Girl Meets God…

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Once in a very great while I find a book that I simply can’t put down. It is a rare windfall when that book feels like it was written especially for me. I was instantly engrossed in Sarah Sentilles’ Breaking Up With God. Like Susan Campbell’s Dating Jesus, this book reinforced the fact that women experience a side of God’s character generally closed to men—the idea that God might be a lover. In our distorted, still patriarchal culture we have yet to grow beyond the idea that God is male. This simple, persistent teaching ensures that a gender-divide will always remain in effect when it comes to monotheistic religions. What truly spoke to me from Sentilles’ book, however, was not the theology, but the heart. Although the gender view from which I approach concepts of divinity must necessarily be different, here I found someone with a journey in many ways similar to mine. The honesty with which the author lays open her experience is beautiful and terrifying.

One of the recurring questions on this blog is whence the concept of God arose. Anthropologists, psychologists, and theologians come up with varying answers but the fact is the real impact is felt in very human minds. We have, perhaps unwittingly, devised a punishing image of the creator of the universe. A God who causes, allows, or at least condones arbitrary human suffering. A God who permits atrocities daily to be committed in his name (for this is a masculine god). A God who has left a burning ruin in his wake. Those of us who’ve attended seminary, as Sentilles makes vividly clear, are taught perceptions of the divine that can never be translated into the pulpit. Those of us who go on to graduate school are permitted a rare glimpse behind the veil to see something that it frightens us to contemplate, let alone write or speak about. It is a burden best worn like a hairshirt—beneath other clothes so that people don’t know it’s there. Many of us are then cast into the career outer darkness with nothing but our highly educated, disturbing thoughts for comfort.

Sarah Sentilles has given the world a gift with her revealing, sensible, and very human story. Having grown up with the image of God as a father, it was a shock when a seminary professor once revealed to me that God could never really fill that role. Nor, he added, could the church. While it cannot be the same as breaking up with God, the realization that what you were taught as a child was merely a metaphor forces a grand reevaluation of perceptions. My professor was, of course, correct. Carrying around a faulty image of God will lead only to intractable complications further down the road. Although Sentilles started down the path some years later than I did, it seems we have wound up in the same neighborhood. Her book deserves to be read widely, thought over carefully, and pondered for a time. We need to consider: what hath man wrought?

Just Druid Again

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It would be difficult to suggest an ancient class of people with greater New Age credibility than the druids. Although I spent three years among the Celts, I claim to have no special knowledge of the druids, and when I saw Peter Berresford Ellis’ book on the subject, I decided to learn more. Not really a straightforward history—not enough of the druidic culture survived in any material form for the writing of such a history—Ellis instead summarizes a complex gallimaufry of evidence and speculations into a reasonable facsimile of who the druids might have been. Ellis suggests that the druids were more a caste of society, rather like the Brahmin caste among Vedic culture. Should that seem far-fetched, it would be difficult to read A Brief History of the Druids without noticing the obvious connections between the cultures. The Celts, of which the druids are a subset, have their origins in eastern Europe rather than the usual supposition of a homeland over the sea in Ireland, Scotland, or Wales. Connected to India via a common ancestral language, Indians and Celts both derive from the same Indo-European linguistic family tree.

Ellis’ book is so full of information that it is unwieldy at times, especially for those of us who find the formidable Gaelic names intimidating. Nevertheless, it is an excellent source for learning about the religion of the druids, insofar as it may be reconstructed. One of the most striking aspects of Celtic culture that emerges from the book is how it differed from the Roman culture that would come to dominate the western world. An obvious example is that Celtic society offered a much more enlightened place for female rights and leadership than would emerge along the Tiber. Another important difference was the Celtic antipathy to abuses of private property ownership. Gaelic bishops earned the ire of Rome by declaring that egalitarianism is the will of God. In the words of a fifth century Celtic bishop:

“Do you think yourself Christian if you oppress the poor?… if you enrich yourself by making others poor? If you wring your food from others’ tears? A Christian is [one] who… never allows a poor man to be oppressed when he is by… whose doors are open to all, whose table every poor man knows, whose food is offered to all.” Words a Perry or Bachmann might do well to read.

