Does that sound dirty? Sorry.
If you haven’t read my previous entry yet, you might enjoy this one more if you go back and read it first. (Then again, you might not.)
If you *have* already read my previous entry and left a note on it, thanks. It’s always great to feast my eyes on the wisdom of others.
Got more wisdom to share after reading the following? Please don’t hold back!
The Fallacy Of The God Gene (Jeff Schweitzer/The Huffington Post; Feb 3)
Two major newspapers did what all mainstream media do best: Get the story wrong. The New York Times published “The Evolution of the God Gene” by Nicholas Wade in which we are told that, “religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning it exists because it was favored by natural selection.” We are further informed that religion is “universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.”
As a neurobiologist specializing in evolutionary biology these twin assertions about natural selection and the brain caught my attention. Both claims are wrong. But they are made so frequently as to have become conventional wisdom, like the canard that we only use 10 percent of our brains. Such folklore is a powerful force so these claims largely go unchallenged no matter how false.
From these incorrect assertions, the author makes an incredible leap from innocuous myth to something more dangerous: “For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.” Amazing how many absurd ideas can be packed into a single sentence. Let’s see.
First, religion did not evolve through the mechanisms of natural selection. The idea of god perpetuates itself through cultural transmission. Second, atheists as a rule do not claim that religion is “useless” at all, fully recognizing that an appeal to an unseen force had benefits to early human societies unschooled in the sciences. Third, even if the absurd claim were true that religion evolved through natural selection, that would in no way challenge the tenet that god is nothing but a silly myth. The “evolution” of religion would simply mean that perpetuating a ridiculous myth had a selective advantage, nothing more, and would certainly not lend credence to the myth itself.
To the author’s credit, the article takes a middle ground and seeks to demonstrate how religion as an evolved trait is not terribly helpful to believers, either. But no matter how balanced the presentation, the basic premise of an “evolutionary perspective” on religion is deeply and fundamentally flawed.
Religion was born not from some god gene, but of fear of the unknown, of the drive to control the uncontrollable, of the need to have mastery over one’s fate in the face of an uncertain world. The first ideas of religion arose not from any awe of nature’s wonder and order that would imply an invisible intelligent designer, but rather from concerns for the events of everyday life and how the vast unknown of nature affected daily existence. To allay fears of disease, death, starvation, cold, injury and pain, people fervently hoped that they could solicit the aid of greater powers, hoped deeply that they could somehow control their fate, and trusted that the ugly reality of death did not mean the end. Hope and fear combine powerfully in a frightening world of unknowns to stimulate comforting fantasies and myths about nature’s plans.
The human brain is extraordinarily adept at posing questions, but simply abhors the concept of leaving any unanswered. We are unable to accept “I don’t know,” because we cannot turn off our instinct to see patterns and to discern effect from cause. We demand that there be a pattern, that there be cause and effect, even when none exist. So we make up answers when we don’t know. We develop elaborate creation myths, sun gods, rain gods, war gods and gods of the ocean. We believe we can communicate with our gods and influence their behavior, because by doing so we gain some control, impose some order, on the chaotic mysteries of the world. By making up answers to dull the sting of ignorance, we fool ourselves into thinking we explain the world. Religion was our first attempt at physics and astronomy.
Of course, the biggest and most wrenching unknown served by religion is that of our fate upon dying. As a matter of survival, we are programmed to fear death, but perhaps unlike most other animals, we have the cruel burden of contemplating this fear. Religion is one way we cope with our knowledge that death is inevitable. Religion diminishes the hurt of death’s certainty and permanence and the pain of losing a loved one with the promise of reuniting in another life.
But fear of the unknown, fear of mortality, and hopes for controlling and understanding nature’s course do not represent the only foundation on which religion stands. Another is social cohesion. We are social animals, gregarious by nature. Cooperation is what makes the human animal — a weak, slow and vulnerable creature — a powerful force on earth. But cooperation becomes more difficult with increasing numbers. Some means of maintaining social order is necessary. Early societies soon learned that rules of behavior imposed in the form of rituals enabled large groups of people to live in close proximity. Rituals create norms against which people can readily judge the behavior of others in diverse social settings. Any deviation from the norm is easily spotted and can be quickly addressed. In this way, order can be maintained. Notice that modern-day teenagers express their rugged individualism by dressing identically. Any non-conforming outlier would be easy to spot. Religion offered, and offers still, an obvious means of enforcing societal rules by promising a joyous afterlife for conformers, or eternal punishment for those who misbehave. Religion is used as a bribe to induce good manners.
