MANN TALK: Criticizing Religious Irrationality
By Perry Mann
Hinton, WV (Special to HNN) – “There is, in fact, not much to secularism that should be of interest to anyone, apart from the fact that it is all that stands between sensible people like ourselves and the mad hordes of religious imbeciles who have balkanized our world, impeded the progress of science, and now place civilization itself in jeopardy. Criticizing religious irrationality is absolutely essential.” Sam Harris, “Rational Mysticism,” published in “Free Enquiry” October/November 2005.
The quote by Sam Harris is out of context just as every quote is. But except for his view that “there is a kernel of truth in the grandiosity and otherworldly language of religion,” and the following passage: “Faith enables many of us to endure life’s difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only by reason,” he bends little from affirming the view expressed in his quote at the beginning of this article.
Imbecile is a harsh word to hurl at anyone but what can one say when reason is applied to those Muslim fanatics in Palestine and Iraq, who drop on their knees and bend to Mecca five times a day and between prayers help harness fellow Muslims with explosives that slaughter the intended enemies and often kill innocents and babes in arms. The motive is a combination of tribalism, religion and despair. They die for their country and their God with the dream that for their sacrifice they will be lifted from despair to a heaven of pleasures forever. For the realization of this dream, conjured and preached by mullahs, the “imbeciles” gladly blow themselves to bits and many others to bits as a result of the irrationality that has been preached to them.
The Jews believe that God chose them especially in preference to all other peoples and that in confirmation of that choice He conveyed to them in perpetuity the Holy Land. Why God allowed other tribes to conquer and disperse the Jews throughout the world is a mystery that is explained somewhat, however, by the prophets as punishment for their sins. But now they are back in the Holy Land, having displaced Palestinians by arms and still are declaring that they are there legitimately on the ground that God gave them the land for theirs to have and to hold forever. What does reason say to the assertion that God gave land to any tribe or to anyone else in perpetuity? The Indians of North America might make the same claim to the United States with as much legitimacy as the Jews do to the Holy Land, if one reads the Indians’ bible. The answer to such a claim is that the claimant is an imbecile or at least that his reason is so atrophy by religion and faith that he cannot think rationally. Nationalism and religion seem to do to reason what sexual infatuation does to common sense---but often with worse consequences.
The Popes have long proclaimed that with regard to morality and other matters that their proclamations and pontifications are infallible. Who but one made imbecilic by indoctrination from childhood would accept such a belief? An infallible Pope once told his flock that Earth was the center of the Universe. An infallible Pope once told his flock that God created the earth, the heavens, night and day, seasons, grass and trees, man and women and the whole of everything inhabiting earth in a period of six days. An infallible Pope now sides with Darwin with the exception that somewhere in the evolutionary chain of life man was given a soul that is eternal. And that to realize an eternity in bliss one must do as the Pope instructs through his agents.
And then there are the Baptist and Evangelical fundamentalists. They believe in the inerrancy of the Bible; that is, they believe every word of it is the word of God revealed to Moses, Christ, St Paul and other prophets. How any rational person can read the Bible from beginning to end---read Leviticus and all the other books of the Hebrew Bible in which Jehovah conspires with the Jews to exterminate thousands of their enemies, rejoices in the sack and plunder of foreign tribes and their cities and generally exhibits the morals of an ordinary human and then read the Gospels and listen to Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount and still maintain that every word of the Bible is God’s word---is a mystery explained only by the atrophy of his reason. The God of the Hebrew Bible has little in common with the Father of Christ. Jehovah would have an adulteress stoned to death, a horrible death even to contemplate. Christ’s sentence of the woman caught in adultery was “Go and sin no more.”
The fundamentalists believe, believe it or not, that the Holy Ghost fathered Jesus immaculately and Mary, to her surprise, conceived and birthed him. They believe that Jesus walked on water, raised the dead to life, died on the cross, rose from his sepulcher, ascended to Heaven and now sits at the right hand of God Almighty. And that he did all this for the sake of all of us to redeem our sins. They also believe in heaven and hell and they believe that for one to get to heaven one must experience full immersion baptism and believe that salvation is dependent upon faith alone and accept Jesus Christ as savior. And they believe that all those who do not abide by all of this nonsense will go to hell. No god in his right mind would ever agree with and confirm such irrationality. Clerics through the ages have either dreamed this theology and believed it or have schemed it in order to gain power over the masses.
Now the people will have to contend with the decisions of Harriet Miers, who has just been nominated a justice of the Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O’Connor and who will probably be confirmed. Ms. Miers, according to Molly Ivins, is a member of the Valley View Christian Church of Dallas, which on its Web site reveals that “it believes in Biblical inerrancy, full immersion baptism, original sin, and salvation dependent entirely upon accepting Jesus Christ. Everyone else is going to hell.”
How, in this world of libraries in every town and village and computers now in every household and in schools and offices and on street corners---can one still believe in the irrationality subscribed to by the church Ms. Miers attends? Particularly how can Harriet Miers, who has earned a college and law degree and has had all the advantages of a well-off person as well as never having had her time consumed by a family or even a husband--- not expanded her mind beyond Fundamentalist theology? It’s a mystery to me and a depressing revelation. If Miers votes with John Roberts to overturn Roe v. Wade, in a world crowded with the animal Homo sapiens, there will be abortions in the alleys and duped and seduced women made criminals. Religionists are helping to create a world that would appall Christ.
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville. Born in Charleston, W.Va. in 1921, he lives in Hinton. The portrait accompanying this column is by Robert Shetterley from his book “Americans Who Tell The Truth.”