Tying God's hands

Today, for the umpteenth time, I saw the following image posted on social media:

The people who posted it apparently think that it's entirely appropriate to use the deaths of innocent people in school shootings to lob some snark at the atheists, secularists, and others who believe in the separation of church and state.  But what I want to address here is the toxicity of the mindset behind the message -- apart from what would spur someone to think that it was ever a reasonable thing to post.

First, I thought y'all were the ones who believed that God is everywhere, is omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient and omni-what-have-you.  What you're implying here is that a handful of people who think religion has no place in a public, taxpayer-funded institution have somehow overpowered an all-powerful God's ability to do anything to stop a crazed gunman.  Probably explaining why both Oklahoma and Texas are currently poised to approve and implement new laws requiring public school teachers to work lessons from the Bible into their curricula; it's easier than doing anything to actually improve education and keep children safe, and leaves the powers-that-be with a nice smug feeling of holiness afterward. 

It's basically "Thoughts & Prayers" v. 2.0, with a side order of Showing All The Other Religions Who's Boss.

So we're already on some shaky theological grounds, but it gets worse.  What the above message suggests is that somehow, God's attitude is, "if you won't pray in schools, innocent children deserve to die."  That given the choice of using his Miraculous God Powers to stop a massacre, he just stands there smirking, and afterwards says, "See?  Told you something like this would happen if you didn't worship me all the time and everywhere.  Sorry, but my hands were tied."

Me, I think any deity that acts like this is a monster, not an all-loving beneficent creator.  That said, it's entirely consistent with the depiction of the Lord of Hosts in the Old Testament.  The Old Testament God was constantly smiting people left and right for such heinous crimes as gathering firewood on the sabbath, and when the Chosen People of Israel conquered a place, the word from above was "kill everyone, including children."

Don't believe me?  There are plenty of instances, but my favorite is 1 Samuel 15:

This is what the Lord Almighty says: "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.  Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them.  Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."  So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah.

Long story short, Saul did as told, killing everyone up to and including the donkeys, but the Lord was still pissed off for some reason, and the Prophet Samuel told Saul so.  Apparently it had to do with the fact that Saul had spared the Amalekite King, Agag (like I said before, to hell with the children).  So Saul executed Agag, but the Lord still wasn't happy with him.

There's no impressing all-powerful deities, some days.

Anyhow, what this shows is that people who post bullshit like the above image are simply describing how the Old Testament God does, in fact, behave.

The whole thing brings to memory a quote from Richard Dawkins.  I know his very name justifiably raises pretty much everyone's hackles, but it's so germane to this topic that I would be remiss in not including it:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

To which I can only say: touché.

The deepest problem, though, is the one that the people who post this nonsense would be the least likely to admit; when they advocate tearing down the wall between church and state, they're absolutely adamant that it can only be for the benefit of one particular church.  Start talking about having Jewish prayers or quotes from the Qu'ran or some of the Ten Thousand Sayings of Buddha festooned about the walls of classrooms, and you'll have these same people screaming bloody murder.  Hell, I bet they'd even get their knickers in a twist over which flavor of Christianity you're allowed to promote.

Hey, teachers in Oklahoma or Texas: maybe you should try posting quotes and sermons and whatnot from the Patriarch Bartholomew of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and see what happens.  Maybe even insist that the children put up Christmas decorations on January 7, when the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas.

Could be an interesting experiment to run.

So as usual, what we're talking about is a combination of ugly theology and smug hypocrisy.  And it would be hardly worth commenting on if it weren't for the power that these attitudes still have, and the increasing degree to which they still influence policy in the United States -- something that is only going to extend further with the incoming administration, especially if more Christofascists like Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee get confirmed in high-level positions.

Other than railing about it here on Skeptophilia, though, I'm not sure what to do.  Anyone who really believes this -- anyone, in other words, who wasn't just trying to score some points off the nonbelievers -- has subscribed to a belief system that is very close to the definition of moral bankruptcy, so trying to reach them via argument is probably a forlorn hope.

And people talk about us atheists being amoral.

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Wallnau's witches

I've noticed a tendency amongst some people that is a little bit like what would happen if the sunk-cost fallacy had an unholy bastard child with confirmation bias.  It occurs when someone has put so much of their time, effort, money, and emotional energy into something that when it's proven wrong, they simply can't accept it -- and start casting around for explanations, however ridiculous or far-fetched, to account for it.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who watched Tuesday's presidential candidates' debate that I'm talking about the supporters of Donald Trump.  A friend of mine commented that prior performances by Trump had set the bar so low that all he had to do in order to win the debate was not shit his pants while in front of the camera, and he couldn't even manage that much.  Kamala Harris -- who was a lawyer, and is a skilled orator who knows how to use her opponents' weaknesses against them -- kept baiting Trump over and over, and Trump couldn't help himself.  He took the bait every damn time, with the result that his side of the debate was an incoherent rant about everything from "the kind of numbers I'm talking about, because child care is child care" (direct quote, that) to his having the best rallies in the history of politics to Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating people's cats and dogs for dinner.

Confronted with their beloved candidate doing what can only be called a complete face-plant in front of millions of viewers, the MAGA types had to figure out how Mr. Stable Genius came across as a barely comprehensible, probably demented nutjob who couldn't stick to the script long enough to answer a single question.  I've already seen one Trump supporter claiming that the only reason Harris did so well is that she was being fed answers through an earpiece.  (Was Trump wearing an earpiece that sucked answers out of his brain?)  Another, following the "Declare victory and go home" strategy, simply said that Trump won the debate and that was that.  But no one has come up with an explanation as creative -- and by "creative," I mean "absolutely batshit crazy" -- as Pastor Lance Wallnau.

