we are raising the “entitlement generation.” Actions used to speak louder than words. State-mandated ethics training has now corrected that little oversight. Higher education used to be about ideas; today it’s “show me the money.”

The truly sad part of all this is that we keep pretending. We preach the myth to a public easily pacified and crucify those who beg to differ. Back in my Nashotah House days a trustee once hushed me so that the board might listen to a student with “fire in his belly.” My belly’s a blackened cinder by now. Is anybody listening? Mythology, particularly in the Greek world, revolves around the concept of hubris. It is a concept with which modern university folk are clearly unfamiliar. It goes something like this: like most people I think I am better than others. In order to prove it, I’ll increase my blandishments until there is no longer any doubt. Is that Olympus straight ahead? I might as well take that as well!

I’d love to stay and lecture some more, but I’m apparently entitled to more state ethics training.

Metamorphoses

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“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” I borrow the opening words from Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis since upon rereading it yesterday I found it consonant with much of mythology. Even the title chosen by Kafka resonates with Publius Ovidius Naso’s (Ovid’s) Metamorphoses. Transformation at the hands of the gods. The idea lives on in the concept of conversion, the religious experience of profound change at the behest of God; some claim a willful hand in their conversion while others simply give God the whole credit. Kafka, one of the great existentialist writers of the twentieth century, considers the transformation without the gods and the terrifying results.

Having discovered the existentialists in high school, I was immediately taken by their writings. Characters find themselves cast into a world devoid of meaning, a world that they can’t understand and in which they often suffer unusual consequences. Little did I know that I was in training for my own experience in the academic world. Academia involves a major metamorphosis, one from which the victim cannot return, and after which she or he will find him or herself ineligible for employment. Reading The Metamorphosis as an often displaced instructor who’s only ever received positive evaluations, I saw much in the novel this time that I could not appreciate last time I read it. In short, I had metamorphosized.

Gregor Samsa, discovering he is now a bug, immediately worries about how to get to work. The painful description of his financial worries and ultimate rejection resonated a little too clearly. Is conversion a positive phenomenon? It is difficult to evaluate. In my experience, those who’ve converted tended to have been pretty decent people in the first place. As Ovid notes over and over again in his lengthy epic poem, when the gods make you into something else a sadness will pervade this new existence. If you survive. As Gregor slowly starves to death (in a fate hauntingly similar to Kafka himself) he finds no divine consolation. The situation is absurd—best just come to terms with that. Kafka could have been a struggling academic in the century after his death and he would have found the same situation applies.

Stephen Hawking’s Heaven

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CNN’s Belief Blog, apparently open to contributions only by “successful” (i.e., university employed) religion scholars, nevertheless occasionally comes up with a thoughtful story. One of yesterday’s posts focuses on the fact that Stephen Hawking says Heaven is a “fairy story.” First of all, I have admit being surprised to see that Hawking is still in Cambridge—I could have sworn he was working in the Princeton public parking garage because it is his voice that comes out of the ticket machine. (Times being what they are for academics, I figured he might have needed a second job.) Ah, but appearances can be deceiving! I have had great respect for Stephen Hawking for many years. My own scientific interests must be relegated to a decidedly lay position among the collegiums of scientists, but Hawking writes books that people like me can (mostly) comprehend. Echoing an idea I stressed earlier—we came to the same conclusion independently—Hawking noted in a recent interview that Heaven is an idea devised to cope with fear.

Cosmologists, such as Hawking, speak with authority on the literal heavens. Ironically, the word “heavens” continues to retain its usefulness, even among scientists, for describing everything that is out there. Humans are assuredly small and our place in the universe is miniscule. In our heads, however, we conceive lofty ideas that seem to place our own consciousness outside the unlimited bounds of this universe. Is it any wonder that we can concoct gods? As deeply as they peer into the cold, dark recesses of outer space, astronomers and cosmologists find no room for Heaven. This cosmic inn, no matter how many aliens there may be, is largely empty.