So noble were the druids in the eyes of eighteenth-century antiquarians that many suggested Abraham was the original druid and that the great figures of the Bible were part of the druidic heritage. The world, alas, has gone after Rome instead. Rather than druids we have CEOs and politicians worth a mint before they ever “swear” an oath of office. If the current Celtic revival brings back some powerful druids, perhaps the world might just become a more tolerable place.

God’s Country Club

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Last week CNN’s religion Belief Blog reported on the five most and least religious colleges in the United States, according to Princeton Review (not affiliated with Princeton University). Having attended one of the five most religious colleges on the list (Grove City College, but whether it is number one or five is difficult to determine), I took an interest in the overarching question: how do you determine if a college is religious? The author of the survey indicated that it was through student interviews concerning whether they perceived other students as religious or not. And that’s where the bone of contention pokes through—who determines what is religious behavior? Are students able to determine who is religious or who acts religious? Does religious mean Christian in this context, or religious in any tradition?

Grove City College, God's Country Club

My years at Grove City left little doubt that the school itself was proudly religious. An evangelical bastion against many forms of critical thought, plenty of indoctrination took place in those hallowed halls. A few religion professors (I was even then over-zealous to learn as much as I could about this field), while personally faithful, asked serious questions that many self-righteous classmates blithely ignored. From glancing through alumni magazines, they seem to be the successful ones. Those who asked the hard questions seriously were ostracized; now they are lost in obscurity. Is this true religion? The Princeton Review is concerned with providing potential students with accurate data about their collegiate choices, but I wonder if the religiosity proffered is anything more than denominational branding.

Three of the four other most religious schools might bear this out: Brigham Young, Thomas Aquinas College, and Wheaton College. Hillsdale College, the final member of the most religious fraternity, is the exception. A liberal arts school, formerly Baptist but currently independent, it fits somewhat uneasily next to the Mormon, Catholic, and Reformed natures of the other four schools. While I can’t speak for the other colleges, at Grove City there was definitely a coercive peer pressure to behave like everybody else—to be religious, i.e., evangelical Christian. With required attendance at chapel and required courses in religion, the ethos was heavily impressed. Were other students truly religious? That depends on the measure that is used. Many have gone on to be entrepreneurs declaring free market economics in the name of the kingdom of heaven. If that is a measure of true religiosity, all hope is lost indeed.

No Sanctuary, No Renewal

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My penchant for dystopias won out over what many would suggest is good sense and I rewatched Logan’s Run for the first time since the 1970s this weekend. Dystopias, of course, are the antonyms to the religio-political utopias that seemed possible to dreamers of the Enlightenment. Since those optimistic times power structures in society have grown ossified and privilege has been entrapped in enclaves of excess wealth, both religious and secular. Seeing the film as a teenager I am certain I missed the savage social commentary in Logan’s Run. Despite its weaknesses, the movie still carries an unexpected punch, given subsequent developments. The premise, for those unfamiliar, is that in the twenty-third century life is ease and hedonism until you reach thirty. To control overpopulation those losing the bloom of youth are euthanized in a religious ceremony to be “renewed.” Logan discovers there is no renewal and, the mythology fractured beyond repair, begins his eponymous run.

In a society just beginning to come to the realization that population trends were leading toward the elderly outnumbering the young, film-makers and novelists were trying to predict where human nature might lead. Movies like Soylent Green, Rollerball, and even The Stepford Wives dealt with issues of potential population pressures. One thing they share in common: the prognosis isn’t positive. 1984 came and went, and savvy politicians learned that control may easily be blended with religious sensibilities. Hot-button issues that have little to do with government (defining marriage, deciding which gender has the right of self-determination, declaring biologists in default of creationist fantasies) easily deflect attention from the serious issues of ensuring a healthy economy and providing reasonable care for those who are actually now alive. Spending too much time gazing into the future can be counterproductive.

Logan heard rumors of a place called “sanctuary” where the aging are free from the draconian enforcements of society. He takes his lady (dystopias are nothing without a love interest) and flees to discover this idealistic place. There is no sanctuary. Outside the safe, hermetically sealed domes of society is a ruined civilization. It is a world full of possibilities, but practically devoid of people. Finding only one survivor, the only option is to convince the police state he fled that all of this is a lie. Religions too, often rely on offers of sanctuary. Some who believe may find it while others will not. Logan’s Run (now being remade) may not have been the most convincing dystopia, but in bringing ethic and myth together in a world of unheard suffering, it may have read the pulse of society better than several of its more fondly received exemplars.