Regular readers of Skeptophilia will undoubtedly be familiar with Wallnau's name, because he's been something of a frequent flier here.  Amongst his more "creative" ideas in the past:

• the January 6 rioters were there at the Capitol to "pick up trash."
• all of Trump's enemies would be struck down by God in May of 2024.  (It's currently September.  We're still waiting.)
• back in 2020, he declared that God would cure Rush Limbaugh's cancer and save his life.  (Despite this, Limbaugh died in February of 2021.)
• Wallnau "took authority" over Hurricane Maria in 2017, and ordered it in the name of Jesus to miss Puerto Rico.  (It didn't.)
• angels "dusted his face with gold flakes" because he loves Trump so much.
• the Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia (resulting in one person's death) were "paid actors" because white supremacists don't exist.

Now, Wallnau is responding to Trump's catastrophically bad performance Tuesday night -- apparently even the good pastor can't stretch the truth enough to pretend Trump was brilliant -- by saying that he flopped because he was under an evil spell cast by the moderators, who are actually witches.  Here's the quote in toto because otherwise you'll think I'm making this up:

When I say "witchcraft" I am talking about what happened tonight. Occult-empowered deception, manipulation and domination.  That’s what ABC pulled off as moderators, and Kamala’s script handlers set up the kill box.  One-sided questions and fact checking sealed the box.  Witchcraft.  It’s not over yet, but something supernatural needs to disrupt this counterfeit momentum because the same public that voted in Obama is voting again and her deception is advancing.

I dunno, Lance, every clip I've heard from Trump's rallies sounds like incoherent babbling, too, so what are you saying?  The "occult-empowered witches" are following him around?

Of course, Wallnau probably would answer that with a resounding "yes, of course they are."  And the more troubling part about this is not that Wallnau is a wacko crank spouting nonsense -- which, after all, is what wacko cranks do -- but that he's listened to, and taken seriously by, thousands of people.

Look, I get how hard it is to admit you were wrong, especially when you've invested a lot of your heart into something or someone.  But this goes beyond conservative versus liberal.  I know a good many people who lean right, and that's just fine; we might disagree on various issues, but those things we can discuss.

But how anyone at this point can look at that incoherent, babbling blowhard and think he's fit to run a country is absolutely beyond comprehension.

Wallnau apparently does, though, to the extent that he's blaming Tuesday night's fiasco on witchcraft.  Couldn't possibly be because he hitched his wagon to someone who was incompetent from the outset, but has since then demonstrated a level of fitness that includes publicly sucking up to dictators like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin, and claiming that he can levy taxes on foreign countries, that there are states where it is legal to "execute babies after birth," and that white people are being denied the COVID vaccine because of their race.  It's so bad that Wikipedia actually has a page called "False or Misleading Statements by Donald Trump," which -- counting only the ones in public record that have been adequately fact-checked -- number in the tens of thousands.  Donnel Stern, writing in the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 2019, said, "We expect politicians to stretch the truth.  But Trump is a whole different animal...  He lies as policy, and will say anything to satisfy his supporters or himself."

So.  Yeah.  I'm probably doomed to disappointment in thinking that this might change anyone's mind, but hell, hope springs eternal and all that kinda stuff.  You never know, though.  Maybe Wallnau's witches are on to something.  I could try casting a few spells and seeing if it moves the poll numbers a notch.

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The empty pews

Today I'd like to look at two articles that are mainly interesting in juxtaposition -- and a third that is as horrifying as it is enlightening.

The first is from Christianity Today and describes a one hundred million dollar ad campaign designed to bring the uncommitted, undecided, and "cultural Christians" -- what the people running the campaign call "the movable middle" -- back into the fold.  The money is being spent for television and online advertisements, billboards, and YouTube videos, all designed to make Christianity look appealing to the dubious.  The program is called "He Gets Us," and focuses on Jesus's warm, human side, his struggles against people who judged him, and his commitment to dedicate himself to God's will even so.

I'm perhaps to be forgiven for immediately thinking of the "Buddy Christ" campaign from the movie Dogma.

The reason for "He Gets Us," of course, is that in the last ten years Christian churches in the United States have been hemorrhaging members, especially in the under-30 demographic.  A 2019 study found that 66% of Americans between 23 and 30 stopped going to church for at least a year after turning 18; most of the ones who left didn't go back.  The main reasons they gave for leaving were church involvement in politics (especially support of Donald Trump), issues of contraception and women's bodily autonomy, and policies and attitudes discriminating against LGBTQ+ individuals.

Haven, the group running the campaign, summed up the problem thusly: "How did the world’s greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?"