Finally, religion was eventually transformed into an important source of raw political power, divorced from any role more benign. If religion is used as a tool to control individual behavior, someone needs to develop those rules and ensure their enforcement. Who better to act as behavior police than religious elders, shamans, or high priests? What better way is there to manipulate and bend people to your will than by making up the rules by which they must live? With that influence over the daily lives of every citizen comes power traditionally reserved for city-states and empires, with all the normal trappings, including armies, treasuries and palaces. And corruption, an inevitable consequence of a system based on the false promise of eternal bliss and empty threats of eternal damnation.
Fear of death, the need to explain away the unknown, hopes for controlling one’s destiny, a desire for social cohesion, and the corrupting allure of power are the combined masters of all religion. Evolution and natural selection do not enter into this equation other than with the obvious fact that humans evolved large brains.
The New York Times article ends by posing the question, “Could the evolutionary perspective on religion become the basis for some kind of détente between religion and science?” No. The two seek fundamentally different answers asking completely different questions using incompatible methods of inquiry. Religion seeks to search for and understand purpose; science does not. Science is a tool of rationalism, which seeks an objective truth that can be verified with reproducible data. The two ideas cannot be reconciled….
(Jeff Schweitzer is a marine biologist and a former Clinton White House science advisor)
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The Evolution Of The God Gene (Nicholas Wade/The New York Times; Nov 15, 2009)
In the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion.
During 15 years of excavation they have uncovered not some monumental temple but evidence of a critical transition in religious behavior. The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C. It moves to the ancestor-cult shrines that appeared after the beginning of corn-based agriculture around 1,500 B.C., and ends in A.D. 30 with the sophisticated, astronomically oriented temples of an early archaic state.
This and other research is pointing to a new perspective on religion, one that seeks to explain why religious behavior has occurred in societies at every stage of development and in every region of the world. Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection. It is universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.
For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.
For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.
But the evolutionary perspective on religion does not necessarily threaten the central position of either side. That religious behavior was favored by natural selection neither proves nor disproves the existence of gods. For believers, if one accepts that evolution has shaped the human body, why not the mind too? What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.
It is easier to see from hunter-gatherer societies how religion may have conferred compelling advantages in the struggle for survival. Their rituals emphasize not theology but intense communal dancing that may last through the night. The sustained rhythmic movement induces strong feelings of exaltation and emotional commitment to the group. Rituals also resolve quarrels and patch up the social fabric.
The ancestral human population of 50,000 years ago, to judge from living hunter-gatherers, would have lived in small, egalitarian groups without chiefs or headmen. Religion served them as an invisible government. It bound people together, committing them to put their community’s needs ahead of their own self-interest. For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community. Religion also emboldened them to give their lives in battle against outsiders. Groups fortified by religious belief would have prevailed over those that lacked it, and genes that prompted the mind toward ritual would eventually have become universal.
In natural selection, it is genes that enable their owners to leave more surviving progeny that become more common. The idea that natural selection can favor groups, instead of acting directly on individuals, is highly controversial. Though Darwin proposed the idea, the traditional view among biologists is that selection on individuals would stamp out altruistic behavior (the altruists who spent time helping others would leave fewer children of their own) far faster than group-level selection could favor it.
But group selection has recently gained two powerful champions, the biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, who argued that two special circumstances in recent human evolution would have given group selection much more of an edge than usual. One is the highly egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, which makes everyone behave alike and gives individual altruists a better chance of passing on their genes. The other is intense warfare between groups, which enhances group-level selection in favor of community-benefiting behaviors such as altruism and religion.
A propensity to learn the religion of one’s community became so firmly implanted in the human neural circuitry, according to this new view, that religion was retained when hunter-gatherers, starting from 15,000 years ago, began to settle in fixed communities. In the larger, hierarchical societies made possible by settled living, rulers co-opted religion as their source of authority. Roman emperors made themselves chief priest or even a living god, though most had the taste to wait till after death for deification. “Drat, I think I’m becoming a god!” Vespasian joked on his deathbed.
Religion was also harnessed to vital practical tasks such as agriculture, which in the first societies to practice it required quite unaccustomed forms of labor and organization. Many religions bear traces of the spring and autumn festivals that helped get crops planted and harvested at the right time. Passover once marked the beginning of the barley festival; Easter, linked to the date of Passover, is a spring festival.