Whatever Happened to Marshmallows?

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A rainy Sunday evening seemed like a good time to watch a scary movie. I had already viewed an exorcism movie or two over the last couple of days, so my wife and I decided to try something scarier: Jesus Camp. This 2006 documentary shows the workings of an evangelical, Pentecostal children’s camp run by Becky Fischer. By not skewing the evidence but by letting the organizers and children speak for themselves, a disturbing political agenda is revealed. Even more disturbing is the psychological scarring that accompanies such childhood indoctrination in a religion of fear. Fischer is obviously concerned with militant Islam, but her tactic of countering it with militant Christianity where children are soldiers (“this is war!” she shouts at one service) feels equally wrong. Part of the problem with such “Bible based” groups is that the Bible contains many contradictions and the Fundamentalists must pick and choose. For example, Rev. Fischer has chosen to disregard 1 Corinthians 14.34, stating that women should keep silent in the church. (I certainly do not advocate the literal application of that verse, nor of many others that made their way into a misogynous Bible.)

Utilizing the Bible only goes so far as a political tool. At the Kids on Fire camp the children are geared up to an emotionally intense state and lectured about the evils of abortion, evolution, belief in global warming, and Harry Potter. No mention is made that the Bible says nothing about abortion or evolution, and global warming had not yet become an issue. I can’t seem to recall Harry Potter being mentioned by name in the Bible, but other fictitious characters are from time to time. The Bible, having been written over a span of about a millennium, contains differing voices making statements for specific circumstances, and never intended to be used as political platforms. One gets the sense that “Bible believers” seldom read the Bible seriously themselves. Certain favorite passages are committed to memory and rehashed to death while others molder in dank corners of Fundamentalist basements.

What is lacking here is the long view. Once such groups win political power—they should be taken far more seriously in this arena—the religious freedom that will have launched them to that position will disappear. Like all human enterprises, however, it too will eventually crumble. Ted Haggard was spotlighted in the film, shot before his own hypocrisy came to light. At the camp George W. Bush is held up as a saint with Samuel Alito as his acolyte. The psychological manipulation and emotional abuse that the children trustingly accept is condemnation enough in itself. The camp was shut down after the film was released, but Becky Fischer, like Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared, “I’ll be back!” This is one Terminator I truly fear. Having watched a couple of exorcist movies over the weekend as well, I am left wondering which is scarier: demons that possess children or false prophets who do the same?

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.

Biblical Sex

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Legislation covering female reproductive health maintenance has finally passed. Even in a nation where equality is highly touted, women will have, until 2013, been treated as more expendable than men. A few years back I read Mary Roach’s Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. There I learned that even as of the publication date of her book, many aspects of the female reproductive system were still poorly understood. The reason: lack of interest by (mostly) male scientists. Of all the great equalizers of humanity, it might be expected that religions would step in to champion the cause of citizens routinely treated as objects and chattels. Instead, the opposite has been the case. Most religions, and even until the last century Christianity in the forefront of them, relegate women a secondary status to men. Religion is all about power. Now that legislation will allow women basic reproductive rights without extra fees, Catholic hospitals are concerned about the implications. “They defied the bishops to support President Obama’s health care overhaul. Now Catholic hospitals are dismayed the law may force them to cover birth control free of charge to their employees.” Thus begins an article in today’s paper by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Associated Press.

Instead of cheering equality, the church is muttering about medieval conceptions of conception. The entire idea that life begins at conception was not even possible in the biblical world where sex did not involve sperm and ova—such things were unknown in those days. The Bible has a few clues to when human life begins, and generally it is thought to be at first breath. Semen should not be wasted, however, since it was thought to be the full set of ingredients to grow new people. The uterus was simply a waiting area, a comfy place to grow with regular womb service. Men were the creators, women were the deliverers. That idea of reproduction formed the basis for all biblical and other ancient legislation on the subject. Comprehending “conception” as now scientifically understood, was only possible with the invention of the microscope. In response, a sexually underdeveloped church decided that the new data strengthened the male hold on ecclesiastical authority. Once the seed is planted, there’s no uprooting allowed. What male, after all, has ever had to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term?