The second article is a paper in the Journal of Secularism and Nonreligion, and attempted to quantify the degree of in-group favoritism and out-group dislike amongst various religions in the United States, agnostics, and atheists.  Contrary to the common perception that "atheists hate the religious," the researchers found that the converse was closer to the mark:

Atheists are among the most disliked groups in America, which has been explained in a variety of ways, one of which is that atheists are hostile towards religion and that anti-atheist prejudice is therefore reactive.  We tested this hypothesis by using the 2018 American General Social Survey by investigating attitudes towards atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims.  We initially used a general sample of Americans, but then identified and isolated individuals who were atheists, theists, nonreligious atheists, religious theists, and/or theistic Christians.  Logically, if atheists were inordinately hostile towards religion, we would expect to see a greater degree of in-group favouritism in the atheist group and a greater degree of out-group dislike.  Results indicated several notable findings: 1). Atheists were significantly more disliked than any other religious group. 2). Atheists rated Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Hindus as favourably as they rated their own atheist in-group, but rated Muslims less positively (although this effect was small).  3). Christian theists showed pronounced in-group favouritism and a strong dislike towards atheists.  No evidence could be found to support the contention that atheists are hostile towards religious groups in general, and towards Christians specifically.

The fact is, it's not the atheists who have a hate problem to address.  I find Haven's disingenuous question about Christianity and hate groups wryly funny, especially since they have also run ad campaigns for Focus on the Family, one of the most virulently anti-LGBTQ+ groups in existence (they are on record as calling LGBTQ+ marriage and parenting equal rights as "a particularly evil lie of Satan").

Maybe the first thing to do before trying to market a kinder, gentler Jesus is for the Christians themselves, as a group, to confront the Religious Right's ongoing campaign of persecution against queer people.  (And if you think I'm overstating the case by using the word "persecution," allow me to remind you that only six months ago, a pastor in Texas told a cheering congregation that anyone identifying as queer should be stood up against a wall and shot; only two months ago, a right wing nutjob went to a nightclub in Colorado Springs and did exactly as told; and shortly afterward, a different pastor told a different cheering congregation he was glad it had happened.)

And they wonder why people are looking at the church, shaking their heads, and walking away.

The last story I probably wouldn't have bothered commenting on if it hadn't been for the first two; in fact, when I first saw it, I thought it was a joke.  It's about former United States Representative and current complete lunatic Michele Bachmann, who since her failed attempt at re-election has turned herself into a spokesperson for the evangelicals.  She was on the Christian radio program Lions & Generals a couple of days ago, and proudly told the interviewer that she had spent Christmas day warning her grandchildren about the fires of hell.

No, I'm not making this up.  Here's a direct quote:

I was with two of my grandchildren this weekend, a two-year-old and a six-year-old, and I was just compelled to talk to them about, when we die, it’s judgement," she said.  "We talked about what heaven is, and we talked about what hell is.  That hell is just as real as heaven.  And in hell, there’s eternal fires and damnation and it’s a real place, we do not want to go there, that’s where the wicked will go.  And then I explained how they don’t go — that they receive Christ and confess their sins … [Jesus] cleanses them and then because of his righteousness, they go to heaven...  And so my little granddaughter immediately started saying, ‘I don’t want to go to hell, I want to go to heaven.’ I said, ‘Bella, can I pray with you? Let’s pray.  Do you want to pray?’ … And I think, why miss an opportunity?

Or, more accurately, "why miss an opportunity to subject a six-year-old and a two-year-old to religiously-justified emotional abuse?"

And once again, they wonder why people are looking at the church, shaking their heads, and walking away.

Look, I know, "not all Christians."  Not, perhaps, even most Christians.  As I've said many times, I have lots of Christian friends, as well as friends of various other belief systems, and mostly we all get along pretty well.  But unfortunately, in the United States, Christianity has allowed itself to get hijacked by the loudest, ugliest, and most vicious minority, and those are the people who are creating the image American Christianity has.  Until the Christians who really do stand for Jesus's command to "love thy neighbor as thyself" -- and that includes thy brown neighbor, thy immigrant neighbor, thy homeless neighbor, thy queer neighbor, thy Muslim neighbor, and thy atheist neighbor -- stand up and shout down the bigots and extremists, no multi-million-dollar ad campaign is going to do a damn thing to stop the pews from emptying.

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Broken tools

Since 2016, one of the most persistent puzzles to me has been the unflagging support of evangelical Christians for Donald Trump, a man whose main claim to fame seems to be embodying all Seven Deadly Sins in one individual.

I get why people with far-right ideology support him; that, at least, is consistent.  Trump has the same pro-corporate capitalist, xenophobic, anti-immigration, authoritarian views they do.  But the very religious have continued to idolize the man despite his openly admitting affairs while married, multiple credible allegations of fraud, and so many outright lies that it's impossible even to keep up with them.  They even go so far as to consider him anointed by God -- I heard one person, with no apparent sense of irony, call Trump "Jesus's Right-Hand Man."

When I've inquired (cautiously) into how "Jesus's Right-Hand Man" can be so dramatically and thoroughly flawed, I've heard comments like "God can work with a broken tool."  Which seems to me to be a puzzling stance for a group of people who ostensibly believe that the Bible should be followed to the letter, and anyone who doesn't do so is destined for the fires of hell.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gerbilo, Christianity symbols, CC BY 3.0]

A fascinating study that appeared last week in Politics and Religion may have figured out the answer.  It's not that they think Trump is religious himself; they don't.  In fact, only 37% of the white evangelical Christians in the study said they thought Trump was religious.  (Surprisingly, Biden scored slightly higher.)  Despite this, they overwhelmingly voted for Trump -- because, the study found, Trump repeatedly emphasized that evangelical Christians were a threatened minority, and promised to protect them.

The perception, apparently, was that it didn't matter if Trump was religious, or even moral, himself; his election was "part of God's plan" to bolster up the evangelical community against perceived external threats.  Trump's strategy was to play into that fear -- and it worked.