Could the evolutionary perspective on religion become the basis for some kind of detente between religion and science? Biologists and many atheists have a lot of respect for evolution and its workings, and if they regarded religious behavior as an evolved instinct they might see religion more favorably, or at least recognize its constructive roles. Religion is often blamed for its spectacular excesses, whether in promoting persecution or warfare, but gets less credit for its staple function of patching up the moral fabric of society. But perhaps it doesn’t deserve either blame or credit. If religion is seen as a means of generating social cohesion, it is a society and its leaders that put that cohesion to good or bad ends.
(Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times, is the author of The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures.)
Comments?
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Yes, yes – it’s an absurd question.
But there’s at least one Christian in the world who apparently thinks the answer is a resounding “Hell YES!”
Here are the details:
Whale Tale: AFA Staffer Says Bible Mandates Death For SeaWorld Orca (Rob Boston/The Wall of Separation blog/Americans United for Separation of Church and State; March 4)
On Feb. 24, a tragedy occurred at SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla. A six-ton killer whale known as Tillikum pulled trainer Dawn Brancheau underwater to her death in front of a crowd of horrified spectators watching a show.
Brancheau’s tragic death has led to some soul searching: What should be done with Tillikum? Is it ever appropriate to keep killer whales (also known as orcas) in captivity? Is it right to expect these animals to perform for our amusement?
Relatively few people are wondering what the Bible says about the matter. Luckily, the American Family Association (AFA), the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s Tupelo, Miss.-based Religious Right outfit, is on the case.
Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of issue analysis for government and public policy, is seriously arguing on a blog that the Bible mandates that Tillikum be put to death.
Fischer noted that Tillikum had killed another trainer at a Canadian aquarium in 1991 and a man who jumped into the whale’s enclosure at SeaWorld in 1999. The whale should have been killed in 1991, Fischer wrote, because the Book of Exodus requires the execution of any animal that kills a human being.
“If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives,” Fischer wrote.
Fischer cites Exodus 21:28
, which states, “If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall go unpunished.”
“So, your animal kills somebody, your moral responsibility is to put that animal to death,” Fischer insisted. “You have no moral culpability in the death, because you didn’t know the animal was going to go postal on somebody.”
Furthermore, Fischer opines, because Tillikum killed more than once, his owner is now culpable and can be executed as well.
[Actual quote: "But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn't kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, 'the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.' (Exodus 21:29)"]
When a friend sent me this column a few days ago, I thought it might be a satire or maybe the work of someone trying to embarrass the AFA. Perhaps some hackers had broken into the AFA’s Web site and posted this. It’s that kooky. The AFA is extreme – but this extreme?
So I called Fischer to ask. He called me back promptly to confirm that he wrote the piece and it’s not intended as satire. He was cheerful and said he appreciated my checking.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Fischer is quite extreme. I heard him speak last fall at the Family Research Council’s “Values Voter Summit.” He explained to the crowd that Adolf Hitler came up with the separation of church and state and opined that states and local governments don’t have to abide by the First Amendment.
Fischer’s column has more than a whiff of Christian Reconstructionism about it. Reconstructionists, you might recall, insist that every jot and tittle of Old Testament law be binding on modern society. Thus, gay people, fornicators, those who worship “false gods” or anyone who engages in “witchcraft” (among other things) would merit the death penalty.
Sometimes people ask me why we get so worked up about the Religious Right here at Americans United. Fischer’s column, as daft as it is, is a good answer to that question. Here’s a guy who wants to kill (by stoning, yet!) a 12,000-pound whale that he believes is guilty of murder – all because of a blind adherence to his fundamentalist reading of the Bible.
If this is the fate that awaits Tillikum in AFA’s vision of a perfect society, what do you think is going to happen to you the next time you offend “biblical law”?
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Liberals And Atheists Smarter? Intelligent People Have Values Novel In Human Evolutionary History, Study Finds (ScienceDaily; Feb 24)
More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.
The study [Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent], published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years.”
“Evolutionarily novel” preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are “evolutionarily familiar.”
“General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions,” says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles.”
An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.
In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.
Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa’s hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as “very liberal” have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as “very conservative” have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.
Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans’ tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see “the hands of God” at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. “Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid,” says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. “So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists.”
Young adults who identify themselves as “not at all religious” have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as “very religious” have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.
In addition, humans have always been mildly polygynous in evolutionary history. Men in polygynous marriages were not expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate, whereas men in monogamous marriages were. In sharp contrast, whether they are in a monogamous or polygynous marriage, women were always expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate. So being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men, but not for women. And the theory predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men, but general intelligence makes no difference for women’s value on sexual exclusivity. Kanazawa’s analysis of Add Health data supports these sex-specific predictions as well.
