In The Beginning, or Sometime Thereafter…
What God has to do with Gay Marriage, Pot, the Death Penalty, and Obama.
So far, 2014 has been a very interesting year for Religion, and—as with all other 2013 years in the Common Era—it has been a hotly debated topic. There were the Gallup polls that have shown a strong culture of religiosity in America. There was the Nye/Ham evolution debate held at the Creationism museum. And today (2/6/14), at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama denounced religious repression after reports had shown America is slightly repressive.
All seems good in the land of Milk and Honey… except that it’s not. Especially not from the outside looking in.
I would agree with Christopher Hitchens (who I profiled here) when he says that religion is the most interesting topic next to politics and literature. I also agree that religion poisons everything. It is, as Philip Larkin would suggest, that “vast moth eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die”. If all it did was tell people that they didn’t have to fear death, then we’d be having a different discussion. What it does do is hold us back.
It all begins with today’s speech by President Obama. In a Times article, they quote him as saying of Pope Francis; “Like Matthew, he has answered the call of Jesus, who said, ‘Follow me,’ and he inspires us with his words and deeds, his humility, his mercy and his missionary impulse to serve the cause of social justice.” As we all know, Pope Francis has been a Godsend to the Catholic Church. He has shifted prying eyes away from the sexual abuse of young children and severe corruption within the Vatican itself by lamenting the economic abuses by the rich.
Mystified by this white dove, we have forgotten all the prior crimes of the Catholic Church. But it’s the idea that these Christians would “serve the cause of social justice” that is most insulting. While I have written before about turning the blind eye to these grievous crimes, at least no one pretended that the Catholic Church was trying to promote social justice.
Many will point to Pope Francis’ words on homosexuality, asking “who am I to judge?” Most, though, will not see through the cosmic wordplay. We all know that while the Pope is God’s representative on Earth, he is not the Judge of humankind, God is. Living in a postdiluvian world as we do, he is essentially saying “let them sin!” This is echoed in a similar vein on his comments about atheists. A discussion on Catholicvote.org has raised similar questions, “did he say that atheists could get in heaven?” “God no.”
All religions serve to divide as long as there is religion. By simply affirming that one belief provides an eternal resting place in the sky as long as you worship correctly, it implies that those who do not will not receive that pleasure. That they are somehow wrong in the way that they choose to live their lives. Obama ended his speech with the “hope that somehow [prisoners of conscience] hear our prayers for them, that they know that, along with the spirit of God, they have our spirit with them as well, and that they are not alone.” But whose God? By religious standards alone, they all can’t be right.
Social acceptance only goes so far as to how willing a person is to drink the Kool-Aid. Rather, the more they reject the official tenets of their faith, the more they are willing to accept progressive social trends.
And this certainly extends to religions outside of Catholicism, but still within the arms of Christ.
The Gallup poll released this week, while showing major centers of Religious belief in America, numbers are slightly down. Looking at the broader scope of the last two decades, though, numbers are down drastically. Looking at this Gallup poll from 1992-2013, it’s more than obvious that religion is experiencing an exodus of sorts.
While the drop in percentage points is a mere 11%—roughly 30 million people—this does not reflect how seriously a person takes their religion.
As you can see, while the number of religious who consider their beliefs very important, the number of those who consider it not very important has increased to its highest numbers yet.
This is an important distinction to make. As Milton Rokeach discusses in his book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, (the name is coincidental and has almost nothing to do with religion) there are spheres of beliefs, some foundational and some incidental. While it is hard to change a foundational belief—the sun rises in the east—it is easier to change beliefs the further they gravitate away from the foundation.
As more and more people move religion to the outer spheres of belief, they are more and more willing to give up especially ignorant beliefs. This is a good thing. To show these trends, I have myself created a table from Gallup Poll data and using Wikipedia as a reference to show that to be religious is to be the opposite of progressive.