"This finding suggests that Trump is a unique case when it comes to white evangelical evaluations of the religiosity of elites," said Jack Thompson of the University of Exeter, who authored the study, in an interview with PsyPost.  "Instead of projecting their beliefs onto Trump, and thereby supporting him because of his perceived religiosity, white evangelicals support him despite his lack of religiosity...  The findings concerning the salience of identity threats on conditioning white evangelical beliefs also provide an additional explanation for why evaluations on Trump’s religiosity might not have mattered when it came to their vote choice in 2016.  Namely, because Trump’s invocation of the decline of white Christian America proved effective in activating religious identity threat in a way that led to white evangelicals to coalesce around his candidacy.  In this way, Trump’s ability to articulate white evangelicals’ fears about the declining influence of Christianity likely overrode any lingering concerns about his religiosity."

So "God can work with a broken tool" turns out to be pretty spot on, as does the observation by a friend of mine that "the Religious Right loves Trump because he hates the same people they do."  

The whole thing makes some twisted kind of sense.  If you're convinced that "God has a plan" -- and that, importantly, you know what that plan is -- then it doesn't make a difference who contributes to the working out of that plan.  It could be the most evil human being alive, committing atrocities, and as long as that moves God's plan forward -- well, that's what needs to happen.

Mighty convenient, that.

One has to wonder how this will continue to play out, because there's no doubt that evangelical Christianity is declining.  A study in 2021 found that between 2006 and 2020, the number of self-identified evangelicals in the United States dropped by 37%.  (In the same period, the number of Roman Catholics also dropped by 27%.)  What that suggests is that the fears of decreasing influence are well-founded.  At some point, the mobilization of the remaining evangelicals because of fear will inevitably be overcome by the fact that they're simply too few in numbers to make a difference in national elections.

At least, I hope so.  I'm not religious myself but have no problem with people who are, as long as they stay in their lane and don't attempt to force belief down my throat.  On the other hand, any group who could support a moral degenerate like Donald Trump can't be allowed to swing the direction of our entire nation.

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Waves, demons, and sunk costs

I find it utterly baffling how hard it is for people to look at something that didn't work out like they expected and say, "Well, I guess I was wrong, then."

I mean, on one level, I get it.  I'm no fonder of being wrong than the next guy.  Finding out you're mistaken, especially about something important, can be devastating.  And admitting you're wrong can be nothing short of humiliating.  But even so -- when the facts demand it, we don't really have a choice, do we?

To judge by a great many people, apparently we do, and that choice is "hang on like grim death to what we already believed, and summarily dismiss any evidence to the contrary."

Take, for example, last week's election here in the United States.  Many of us, on both sides of the aisle, were expecting a "red wave" -- that the Republicans would score resounding wins, and end up with decisive majorities in the House, Senate, and gubernatorial races.  Didn't quite work out that way.  The Democratic majority in the Senate looks like it'll be up by at least one, possibly two; at the time of this writing, the control of the House of Representatives has yet to be decided, but any majority (either way) is going to be razor-thin.

My reason for bringing this up in the context of "being wrong" is not the pollsters, nor mere voting citizens like myself.  I have nowhere near the expertise in political science to expect my prognostications about elections would carry any weight at all, and polls have been wrong as often as they're right.  No, what I'm looking at here are the people who predicted the "red wave" would happen -- because God had told them so personally.

Let's start with pastor George Pearsons, who told an interviewer on The Victory Channel that he knew the election wouldn't be "stolen" because he'd gotten the information directly from the Big Guy himself:

This afternoon I'm in the kitchen, and I'm fixing something to eat, and Terry and I are talking about the election, and the different things that are happening.  And for a moment I got quiet, and I heard the voice of the Lord.  And you know what he said?  He said, 'I got this.'...  Father, we thank you.  We have worked together between heaven and Earth.  Two years, praying, standing, believing,  We are, as believers, emboldened, empowered, and standing on our authority in the word of God.  This election will not be stolen.  Corruption, you bow your knee, your name to the name of Jesus [??? sic], and Father we thank you that we've seen in two years, Jesus himself has rolled up his sleeves, and he has worked, and his people have worked with him, in every shape, form, and manner.  So Lord, we thank you that this deal is over.  It's up.  And now we hear your voice: 'I got this.'  And we praise you and honor you for the victory this night for the United States of America.

As the results started coming in, though, the tune changed.  My Pillow guy Mike Lindell, also speaking on The Victory Channel, said he saw it coming, despite what God himself had said to Reverend Pearsons, and that had been announced on the same channel, only hours earlier:

Well, it's kind of what I expected.  They're stealing everything.  Just in Herschel Walker's race alone, over two hundred thousand votes have been injected into his opponent to get to this runoff stage.  They stole the governor's race with Mastriano in Pennsylvania, we've seen an early injection of ninety thousand votes in the computers, and Kari Lake, they're trying to steal her race, too.

Needless to say, there was no "injection" of votes, and the races weren't "stolen."  Walker's in a runoff but is trailing Raphael Warnock, and Mastriano lost fair and square.  But saying that is a bridge too far for people like Lindell.

A couple of days afterward, when it became clear that there had been no "red wave," the christofascists were scrambling around trying to figure out why the divine guidance had turned out to be flat wrong.  No way could they just say, "Maybe God didn't speak to us after all," or "Perhaps hitching our boat to Donald Trump wasn't such a great idea," or (worst of all) "It's time to do some reflection and rethink whether our message of exclusion, ugliness, and hate is in line with Jesus's actual words."  Instead, they cast around for what could possibly have made the election go sideways, and landed on the obvious answer:

It was the demons.