One intriguing but theoretically predicted finding of the study is that more intelligent people are no more or no less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar entities as marriage, family, children, and friends.
CNN’s Feb 26 version of this story added these details:
“The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward,” said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. “It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people — people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower — are likely to be the ones to do that.”
Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with “unconventional” philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be “ways to communicate to everyone that you’re pretty smart,” he said….
Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said. Assuming that, for example, a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger.
“It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere,” Kanazawa said….
Atheism “allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion,” Bailey said.
“Historically, anything that’s new and different can be seen as a threat in terms of the religious beliefs; almost all religious systems are about permanence,” he noted….
Neither Bailey nor Kanazawa identify themselves as liberal; Bailey is conservative and Kanazawa is “a strong libertarian.”
Vegetarianism, while not strongly associated with IQ in this study, has been shown to be related to intelligence in previous research, Kanazawa said. This also fits into Bailey’s idea that unconventional preferences appeal to people with higher intelligence, and can also be a means of showing superiority.
None of this means that the human species is evolving toward a future where these traits are the default, Kanazawa said.
“More intelligent people don’t have more children, so moving away from the trajectory is not going to happen,” he said.
To learn much more about the relationship between atheism and intelligence, see the entry I posted on Feb 20, 2005.
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Or is that an unfair characterization?
Apparently Austin Cline doesn’t think so:
White Supremacist Theocrats: Tea Baggers Out Of The Closet (Austin Cline; Feb 25)
Tea Baggers try to present themselves as little more than fiscal conservatives who believe in a smaller, limited federal government and who are concerned that a growing government will infringe on personal civil liberties as well as bankrupt the nation. It’s hard to credit any of this as true, since few if any of them made a peep of protest when George W. Bush spent so much money and expanded the unchecked power of the government.
Instead of simply taking at face value what they tell outsiders about themselves, pay more attention to how they behave and what they say to each other. Doing so reveals an entirely different set of concerns that are more in line with white supremacism, Christian theocracy, and government oppression. The Tea Bagger movement isn’t quite a Christian brownshirt movement, but the combination of faux economic populism with xenophobia and faith-based fascism is disturbing to say the least.
Jonathan Kay writes about what he saw at the Tea Party National Convention:
I think the one thing that really did surprise me was the high level of explicitly Christian social conservatism on display here. One of the “breakout sessions” featured a speech from Pastor Rick Scarborough — who is most famous for trying to get America’s preachers more politicized. (“I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I’m a Christocrat.”) After his speech, a middle-aged female delegate with a twang stood up and said, during the Q&A, “All the media types are asking us why we’re here. Here’s what I say. We’re all here for a little R&R — revival and revolt. If you’re not a Christian, and a person of faith, you just can’t understand what we’re doing!!” She got a standing ovation.
At the time, I thought this might be just because this particular session was self-selected by Christian attendees. But an hour later, the lunch speaker was Roy Moore: the “10 Commandments Judge” who was fired from his position as Alabama Chief Justice when he refused to remove a 5,000-pound 10-commandments sculpture from his court building. (He’s now running for Alabama Governor — his volunteers are a big presence here.) Anyway, he gave a fire-and-brimstone speech that peeled the paint off the walls. He sounded, at times, entirely indistinguishable from an Evangelist at Sunday service, listing off the many reasons America is going to hell (militant gay activists, naturally, figured prominently). And the guy brought the house down.
One thing that is particularly notable about the above — and much more like it that occurred at the Tea Party National Convention — is that most people simply don’t know about it. The so-called “liberal” media simply didn’t cover it and show the nation just what the Tea Baggers really believe, really want, and really intend. In effect, then, the media is actively aiding the Tea Baggers’ agenda by actively covering up their more extreme views, allowing the nation to imagine that their agenda is the more mild, more moderate version which they try to present to outsiders.
Why is that? Why would anyone in the media deliberately avoid presenting what would appear to be an important as well as explosive story about the growing power of an extremist, xenophobic movement in American politics? This isn’t even about the failure of the media to ask hard, probing questions — all they would have to do is air some key video, without comment, but they won’t even go that far. I don’t know why, but none of the reasons that come to my mind are good.
Is Cline being insightful here? Are his opinions outrunning the evidence?
*Wondering if joining a Hard Liquor Party might help me forget Sarah Palin and the people who like her*
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Of course.
Gravity actually exists.