Female religious leadership was recognized in many early societies, and even in some branches of early Christianity. No legitimate rationale exists for saying half the human race is disqualified on the grounds of basic hardware. After all “male and female created he them.” Concerns of “purity” for an age when menstruation was not understood could be marshaled to the cause of male supremacy. That mystery was solved when conception became clear. An unequal result emerged nevertheless. Since women couldn’t be discounted on genetic grounds, they could on the basis of “impurity.” And here we are two thousand years after pre-scientific Christianity was conceived, still waiting while a coterie of all-male bishops castigates normal health care for females. Believers like to suppose that their leaders receive special word from the mouth of God. Those leaders tremble in the face of true equality for the very first word the Bible has to say on the subject is “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Who's superfluous here?

Livin’ On a Prayer

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Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that Neo-Con politicians are naïve enough to believe that prayer will solve all our problems? Where was God during the Bush years, for crying out loud? And yet headline after headline speculates about Texas Governor Rick Perry’s prayer-fest scheduled for Saturday. What is more disturbing than the lack of imagination on the part of would-be candidates is the sheep-like following on the part of a large segment of the electorate. If God is going to step in and take charge, he had a great chance back on May 21 and refused to pick up the option. If God was behind politics, why did George W. Bush fail to find Osama Bin Laden? If God is running things, why are so many unemployed? Ah, but the religious pundits have a pat answer: America is a sinful nation. What it takes is religion, Texas-style.

In the many years I spent at Nashotah House, the majority of our students hailed from Texas. They represented the conservative hard-line and doctrinal strappadoes that caused much suffering but still somehow didn’t placate an angry God. That, of course, says more about Nashotah House than it does about Texas. Perhaps it is the logical evolution of a country that began with prominent ministers gleefully describing sinners in the hands of an angry God. Nearly three centuries later and we are being told God is still angry. Thou shalt not hold a grudge, eh? The problem seems less about sinful folks just trying to get by (a la Bon Jovi) than about politicians using their religion to get elected. Centuries down the road it will be the topic of some new series of History’s Mysteries that an affluent, educated, and generally forward-looking nation cluttered its governing bodies with politicians who believed the answer to complex problems is to bow their heads and tell God how to fix it. Are we really half-way there, or have we spread our arms to embrace Jonathan Edwards once again?

In MSNBC’s article on Rick Perry’s prayer day, it is noted that the book of Joel is cited as an inspiration for the event. For such a brief book, Joel has been at the forefront of a ton of damage wrought by prooftexters. Joel wrote three brief chapters about a locust infestation for which the suggested response was prayer. One wonders if Rick Perry simply prays when the termites begin to gnaw on his expensive home, or does he call Ortho instead? Joel was truly old school. The locusts in his day meant literal mass-starvation. No chemical romance to solve the problem there. Unfortunately we don’t know how that one turned out—Joel doesn’t say. I’m just glad that Governor Perry hadn’t been reading Psalm 137 when inspiration struck, and can I get an amen from the pro-lifers on that?

Ricky used to work on the docks?

P.S. Matthew 6.5.

Slash and Burn

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Extinction is an evitable part of life in the universe we’ve inherited. Throughout the eons of our planet mass extinctions have occurred several times, and the new world that emerges is strange and unexpected. We as primates owe our existence to such a natural occurrence at the end of the Cretaceous Period. We evolved religion, which, in some species, bestows the right upon us to alter, or even destroy, our environment. The lame reasoning that generally accompanies such amateur theologies is that a deity is about to sweep down and reclaim those “he” (inevitably) likes. All the rest are just part of a hellish charade to make the righteous feel their entitlement more acutely. So we now find ourselves facing, as scientists warn, another great extinction. This one is of our own making.

The causes are not too difficult to discern. For centuries the dominant religions in the western world have preached messages easily mistaken for selfishness. The perverse aberration called the “prosperity gospel” is one such bastard theology. (I use that term in its literal sense here: the prosperity gospel claims false parentage in declaring that Jesus rewards the affluent with material wealth.) An article in Sunday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger points out that the unprecedented human involvement in extinctions. Using Haiti as a test-case, Faye Flam of the Philadelphia Inquirer notes that 99 percent of that nation’s forests have been wiped out as the poorest people in the western hemisphere seek wood for the basic necessities of life. Just over six hundred miles to the north begins one of the most affluent nations in the world where as long as we get our own, the rest of the world can go extinct. We are so blessed. While the loss of forest barely keeps the people of Haiti alive, it drives unnumbered species to extinction.