Pastor Shane Vaughn said that of course what God told him wasn't wrong, and of course he wasn't delusional when he claimed to hear God speaking in the first place.  It was just those damn demons:

That's why there was no red wave.  Abortion.  Abortion changed everything.  And even though all the polls showed the economy was the main issue, abortion is a religious issue.  And religion creates more passion than anything in the world...  And there's a religion of demons that loves abortion.  That religion of pro-abortion showed up.  It was bigger than anybody understood because of the passion those demonic powers create in their church of heathens that love to kill babies.  Now that's why there was no red wave.  Abortion.  Had it not been for the abortion issue, I promise you, the whole country would be red today.  What happened in Pennsylvania -- anybody who could vote for that monster, Uncle Fester, proves to me the power of demonic activity in the world today.  That's the only way you could vote for that man.  That's it.  Those demons did show up, and those demons do have power over this Earth.

So if the supernatural voice you supposedly heard telling you something turns out to be wrong, you have to invent a supernatural enemy to explain what happened?

I understand the sunk-cost fallacy; that once you've put a tremendous amount of personal and emotional energy into supporting something or someone, it's a huge effort to reverse course.  But seriously; isn't it time for some reassessment, here?

It puts me in mind of a couple of quotes, the first from Susan B. Anthony: "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."  And even more to the point, from theologian and writer Timothy Keller: "If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself."

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Putting Christ back in... Halloween?

Every year about this time, evangelicals start stepping up the pressure on Christians to discourage them and their children from participating in Halloween, an event that they see as celebrating Satan.  Some of the devout even believe that demonic curses can be transmitted via Halloween candy.  This has made the candy manufacturers sit back, in the fashion of Jabba the Hutt, and say, "Your fundamentalist mind-tricks will not work on us.  Bo shuda."  Then they give a nasty throaty chuckle and respond by bringing out the Halloween candy even earlier each year, until eventually they'll be putting out next year's candy on November 1 of this year.

Most of the rest of us just seem to find the whole thing unintentionally hilarious.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Paul Hermans, Halloween in Uikhoven 27-10-2020 19-07-07, CC BY-SA 4.0]

The evangelicals, who in this fight see themselves in the role of Luke Skywalker, are not going to give up and let themselves be eaten by the Sarlacc (i.e. Satan), so every year, they gird their loins and prepare for battle.  This year's sortie, which I swear am not making up, is called "JesusWeen."  At first I thought, especially given the cringe-y name, that this was some sort of parody site intended to ridicule the fear-mongering, but it seems to be entirely serious.  Meant to encourage Christians to do something more than hiding inside and locking the doors on Halloween, JesusWeen suggests some bold and proactive steps, to wit:

• handing out Bibles or scripture verses instead of candy;
• putting up signs in your town, encouraging people to give up participating in Halloween;
• having prayer circles with neighborhood children instead of joining in trick-or-treating;
• and going door-to-door on Halloween night, evangelizing and trying to get the demonic-candy purveyors to see the error of their ways.

All of which makes me wonder if these people have ever met any actual children.  I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, if my friends and I had gone trick-or-treating, and a family had handed out scripture verses instead of mini-Milky Way bars, they would still be trying to find their house underneath the mass of toilet paper.

You have to kind of admire the JesusWeen people for their Daniel-in-the-lions'-den approach to winning a battle against impossible odds.  And however medieval their beliefs seem to be, no one can accuse them of being in the Dark Ages with respect to electronic networking. They have a JesusWeen chat, are on Twitter (@JesusWeen), and have several videos on YouTube.  They seem quite optimistic -- their website says, "Jesus Ween (Oct 31st) is expected to become the most effective Christian outreach day ever and that's why we also call it 'World Evangelism JesusWeen Venue: In Every Country, Every City, Every Street, Every Home.'"

I dunno.  That seems kind of like wishful thinking to me.  I'm doubting that Bibles are ever going to be the draw for kids that candy is.  My guess is that no one who wasn't already a believer is going to have some kind of epiphany because of JesusWeen, and once you get a reputation for inviting trick-or-treating kids into your house for a prayer circle, you probably won't be getting many visitors on Halloween night, except maybe the police.

So that's the news from the evangelical movement.  Whatever else you can say about these people, they're consistent -- once they decide something, they follow through.  I almost hope that we have some show up at our door on Halloween night, just for the amusement value.  Maybe I'll hand out Richard Dawkins books.

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A moment of Judeo-Christian silence

Let me start out with a reality check: despite what the Religious Right and the pseudo-pundits on Fox News want you to believe, there is no law against students praying in public school.  Nor is it against the rules for any student in any public school in the United States to have, or read, a Bible.  Nor to cite it (or Jesus) as an influence in their lives in personal essays.  No school has stopped students from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because it contains the words "under God."  Bible study and Christian fellowship groups are allowed to hold meetings on school property as long as attendance is completely voluntary.

Anyone who claims otherwise is wrong at best, and flat-out lying through their teeth at worst.

What is not legal is mandating prayer in school, or using Christian membership or affirmation as a qualification for... well, anything.  Schools cannot legally force students to follow the precepts of any religion.  The upshot is that public schools are simply not the venue for generating religious adherence, or (for that matter) preventing it.  It is no more teachers' place to alter their students' religious views in either direction than it is for churches to teach their congregations algebra.