Here’s proof:
Fallen Tree, Snow Cause DC Church Collapse (The Washington Examiner/The Associated Press; Feb 6)
WASHINGTON: A D.C. fire official says a small church has collapsed in northeast Washington.
Fire department spokesman Pete Piringer says when a tree fell on the roof of the Joshua Temple Church Ministry on Sheriff Road northeast on Saturday afternoon, the weight of the tree and the snow made the roof collapse and then the walls gave way.
Piringer says the only thing left is the church’s steeple.
He says no one was inside the one-and-a-half-story wood frame church when it collapsed and homes on either side of the church were not damaged….
CulturalTourismDC lists the church on its African American Heritage Trail, noting it was built in 1908.
Church Roof Collapse Kills Worker (The Fayetteville Observer; Feb 19)
CLINTON, North Carolina: One person is dead and two more were in critical condition after the trusses of a church roof under construction collapsed Thursday afternoon.
Sampson County Interim County Manager Susan Holder said the accident happened around 4:25 p.m. at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church on the 3700 block of Faison Highway northeast of Clinton.
Holder said the two surviving construction workers were taken by helicopter to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, where they were in critical condition Thursday evening. All three victims worked for Clifton Halso Construction of Chinquapin.
The names of the workers were being withheld, Holder said, until the family of the deceased is notified and until the N.C. Department of Labor determines the cause of the accident.
The workers were working on the roof of what was planned to be a new sanctuary for the church, Holder said.
Heavy Snow Blamed For Ohio Church Roof Cave-In (Jessica Heffner/Middletown Journal; Feb 22)
MADISON TOWNSHIP: The Poasttown First Church of God’s fellowship hall was silent Sunday, Feb. 21 for the first time in 12 years after its roof caved into the building.
It was about 2:19 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19, when Darrell Whisman said he felt a vibration and looked out the windows of his home in the old Poasttown School nearby and “saw insulation just blowing out. There was no roof.”
After receiving the call of the roof collapse, Fire Chief Kent Hall said he feared the worst, knowing that the fellowship hall is usually a bevy of activity. While he said the building is “probably a total loss” he was just glad there was no one inside.
“We vote here, have breakfast and dinner. Kids are always inside, in the gym on the stage,” Hall said. “I know this is a church, but I have to say God was watching over this because it’s a miracle no one got hurt.”
But the hall also was more than just the scene of community bean dinners and fish fries, said Wayne Cox, a churchgoer for 26 years. It was recently named for the church’s former pastor, the Rev. Randy Wallace, “a man who was so loved here” and who passed away in August 2009 after battling a rare form of leukemia.
“I couldn’t believe this had happened. I wanted to see it for myself,” Cox said while watching insulation from the crumbled roof blow across the parking lot like snow. He couldn’t put to words how the scene made him feel. For several moments he just stared at the wreckage, swallowing a lump in his throat before whispering, “It’s awful.”
Hall said he believed the roof fell in from the weight of the snow built up during the past storms.
Even while the Rev. Kenny Brewer said he just “felt like crying” looking at the damage, crews from Old School Construction were called to assess the repairs.
The walls are bowed from the weight of the roof and Hall had crews rope off the building.
“We are going to go on regardless,” Brewer said. “We will trust the Lord to go with us and we will built it back.”
George Holland, chairman of the church board, said the building was insured and he hoped repairs would be done “in the next three months.”…
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Dozens Die In Morocco Minaret Collapse (The BBC; Feb 20)
At least 36 people were killed in Morocco when a minaret collapsed at a mosque in the central town of Meknes, officials say.
More than 60 people were injured in the accident at the Berdieyinne mosque in Meknes’ old city during Friday prayers, according to Moroccan state television.
The TV report said that the collapse came after heavy rains which lashed the region for several days.
The minaret is said to have been four centuries old.
Many people are said to be buried under the rubble of the collapsed tower.
A resident, Khaled Rahmouni, told Reuters news agency that about 300 worshippers had gathered inside the mosque for Friday afternoon prayers.
“When the imam was about to start his sermon, the minaret fell down,” he said….
King Mohammed VI ordered the minaret to be rebuilt….
For details about another mosque collapse that killed 10 people in 2004, go here.
To learn about a mosque collapse that killed 4 people in 2006, see Theist File #1410.
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If you haven’t heard about Fathima Rifqa Bary, I envy you.
My local newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch, published its 29th item about her last month.