Mind the fact that this is a very ugly chart, and take a look at a religious snapshot of our country’s fifty states and the District of Columbia. All the way at the top, Gallup’s numbers show that Mississippi is the most religious state in the Union, with 61% of respondents saying that they are very religious, 29% moderately religious, and 10% are non-religious. The least religious state, Vermont, has only 22% very religious, 21% moderately religious, and 56% non-religious. It is one of two, along with its neighbor New Hampshire that has a majority of non-religious citizens.
What I’ve done is coupled these statistics with popular progressive trends aimed at “social justice”, as well as the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. Looking at this chart, it becomes clear that the less religious the citizenry, the more progressive the state. If you consider Texas and Arkansas outliers in Medical Marijuana laws, and North Dakota an outlier in consideration of death penalty laws, it appears that 43% of very religious citizens is the threshold—tipping point?—of social progressiveness. And though I’m not claiming direct causation—the r-squared value would be very low—, it seems pretty clear that there is some causation.
A Gallup Poll from last June suggests that most Americans believe that this country would be better if America was more religious, but better for whom? And how? We would still be a nation that relegates lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and trans-gender citizens to second-rate status. And in a cruel irony to the way in which Jesus was treated (as I have written about here), we would still be a nation of murderers. We would withhold a valuable, safe, and cheap drug from those who need it. We would elect more officials that would—again cheapening the messages of Christ—gut social safety nets for the sick and poor.
But I fear the worst for science.
What happens if—as many Americans seem to blindly wish for—America becomes a more religious country? Would we really work for social progress? I actually doubt we would. So what would be done to science? We would try to do what Texas—the twelfth most religious state—is currently trying to do: void it completely.
The most recent affront to decent science comes from Ken Ham, a man whose—to borrow from Mark Twain—“ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere”. In the aforementioned evolution debate between he and Bill Nye (of Science Guy fame), Ham spewed unscience so foul that even manure-ridden Pat Robertson thought something smelled funny.
The debate was held at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (the eleventh most religious state), which was already a warning sign, and it was a holy mess. Many different sources from Slate to the Richard Dawkins Foundation begged Bill Nye not to show up or suggested he lost by lending “his esteemed brand to one of the most despicable pseudoscientific cults in the United States”. I disagree with this last sentiment on the basis that the creationist cult is so instilled in their ways that Nye’s responses were possibly the first time they’ve heard a dissenting opinion—Nye noted this by frequently referencing Science as something done “outside of here”.
I think it is important for creationists to understand the glut of information, data, and knowledge credible scientists like Bill Nye have. But I also think it is important for the rest of us to understand just what exactly a creationist believes, and more specifically in this case, a Young Earth creationist. We do not, on the scientific side, want to seek out only the information that confirms our beliefs—commonly called “confirmation bias”—, but also to seek out those beliefs that are different from ours.
It was clear from the outset that Ham was going to slither his way through the debate, talking about creationism when it suited him and intelligent design when creationism didn’t work. His most used phrase of the night was, “well, there’s this book.” By which he meant The Bible, offering no facts, no data, but trying to denounce facts and data. One of my favorite utterances of the night was when he asked—out loud mind you—how we knew that a tree’s rings weren’t put there all at once to refute the fact, brought up by Nye, that there are trees older than the post-flood world.
Not once did he mention some of his more ridiculous beliefs, such as the idea that humans lived side-by-side with dinosaurs (this article’s lead picture is of a vegetarian t-rex). Instead, he couched his ideas between other scientists who also believe in Young Earth Creationism in order to legitimize his willful opposition to scientific fact. He at times conflated evolution with racism, while not quite reaching Godwin’s Law, he certainly came close. He believes that not teaching creationism is denying children a critical thinking asset.
The most interesting thing though, is his ability to compartmentalize science. There is “observable science” and “historical science”. The former is what has given us medicine, flight, and computers among all other things. The latter is unobservable in Ham’s opinion, as the only witness to history before us is God. And this is how he gets away with murder.
He can believe in pseudo-science by believing science to be pseudo-science. Or rather, his belief in the 3000 year-old document allows him to say “God did this” and magically make science vanish. Radioactive decay? God did this. The rings on a tree older than the world? God did this. It’s like he’s wearing a pair of the sunglasses from They Live! if they were set to weed out anything that disproves what his book says.