As a personal case in point:

• I responded to questions about my own religious beliefs with "that isn't relevant to the discussion" -- even while we were studying fraught topics like evolution.
• I had a Bible on the bookshelf in my classroom.  I was given it by a student many years ago, and saw no reason it shouldn't be there.
• I saw students praying before exams and saying grace before lunch, and no one ever stopped them or had any problem with it.

As a brief aside, there is an explicit conflict in the "under God" part of the Pledge, in my opinion, because if it's recited by students -- which it still is, in public schools across the country -- it pressures non-religious students to affirm something they don't believe it (i.e., to lie).  I find that people who argue against taking out the words "under God" (which, by the bye, were not original to the Pledge but were added in the 1950s) often can't come up with a cogent reason why the words should be recited in a public school where (1) attendance is compulsory, and (2) there are students (and adults) of all different gradations of belief and disbelief.

But of course, that "live and let live" (or, as my mom used to put it, "your rights end where my nose begins") attitude isn't enough for the sanctimonious spokespeople of the Religious Right, who will stop at nothing to inject religion back into public schools.  And not just any religion, of course:

If there was any doubt about this, it should be put to rest by what happened in Florida (of course it was in Florida) last week.  A new law was signed by Governor Ron DeSantis that will mandate a sixty-second "moment of silence" that must be observed in all public schools.  The proponents gave some lip service to a broad-minded sentiment behind this -- that students need to have time to engage in meditative self-reflection -- but the real reason was given away by the bill's sponsor, Representative Randy Fine, who tweeted triumphantly, "Just joined Governor DeSantis to sign my fourth bill of the 2021 Legislative Session, allowing prayer back into schools via a moment of silence for all our schoolchildren.  I won't stop fighting against woke radicals who which [sic] to drive out Judeo-Christian values from every aspect of our lives!"

You'd think that anyone with any sense would recognize that saying this explicitly is just asking for the filing of lawsuits to invalidate the new legislation, but DeSantis, who certainly wouldn't be in contention for the "smartest governor in the United States" award, not only didn't contradict Fine but immediately agreed.  "The idea that you can push God out of every institution and be successful," DeSantis said, "I'm sorry, our Founding Fathers did not believe that."

"Students are free to believe what they want" isn't enough for these people; Fine and DeSantis make it clear that the "moment of silence" bill is just a foot in the door for reinserting prayer -- Christian prayer, of course -- back into public school classrooms.  And call me a "woke radical" if you like, but no compulsory prayer of any kind belongs in publicly funded institutions.

And for fuck's sake, it's not like public school teachers have time to do some kind of subversive anti-religious indoctrination.  I was a teacher for 32 years, and never once did I say, "Okay, kids, we've got an extra twenty minutes today, I will now teach you how to blaspheme!"  I had enough on my hands trying to get high schoolers to understand the Krebs Cycle and Mendel's Laws and the reactions of photosynthesis, I definitely didn't have the space in the curriculum to devote to undermining students' dearly-held religious beliefs.

Nor, might I add, did I have the desire to.  I may be a staunch atheist myself, but I am firmly of the opinion that everyone arrives at their understanding of how the universe works in their own time and fashion, and while I may disagree with someone's worldview, it's not my place to criticize it -- or honestly, even to make a judgment about it at all.

Unless that worldview involves compelling others to alter their own beliefs and actions.  It's all very well to say, "I do this because it's required by my religion;" when you start saying "you have to do this because it's required by my religion," you're going to have a fight on your hands.

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One of the most devastating psychological diagnoses is schizophrenia.  United by the common characteristic of "loss of touch with reality," this phrase belies how horrible the various kinds of schizophrenia are, both for the sufferers and their families.  Immersed in a pseudo-reality where the voices, hallucinations, and perceptions created by their minds seem as vivid as the actual reality around them, schizophrenics live in a terrifying world where they literally can't tell their own imaginings from what they're really seeing and hearing.

The origins of schizophrenia are still poorly understood, and largely because of a lack of knowledge of its causes, treatment and prognosis are iffy at best.  But much of what we know about this horrible disorder comes from families where it seems to be common -- where, apparently, there is a genetic predisposition for the psychosis that is schizophrenia's most frightening characteristic.

One of the first studies of this kind was of the Galvin family of Colorado, who had ten children born between 1945 and 1965 of whom six eventually were diagnosed as schizophrenic.  This tragic situation is the subject of the riveting book Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family, by Robert Kolker.  Kolker looks at the study done by the National Institute of Health of the Galvin family, which provided the first insight into the genetic basis of schizophrenia, but along the way gives us a touching and compassionate view of a family devastated by this mysterious disease.  It's brilliant reading, and leaves you with a greater understanding of the impact of psychiatric illness -- and hope for a future where this diagnosis has better options for treatment.

[Note: if you purchase this book from the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

 

This week in lunacy

Is it just me, or have the evangelicals as a group completely lost their damn marbles?

I was a college student in the height of Jerry Falwell Sr.'s "Moral Majority," when the elder Falwell made the case that the United States had gone off the rails morally.  Unsurprisingly, given the Religious Right's continual obsession with what people do with their naughty bits, a lot of it had to do with the acceptance of LGBTQ individuals and the increase in swearing and sex in movies and television.