That comes out to about one item a week, every week, since she first made the news back in August. Like John Freshwater (who has now had nearly 60 items devoted to him since he first made the news back in April, 2008), Rifqa is threatening to become the news media equivalent of a permanent toothache as the controversy surrounding her drags on and on and on without any resolution.
Is it sheer coincidence that both Freshwater and Rifqa are Christians whose highly questionable, religion-inspired actions rest at the heart of all this turmoil and attention? I think not.
Coincidence or not, suffice it to say that both in their own way reveal how savagely religious beliefs can divide people rather than bring them together.
And both also provide us with yet two more examples of how Christians and their Christianity can reduce children to the status of pawns to be manipulated and fought over in the name of some holy good….
Wikipedia does a fairly good job presenting the basic facts of the case:
Fathima Rifqa Bary born on August 10, 1992 is an American of Sri Lankan descent who drew international attention in 2009 when, aged 16, she ran away from home saying that her Muslim parents might kill her for having become a Christian. A law enforcement investigation in Ohio and Florida found no credible evidence that her life was in danger.
Fathima Rifqa Bary is the daughter of Mohamed and Aysha Bary, Muslim immigrants from Sri Lanka. She grew up in Columbus, Ohio….
Rifqa ran away from home in July 2009 to the home of a Christian pastor in Florida whose wife she had met on Facebook. She had been with Reverend Blake Lorenz and his wife Mrs. Beverly Lorenz for three weeks before they contacted child welfare authorities. Blake and Beverly Lorenz could face criminal charges for not contacting the authorities within 24 hours as required by Florida law. Her case drew attention when she appeared on television and declared that her father said “he would kill me or send me back to Sri Lanka,” describing herself as the intended victim of an honor killing. Brian Michael Williams, an Ohio State University student and aspiring pastor who became a mentor and friend of Rifqa, drove her to a bus station where a ticket was purchased under an assumed name for her bus ride to Orlando.
Her parents say they have never threatened to harm her. Her father, a jeweler, told a reporter that “Honestly, we didn’t know why she left.” And that as to the death threat described by his daughter, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” and “I want her to come back home. I love my daughter whether she’s Christian or anything else. I want my daughter back.”
Bary was taken into custody by Florida child welfare authorities while an investigation proceeded. On September 14, 2009 a Florida court ruled that it found no credible evidence that Bary’s life or well-being had been threatened by her family. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) report states with respect to the allegations of physical and verbal abuse that they found no credible evidence of such abuse….
The FDLE report also listed several statements by Rifqa Bary which were not supported by evidence. Rifqa Bary stated to them that her father did not know about the true nature of her cheerleading, but the FDLE report states that pictures of her in uniform were prominently displayed in the Bary home…. Rifqa Bary stated that a teacher offered her refuge due to the abuse she suffered. The FDLE report states that the teacher was unaware of any abuse, and was concerned about parties, with alcohol consumption, purchased with a fake ID, which were thrown by Rifqa’s older brother Rilvan when their parents were away…. The FDLE found no credible evidence of any threat to Rifqa’s life from her parents. On October 13, Orange County Judge Daniel P. Dawson ruled that he would return Bary to Ohio….
On October 27, 2009 Rifqa Bary was returned to Ohio and temporarily placed in the custody of Franklin County Children Services….
Margaret Shirk filed a case-management plan December 1, 2009 stating that Rifqa and her family needed to have face-to-face talks about their understanding of Christianity and Islam as one step toward reunification. Franklin County Children Services hopes to reunite the family before August 10, 2010, when Rifqa turns 18….
The situation drew international attention and became a cause célèbre and point of “hostility between some Christians and Muslims”. Ms. Bary’s case has become a focal point in a culture clash between Evangelical Christian Americans and Muslim Americans.
Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida claimed that the controversy was caused “by far-right religious groups” portraying Islam and Muslims as extreme fundamentalists who might kill a child. Harry Coverston, a professor of religion, theorized that some individuals must have an enemy. Dr. Hany Saqr of the Noor Islamic Cultural Center stated that paranoid and manipulative “Islamophobes” were pushing the story.
The 29 items published by The Dispatch have of course gone into much more detail.
A few have detailed the sort of bizarre, circus-like atmosphere that so often seems to accompany Christians high off Jesus and determined to get their way no matter what the objective facts may be (perhaps most infamously epitomized by the Terri Schiavo case).