And while Bill Nye did his best to call him out on his ignorance—my favorite Nye moment of the night was when he asked “are the fish sinners?”—nothing would save Ham from his blind faith. In what I’m sure will be the take-away moment from the debate, they were both asked point blank what would make them change their views: Nye, of course, said evidence. Ham said nothing would make him change his mind.
That is the sad fact of the very religious, those whose foundations are laid on misinformation: there is nothing that will alter their beliefs. There is a confirmation bias in the way in which they must live out their lives; willfully ignoring all that goes on in science that doesn’t confirm their beliefs. They will gladly accept their iPhones, which uses rare earth minerals to produce real magic, but they will not accept that the Grand Canyon took more than 4000 years to form.
After the debate took place, a Buzzfeed staff member went around asking Creationists to write a message to those who understand science. (We do not, as he writes in the headline “believe in evolution”. We suggest answers based on evidence. You can say you believe that eating fast food makes you fat, but you can empirically prove it by studying people who eat nothing but fast food for thirty days, and then reviewing the data from the bathroom scale. Evolution is not the tooth fairy.)
Some of them actually attempted at a rebuttal—what about the second law of thermodynamics? what evidence has science discovered that evidences an increase of genetic information [… emphasis theirs]? why have we found only 1 “lucy”?
Others (most) were not so good—Bill Nye are you influencing the minds of children in a positive way? are you scared of a divine creator? how do you explain a sunset if their [sic] is no God? and my favorite, if we came from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?
The answers to the good questions were multifarious. Bill Nye discussed in the debate how the Earth was an open system in response to the question of the second law of thermodynamics. But for the rest of the questions, Phil Plait at the Bad Astronomy blog on Slate had us covered. He covers the questions of why there is only one “Lucy” by letting us know that there is not. And while he answers succinctly, he omits the cache of human bones that were recently found in Georgia (the other Georgia). This discovery is changing the way we view the evolutionary path of humans, something that Bill Nye said would happen in the face of new evidence. (I would also suggest The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, which I read excerpted in The New Yorker, for more information on fossils and extinction).
It wasn’t all bad news though. While many attendees were already Young Earth creationists, immutably stuck in their ways, it seems that some other Christians may not be. A poll at Christian Today stands at 92% for Bill Nye winning the debate. Since it’s online, it’s hard to say whether or not these are real Christians or just trolls rooting for the Science Guy. Either way, Bill Nye won just by doing what he does best: explaining science to the minds of children (or children-minded people).
It is towards the end of the debate that Bill Nye quotes the Constitution of the United States of America, which I quote in full: “The Congress shall have power […] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” (Article 1, Section 8). While this obviously creates a patent office, the idea that the government should “promote the progress of science” is the crux of the idea Nye was getting at.
We as a country cannot have science fall to the wayside. We cannot risk teaching pseudo-science alongside real, data-driven science. We cannot be flat-earthers. We cannot be geo-centric loons. And we cannot be Young Earth creationists who will put the teaching in classrooms back 200 years.
And we cannot do it for one very good reason. We are Americans, and it is also in our Constitution that we will “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And while they are free to practice their religion, the government is not free to promote it in our classrooms. There is, as Jefferson said in his letter to the Danbury Baptists, “a wall of separation between Church & State”.
Philip Larkin says in “Church Going” that “superstition, like belief, must die,/ And what remains when disbelief has gone?” The trend toward social justice comes not from the decaying halls of religion, but from the death of belief. It is replaced by fact, and, eventually, there will be no fact to disbelieve. There will be a day when a 3000 year-old book does not guide the morality of 21st century human beings. Larkin hints at this future. The church he visits is becoming desolate, “a shape less recognisable each week, a purpose more obscure. I wonder who,” he wonders, “will be the last, the very last, to seek/ This place for what it was?”
What do we do to keep moving towards progressive social goals? How do we ensure scientifically literate students? How do we show equality to all, including the religious, while not letting belief interfere with law?
The answers are out there somewhere, surely, they will not be found by divine intervention, but through human progress.