But at least it was consistent, and (on some level) reality-based.  LGBTQ individuals were gaining a greater voice, and there was more edgy stuff coming out of Hollywood.  A lot of us, myself included, had no real problem with that -- I've always wondered why in film ratings, nudity and sex were equated with violence and gore, as if a naked human body was as horrifying as a dismembered one -- so I disagreed with their assumptions.  But the definition of morality Falwell and others were pushing at least didn't seem to be coming from some sort of bizarre fever-dream.

Which is more than I can say from today's evangelicals.  Here's a sampler of rants from prominent spokespeople on the Religious Right, just in the last week:

• "Christian Prophetess" Kat Kerr told everyone that they shouldn't be sad about the deaths of family and friends because in heaven there was a "portal," sorta like a balcony, where all of the deceased love ones could peer down at us.  "Literally, these are all over heaven," Kerr said.  My general feeling about this is that it's more creepy than comforting -- I know there are times I would really prefer it if Great-Aunt Marie weren't watching.  But Kerr doesn't seem to think of this, and says that the dead are especially likely to be there on special occasions.  "On your birthday, they go to this place," she says.  "They look down… and sing 'Happy Birthday' to you even though you cannot hear them."

• Right-wing commentator Rick Wiles called Hillary Clinton the "queen of sleaze" and claimed that had she been elected, she would have rounded up conservatives and put them in concentration camps.

• Dave Daubenmire, of Pass the Salt Ministries, created a new confection of nastiness by mixing evangelical Christianity with racism and adding a dash of pure lunacy, accusing Meghan Markle of "poisoning the royal bloodline of the crown" because she's "half black," something that's especially awful because "the royal family is the seat of Christianity."

• None other than Vice President Mike Pence said he was "honored to represent President Trump" at a church service wherein LGBTQ people were said to be "demonic spirits working for the devil."

• White House religious advisor Paula White made the news twice this week, first for saying that she had a vision of how Trump was going to participate in the End Times.  "God came to me last night and showed me a vision of Trump riding alongside Jesus on a horse made of gold and jewels," White said.  "This means he will play a critical role in Armageddon as the United States stands alongside Israel in the battle against Islam."  She hit the news again with a response to the bounty offered on Trump's head because of his authorization of the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, saying Trump was going to be fine because she'd invoked the "superior blood of Jesus Christ" to protect him.  White, you may recall, is the one who last year at about this time said good Christians should "donate their entire January salaries" to God (i.e., write a check to her as God's spokesperson) so that they'd receive blessings in the coming year.  

• The ever-entertaining Jim Bakker issued a dire warning that a number of cities were going to be destroyed by the wrath of God because of their wickedness, and expects people to take him seriously even though he has an exactly zero percent success rate in predicting previous divine smitings.  Named specifically as targets are New York City and Long Island in New York, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana in California, New Orleans, Louisiana, Washington, D.C., Bangkok, Thailand, Tel Aviv, Israel, and some unnamed "North New Jersey Towns."  As far as why we should believe him, he says, "I know I'm not wrong."

That's in the last week.

The craziness gets passed along to the followers.  Just a couple of days ago, a woman in Pennsylvania named Nadedja Reilly drove her car into oncoming traffic to "test her faith."  She herself wasn't hurt (hallelujah) but two people in other cars were, something that didn't bother her in the least.  "Reilly related God took care of her by not having her injured," wrote Trooper Bruce Balliet in the arrest affidavit. "Reilly expressed no concerns or remorse for the victims.  Reilly also stated she did not care if the other people were injured because God would have taken care of them."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons HoppingRabbit34 at English Wikipedia, Baptists-against-jews, CC BY 3.0]

If it's not clear from what I've written already, yes, I know it's not all Christians.  I have a great many Christian friends of various denominations, and I'm sure they'd be as appalled as I am at all this.  But my point is that in the last couple of years events have revealed a deep streak of batshit lunacy in the Religious Right, beyond the intolerance, self-righteousness, and homophobia that has been evident for as long as I can remember.  And all too few people recognize this as the same kind of insane extremism and disconnect from reality that exists in radical Islam -- despite the fact that many of the same people who love Pence and Wiles and Bakker et al. consider the outrageous, bigoted, and violent statements made by fundamentalist Muslim spokespeople to be deeply and thoroughly evil.

Maybe they should reread the injunction from Matthew 7 to remove the beam from your own eye before you attempt to pluck the splinter from your neighbor's.  Or the message to the Pharisees -- the Religious Right of Jesus's time -- in Matthew 23, where Jesus referred to them as a "brood of vipers" for their pious, hypocritical self-righteousness.

None of that seems to occur to them.  A selective reading of the bible is also one of their specialties.

It's all very well to laugh at these people; Bakker in particular is so out in left field that he's almost begging to be ridiculed.  But there's the danger that if we poke fun at them, we lose sight of two facts: (1) they're completely serious; and (2) they have a great many followers who believe every word they say.

How to fight against this, I have no idea.  Knowing about it is a start, which is why I'm writing this today.  But that gets us no closer to eliminating this frightening streak of fanaticism that seems to be getting louder and louder.  It puts me in mind of the quote, often misattributed to Sinclair Lewis (its actual provenance is unknown): "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

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I don't often recommend historical books here at Skeptophilia, not because of a lack of interest but a lack of expertise in identifying what's good research and what's wild speculation.  My background in history simply isn't enough to be a fair judge.  But last week I read a book so brilliantly and comprehensively researched that I feel confident in recommending it -- and it's not only thorough, detailed, and accurate, it's absolutely gripping.