One story from Sept 4 bearing the headline “Christian Activists Rally Behind Runaway Teen,” for example, begins this way: “Outside the Orlando courthouse, it was clear yesterday that the saga of Fathima Rifqa Bary has become much bigger than the private turmoil of a 17-year-old Columbus runaway. Christian supporters of Rifqa, some of them from out of state, held Bibles and tried to crowd into the tiny courtroom alongside an army of newspaper and TV reporters and bloggers. Activists held a news conference outside to rally against their view of Islam, exchanging shouts with an angry Muslim man….”
Another story from Sept 14 bearing the headline “Amid A Holy War” begins this way: “The pastor lay facedown on the living room floor, placed his hands over his eyes and pleaded with God to help Fathima Rifqa Bary. About 20 people joined the Rev. Blake Lorenz in the Orlando, Fla., home. They prayed for Rifqa’s peace of mind and safety…. They asked God to do his will in the courtroom where her fate will be decided.”…
The headline of another story from Nov 17 said it all: “120 Rally For Rifqa Outside [Columbus] Courthouse.”
Long-time readers know that I am no more sympathetic to Islam than I am to Christianity. I have not hesitated to publicize and condemn the so-called “honor killings” that plague much of the Muslim world any more than I have hesitated to publicize and condemn the way Christians have killed their children with exorcisms, with faith healing, or simply because gOd allegedly told them to.
I would prefer that all children be raised to base their beliefs on reason and evidence – not religion or faith. If parents of a particular household have a different opinion, however, so be it. I rely upon logic and the facts to eventually lead young people in another, better direction – and I rely upon the state to intervene in a timely and legal manner in those cases where parental guidance crosses the line and constitutes abuse.
In the case of Fathima Rifqa Bary, it is clear that – once again – Christians choose to play by a very different set of rules.
Rules that apparently allow them to bitterly complain about the material their minor children might be exposed to in school or in the popular culture even as they themselves steal away and illegally harbor the minor children of non-Christians.
Perhaps a letter from Richard J. Cacchione that appeared in The Dispatch on Sept 11 put it best: “I wonder how your coverage of the Fathima Rifqa Bary case might have differed if the situation were reversed: if a 17-year-old Christian girl was spirited away to Florida via Greyhound by Muslim clerics…. Those same Christian activists would be demanding the girl’s return from Florida, rather than cheering on her runaway status.”
To those who are young or for some other reason have only a dim understanding of history, Rifqa’s story might seem too bizarre and unique to pay much attention to.
To others, the ugly echoes of other cases and times might easily be heard.
Perhaps the loudest and most disturbing echo is to be found in the case of Edgardo Mortara.
As I explained in an entry I posted way back on Sept 3, 2000, “In 1858, Vatican guards seized 6-year-old Edgardo from the home of his Jewish parents in Bologna and whisked him away, sparking international outrage far greater than that generated by the recent case of Elian Gonzalez. Why did Vatican guards do this? Because Edgardo had allegedly been secretly baptized by a Catholic housemaid when he was a gravely ill one-year-old. Despite problems with this housemaid’s story, the boy was snatched on the grounds that Jews could not be trusted to raise a Christian child. The parents weren’t told this, however. They were told nothing at all as they vociferously and tearfully protested the action of the guards. Private investigations led to their enlightenment. By that time, Edgardo had become the personal ward of Pope Pius IX. Despite tremendous international outrage and protests even from many Catholics, Edgardo remained a ward of Pius – who dismissed all criticism as being nothing more than a sign that friends of the Jews hate Christians. Instead of returning the boy to his heartbroken parents, Pius allegedly had him lick the floor in the shape of the cross to prove his faith to visitors. Six years later, the case was repeated when nine-year-old Giuseppe Coen was baptized in Rome without his parents permission and also whisked away….”
Has Pope Pius IX since become an embarrassment to Christians? Is he considered to be an example of an extremely misguided follower of Jesus – someone to be shunned or condemned? No. I posted the entry about Edgardo when I did because Pope John Paul II had just beatified Pius – an act of high praise that advanced him further along on the road to sainthood….
The self-righteous, ends-justifies-the-means thinking that lurks behind cases like these also lurks behind so much of Christian history: The bursting into synagogues to force Jews to listen to Christians sermons (among many, many other acts of anti-Semitism); the Crusades; the witch hunts (which continue to this day); colonialism; slavery; the murder of abortion doctors….
Although Christians love to say that gOd is love and Jesus is the prince of peace, the essential, bottom line message of Christianity remains this: Those who disagree deserve eternal hellfire.
And once you’ve accepted that message as gOd’s own truth and a moral absolute, it’s devilishly difficult to resist thinking that extremism to defend and promote that truth is no vice, and moderation is no virtue….