Entitlement is an odd phenomenon. Without those further down the food chain, the advantages of privilege disappear. When there are no poor to support the wealthy, the comparison fails. The same is true on a species level. As privileged Homo sapiens, we have climbed to the top of the mountain and made ourselves gods. Other species are counted as chattels to be divided up among the wealthy. The rarer they are, the more valuable. Problem is, once rarity reaches extinction there’s no turning back. Our environment placed us in this position and gave us the grey-matter to figure it out. Instead we liken ourselves to gods who do not need this world that gave us birth. Biology disagrees, as time will tell.

Icon of the prosperity gospel.

In God We Lust

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One of the entrenched ironies of human mentality is that reason will not suffice to change religious views. Many studies have repeated demonstrated that faith is impervious to logic, and this has appeared with Ektachrome clarity in the case of Warren Jeffs. Rev. Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has painted himself into a mental corner that makes the logic of legal proceedings appear as slapping the idiot. Logic and faith do not connect. Any Christian who has read the letter to the Hebrews should know that. Nevertheless, Rev. Jeffs, having illogically dismissed his team of lawyers, has been attempting a divine defense to justify his alleged sexual abuse of minors. He remained silent during his opening statement, despite judicial advice that such a tactic might harm his case. Breaking silence yesterday with a nearly hour-long sermon, faith responded to logic and was found wanting.

Society at large fails to consider that studies of religion have been carried out from multiple angles over many decades. We have erudite studies of the philosophy of religion, the psychology of religion, the anthropology of religion, and the sociology of religion. They all point to the human origins of this phenomenon, often demonstrating that a basic disconnect remains when religious belief is brought into the harsh light of logic. Neurologists and biologists have explored the utility of religion as a survival tactic, and evolution seems to have blessed it. Yet trial lawyers, judges, law enforcement officials, and politicians—often themselves religious individuals—are charged with apprehending and convicting others who simply take their religion to extremes. Religions make untenable demands on adherents. God has a poor record of turning up in the courtroom. His divine statements are absent from the stenographer’s tape.

Not knowing the details, it is difficult to find much sympathy for Rev. Jeffs, should he be found guilty. Yet at the same time, his interpretation of religion differs only in a matter of degree from other religious sexual ordinances. Is it normal for a clergyman to live a lifetime of enforced celibacy? Although signing on the dotted line may indicate a tacit agreement with church policy, what young man can clearly anticipate the pressures of decades fighting biology and psychology? Yet the practice is perfectly legal. Until the nearly inevitable inappropriate results squirm out. Public rancor runs high, as it should, against child molesters. The children are innocent victims. The perpetrators, however, believe themselves to be following divine dictates. It would seem that much suffering would be ended if God would go on the record here, so that we might have solid evidence with which to judge the case. If it please the court.

Photo credit: Tony Gutierrez, AP, from The Seattle Times

Defining Humanity

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Positions of power replicate themselves. In a sense this is understandable as power is the most addictive substance on the planet. Once superiority is asserted, it will never allow itself to be uprooted. With the recognition of homosexual marriage in New York, many heated reactions sprouted from the position of power man-plus-woman (always in that order) camp. Such a response was predictable and anticipated. I suspect it is largely based on fear. I have many friends with differing sexual orientations than mine. Raised to castigate such individuals, that outlook became increasingly difficult to uphold once I got to know my gay friends as people. I count them among my most loyal friends. People are people.

The problem lies in labels. Humans are natural categorizers: bird, fish, or mammal? Predator or prey? Religious or secular? We want our world to stay true to categories we devise. People, however, are seldom easily classified. Still, we try: skin color, ethnic ancestry, religious heritage, sexual orientation. People are people. The world of trite classification is ending, and those in positions of power tremble. Anything that is different might upset the economic balance that keeps those on top in their positions. (My own amateur observation, however, is that the economic balance is naturally top-heavy and readily upsets itself. It seems to have been that way since before this blog began.) Would we not do better to try to understand those who are different than ourselves?