On May 7, 1915, the passenger ship Lusitania was sunk as it neared its destination of Liverpool by a German U-boat, an action that was instrumental in leading to the United States joining the war effort a year later.  The events leading up to that incident -- some due to planning, other to unfortunate chance -- are chronicled in Erik Larson's book Dead Wake, in which we find out about the cast of characters involved, and how they ended up in the midst of a disaster that took 1,198 lives.

Larson's prose is crystal-clear, giving information in such a straightforward way that it doesn't devolve into the "history textbook" feeling that so many true-history books have.  It's fascinating and horrifying -- and absolutely un-put-downable.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Vote for your life

I made a comment a couple of days ago on social media that American citizens should vote on Tuesday as if their lives depended on it -- "because they do."

One person who responded to this said, "Come on.  Stop with the alarmist talk, it doesn't help anything or anyone.  My life depends neither on whether I vote nor who I vote for."

My response is that privilege will do that to you.  But you'd have to be blind not to see that not all Americans are so fortunate, and making this claim implies that you don't give a rat's ass what happens to them.  What I said was neither hyperbole nor a ham-handed attempt to stir people up; it was simply a fact, if not for everyone, for a great number of people who are finding their rights curtailed and in some cases their identities legislated out of existence.

Let me give you just one example -- Representative Matt Shea, of Washington State, who is on the ballot for re-election on Tuesday.  Shea is a religious nut job who just published a four-page "manifesto" outlining what should be our approach to fighting wars on God's behalf.  The part that stands out is this:

Rules of War

• Avoid bloodshed if possible.
• Make an offer of peace before declaring war.
• Not a negotiation or compromise of righteousness.
• Must surrender on terms of justice and righteousness:
• Stop all abortions;
• No same-sex marriage;
• No idolatry or occultism;
• No communism;
• Must obey Biblical Law.
• If they yield, must pay share of work or taxes.
• If they do not yield -- kill all males.

Yes -- there is a man running for Congress, as an incumbent, who believes that I (as a male supporter of same-sex marriage, and someone who doesn't obey biblical law) should be killed.

Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, of Spokane County, has turned over the "manifesto" to the FBI.  As well he should.  It is a direct, specific threat against a (large) group of American citizens based on one thing and one thing only -- religion.  If someone can explain to me the difference between this and ISIS's continual cry of "kill all the infidels," I'd appreciate it.

Gustave Doré, Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (1877) [Image is in the Public Domain]

As for Shea, he said the comments were "taken out of context," making me wonder in what context they could possibly be put that would make them acceptable to any reasonable human being.  "First of all, it was a summary of a series of sermons on biblical war in the Old Testament as part of a larger discussion on the history of warfare," Shea said in a video.  "This document, in and of itself, was not a secret. I’ve actually talked about portions of this document publicly."

Which I'm calling bullshit on.  If you read the document, he is clearly not outlining, in some kind of academic way, the rules of holy warfare in Bronze-Age Israel.  He goes into some detail about the command structure of God's Army, using terms like "corporal," "sergeant," "captain," and so on.

Now, I'm no biblical scholar, so correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is that these are not terms that were used by Joshua's soldiers at the Siege of Jericho.

Oh, and he says that to be part of God's Army, guys need to be circumcised.

Is it just me, or are these ultra-religious nutcakes really fascinated by guys' naughty bits?  I swear, people like Shea care more about what I do with my dick than I do.

The scariest part of this is that this is not some lone loony crying out in the wilderness; this guy is in a credible position of being re-elected.  Not surprising considering our leadership; Vice President Mike Pence is himself an evangelical hard-liner, to the point that after the shootings at the Pittsburgh synagogue last week, he couldn't even bring himself to get an actual Jewish rabbi to offer words of comfort.  The guy who did the speaking -- Loren Jacobs -- is a member of the "messianic Jews," sometimes called "Jews for Jesus," who believe that Jews in general are destined for hell, and will only be saved if they accept Jesus.  (The other upside, I guess, is that they get to keep their cultural Judaism, which is why people like Jacobs don't speak of this as an actual conversion.)

So yes, voting for one of these people is saying that you don't care if people in demonized groups live in peace or get murdered.  At least own up to it and stop trying to soft-pedal the truth.

In my fifty-odd years of being aware of politics, next week's election is far and away the one that is the most crucial.  It feels like we're at a crossroads between turning our nation around, reclaiming the tolerance and acceptance that have always been part of our national heart, or accelerating the slide into fascism.  So let me amend my statement in the previous paragraph; not only is voting for people like Shea accepting Trump's brutal, ultra-Christian, white nationalist view of what the U.S.A. should be, not voting is the same thing.  Because it's fucking well certain that the people who are on Shea's side -- and Trump's -- are not going to sit this one out.

So next Tuesday, vote.  Shed your complacency.  Find others who aren't sure if they want to make the effort, and give them a gentle nudge.  Offer to drive people to the polls.  If we can't do this, I fear that we are in for a very, very dark time ahead.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a wonderful read -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Henrietta Lacks was the wife of a poor farmer who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951, and underwent an operation to remove the tumor.  The operation was unsuccessful, and Lacks died later that year.

Her tumor cells are still alive.

The doctor who removed the tumor realized their potential for cancer research, and patented them, calling them HeLa cells.  It is no exaggeration to say they've been used in every medical research lab in the world.  The book not only puts a face on the woman whose cells were taken and used without her permission, but considers difficult questions about patient privacy and rights -- and it makes for a fascinating, sometimes disturbing, read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]