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Does Vishnu? Does Krishna? Does Ganesha? Or are all these gOds just as missing in action as Yahweh and Jesus and Allah when it comes to protecting their devout followers from Very Bad Things even as those followers flock to their holy temples?
Police Investigate Deadly Indian Temple Stampede (The BBC; Mar 5)
Police in India have lodged a case of criminal negligence against the managers of a Hindu temple where at least 63 people died in a stampede.
Dozens more were injured when the gate of the temple in northern Uttar Pradesh collapsed leading to a stampede.
All of the dead identified so far are women and children, police say. The temple gate was still being built.
Hundreds of people have been killed in stampedes at crowded Indian temples in recent years.
Senior police official Kunda Iqbal Singh told the BBC that investigations were under way but no-one had been arrested in connection with the incident.
Temple authorities have offered financial help to the families of the victims.
Thursday’s disaster happened at a popular Ram Janaki temple in the town of Kunda in Pratapgarh district, about 25km (15 miles) north of the city of Allahabad.
The temple is owned by a Hindu holy man, Jagadguru Kripalu Ji Maharaj, who police say was marking the anniversary of the death of his wife with a ritual feast.
Thousands of people had gathered for the ceremonial feast and free distribution of clothes – the stampede occurred when people scrambled to collect the offerings being handed out.
Local journalists told the BBC they were mostly poor people from local villages.
Police officials said an iron gate leading to the temple complex collapsed, leading to a crowd surge.
The BBC’s Ram Dutt Tripathi in the state capital, Lucknow, said the temple gate was under construction when it collapsed.
The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, Ms Mayawati, has ordered an inquiry into the incident.
Government officials say it appears that the organisers of the event had been unprepared to deal with the size of the crowd.
Eyewitnesses say it took a while for help to arrive and there was no-one on hand initially to offer them any assistance.
[For more about the aftermath of this incident as well as about the criminal negligence that seems to have led to it, go here.]
There have been a number of similar accidents in India in which large numbers of people congregate in an area ill-equipped to handle big gatherings.
In 2008, nearly 300 people were killed in stampedes and scores injured in two different Hindu temples in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh states.
INDIA STAMPEDES
January 2010: Seven people die at festival on Ganges in West Bengal
September 2008: More than 220 people die at temple in Jodhpur
August 2008: At least 140 people die at temple in Himachal Pradesh
March 2008: At least eight people killed at temple in Madhya Pradesh
January 2005: Up to 300 people die on pilgrimage to Maharashtra temple
You can find the BBC’s list of the 9 deadliest stampedes here. (Three involve Hindus and five involve Muslims.)
If I could have prevented these stampedes, I would have.
Why are the Hindu gOds (among others) so much less compassionate and caring than the average atheist?
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Of course not.
Mythical beings are incapable of hating anyone at all.
But if you believe Allah isn’t a mythical being… well, suffice it to say that he seems remarkably indifferent to the tragedies that befall his devout followers even as they’re in the very process of worshipping him….
Deadly Crush At Timbuktu Mosque (The BBC; Feb 26)
Twenty-six people, mostly women and children, have been killed in a crush at the famous Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu, sources have told the BBC.
The stampede happened during the Mouloud festival to mark the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, when people walk around the mud mosque in northern Mali.
The worshippers had to use a different path than usual because of renovations to the 14th Century building.
Timbuktu, in the Sahara Desert, was once a centre of Islamic learning.
Initial reports said that 16 people had died but local officials have subsequently told the BBC that a further 10 bodies were recovered at the scene and buried by their families without going to hospital.
According to Muslim tradition, people should be buried with 24 hours of their death.
Local tour guide Halif Mohamed al-Hassan told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme that up to 25,000 people converge on the mosque each year and walk around it three times to mark the prophet’s birthday.
He says the people were killed after an elderly woman fell down and others were trampled to death.
Some 40 people were injured, the police say, according to Reuters news agency.
“I lost my sister. She was 16 and had gone to pray,” said local resident, Ali Kounta, reports the AFP news agency.
The Djinguereber mosque is the largest in Timbuktu.
The once wealthy city helped spread Islam across West Africa.
Its fortunes declined after the 16th Century, as the region’s main trade routes switched to the Atlantic Ocean, instead of the Sahara Desert.
For several other examples of how going to a mosque can be hazardous to your health, see the entry I posted on Feb 22.
(Would you prefer to read about how dangerous it can be to participate in the annual pilgrimage to Mecca? See the entries I posted on Jan 13, 2006 and Jan 21, 2008.)
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