As an exercise in this direction, I recently read Alvin Orloff’s smart satire, I Married an Earthling. As my long-term readers know, I have a slight soft-spot for aliens, and this story of a gay man finding nothing but rejection on earth and eventually marrying an alien seemed quite fitting in the present climate. Not part of the gay subculture, many aspects of the story were foreign to me, but what was painfully clear throughout is that people are people. Some are accepting, others are not. When reality offers so few options that he must flee his own planet, Chester, one of the protagonists, takes to the stars. At a couple points before his exodus, he notes the role that religion played in his antagonists’ outlooks. The book is lighthearted and funny overall, but the serious issue remains. Those in power tend to horde privilege. When that happens, economies—material and spiritual—collapse.

Cross Swords

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Occasionally the symbol of the Prince of Peace is used as a weapon. A current case playing out in New Jersey revolves around a Livingston man and his convictions. Originally erected for Lent, the homeowner in question placed a wooden cross within a municipal right-of-way zone where signs and potential distractions to drivers are prohibited. When informed of the violation the owner removed the original cross and placed a larger one just within the right-of-way zone. When asked to remove it he contacted the Alliance Defense Fund—a group of Christian lawyers (which sounds apocryphal to me) who advocate the spread of the Gospel. This bizarre case is now being cited as a test of a land-use law that protects religious expression. A few inches would have resolved this entire mess. Had the homeowner placed his second cross beyond the restricted zone, no fuss would have been made.

I don’t really feel safe in a world where bands of renegade Christian lawyers rove about seeking to support the violation of public safety ordinances. Instead of friendly persuasion the cross is here used as a cudgel. Perhaps wearing one’s religion on one’s sleeve ought to be accompanied with a measuring tape. Certainly there are those impressed by the masculine chest-thrusting implied in defying laws to assert one’s particular take on religion. Pushing such issues to the point of public funds being spent to enforce a law throws the action into sharp relief.

Some varieties of Christianity (and other religions too, I’m sure) thrive on the fiction of persecution. Is the quality of life of the homeowner affected deleteriously by not being allowed to place a cross in a no-sign zone? Is it not rather an attempt to set, in H. Richard Niebuhr’s phrasing, Christ against culture? What friends (besides lawyers) does it win to the cause? Having gone through a phase myself where PDR (Public Display of Religion) was considered the only way to be authentic about belief, I think I might understand the original intent of the homeowner. A clergyman, however, long ago set me straight with a frank discussion of subtlety. What I came to realize is that shoving only leads to shoving back. Perhaps moving the cross six inches would be the equivalent of turning the other cheek? But when the other cheek is turned, lawyers don’t get paid.

After the Carapture

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When my wife showed me the first news article about “Carmageddon” I shrugged my shoulders with a noncommittal “meh.” Now that the nation has somehow managed to survive the two-day closure of a highway in Los Angeles, commentators are wondering what this reveals about our cardolatry. As a nation, the United States worships cars. Last week predictions were made that traffic jams of biblical proportions would disrupt the second largest city in the country and that not even God would be able to sort out the mess. In Norway, in the meantime, a right-wing conservative Christian decided to tip the scales of justice by becoming a mass murderer. Why do we glory in our own destruction?

Human beings only developed what we recognize as religion after the advent of the city. Cities require temples and temples require religious infrastructure. Priests had much to gain in antiquity by proclaiming the wrath of God—the angrier the deity the more offerings that roll in and the wealthier priests become. Religion has evolved over the five-and-a-half-thousand years of civilization, but it has never had a true conversion. It is one among many ways of coping with the stresses of becoming an urban population. We live in cities and we have traffic jams. We live in cities and learn from those far different from us. We live in cities and bomb our enemies in the belief that God finds those far different from us evil. Apparently God approves of the killing of teenagers. Just ask old Ramesses about that one.

Norway is among the most non-violent and secular cultures in the world. Los Angeles is a liberal city among one of the most religious cultures on earth. They experience the wrath of God in different ways, according to the media. Cities gave us religion. When we had had religion long enough, cities began to withdraw from that particular approach to life. When we can’t get our cars where we want, it is the wrath of God. When we can’t get the government to follow our personal religious quibbles, we take the prerogative to introduce the wrath of God. We long for the end of what we have created. No matter how we achieve such destruction, we’ll find religion planted squarely in the middle.

What's coming to your neighborhood?

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!