What I find interesting is that journalists of religion find skepticism among scientists newsworthy. While being a rational thinker, as science demands, does not necessarily forego divine entities, using gods as explanations and having trans-dimensional heavens tucked away behind some far asteroid does somehow devalue the power and majesty of our eternal home. We expect our scientists to be skeptical—we wouldn’t often visit a doctor who sacrificed a goat on every office visit to consult its entrails concerning our health. And yet it is newsworthy when a scientist says in a forthright statement that Heaven does not exist. It would be like an evangelical preacher saying evolution never happened. The biggest miracle of all may be that whether it is Dr. Hawking’s doing or not, I actually manage to find parking in Princeton.

Billions and billions, but no angels with harps...

Triskaidekaphobia

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Friday the thirteenth. The very concept awakens images of horror movies and inauspicious happenings. An interview with a Psychology professor at Rutgers recently discussed this unusual phobia. Mike Petronko of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology had this to say: “Exactly how this got started is difficult to say, but the belief appears to date back to ancient times. Often, superstitions are rooted in religion. Some folklorists believe the fear may stem from the Last Supper, when, according to Christian belief, Jesus and his 12 disciples gathered for the final meal, which set the stage for his crucifixion, on Good Friday.” There is no doubt that the origin of the superstition is religious and that Fridays earned their notorious reputation because of Good Friday. Even today, as any Roman Catholic can tell you, Friday dietary requirements differ from those of other days.

But wasn't this a Thursday?

Thirteen is a little harder to pin down. It is a prime number after ten, but then, so are eleven and seventeen. It may have its unlucky associations back in the old Mesopotamian base-six numerical system. Once you reach past the first doubling of six you meet thirteen. Even today hotels are designed with no thirteenth floor, although pasting a fourteen over the actual thirteen is merely for psychological relief. Mathematics insists thirteen follows twelve. As Petronko notes, the fear is real. Airliners do not have row 13 and hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue are lost because so many people refuse to engage in regular practices (such as flying) on Friday the thirteenth.

Religion and fear are not strange bedfellows. In fact, religion, in its earliest origins, seems to have been a coping mechanism for fear. People are afraid of many things – that is the curse of consciousness. We can anticipate eventualities that will never materialize. We imagine them happening to us. Religion seeks to placate those forces that are beyond our control. We may lay claim to a highly advanced and technologically sophisticated society, but millions of people are anxiously awaiting the end of this day. Rutgers, like most universities, hardly sees the need to fund the study of religions. Nevertheless, our very culture belies that indifference. Many people are afraid today and we still don’t even know why.

Doubts Creep In

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What between Snooki at Rutgers and Mel Gibson’s Passion played at Montclair, I seem surrounded by university controversy lately. A recent article in the New Jersey Jewish News addresses once more the pre-Easter screening of The Passion of the Christ on Montclair State University’s turf. Education is bound to be embroiled in controversy since learning is seldom comfortable. I suspect that is one reason bully governors and the occasional president go after higher education. Few adults like to have their assumptions challenged, their values questioned. I am reminded how blindly many educated clergy accepted the version of the faith story by a disgruntled actor rather than by scholars who actually know what they’re talking about. It is difficult to dismiss the truths of the big screen.

The fact that the wounds opened by this screening are still bleeding weeks after the event demonstrate just how vital open dialogue is. Not only open dialogue, but frank discussion of religion. Many, if not most, religious believers carry on the tradition in which they were raised. Parents begin religious instruction early, and with the threats of a fiery Hell and an enraged divine father overhead, children are shunted toward Heaven everlasting. Not all religions use the same stick and carrot, but no matter what the bludgeon or the vegetable, religions give the faithful reasons to stay in line. Best not to discuss it too much, otherwise doubts might creep in. Educating students in religion is controversial, but necessary as long as people continue in practicing it.

As the article notes, the objection to the film revolved around the fact that no educational component was included. This was one of those “think with your guts” kind of moments, as if feeling sorry for the fictional portrayal of Jesus might somehow make one a better Christian. Educational institutions are duty-bound to teach critical thought when it comes to matters of belief. Emotion is a fantastic motivator, but as history has repeatedly demonstrated, it tends to act without thought. Universities should be open to such constructive criticism, although, it is doubtful that many minds are likely to be changed when the draw at the box office is too great to ignore.

Entertainment or education?