The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives And Culture (Darrel W. Ray/IPC Press/243 pages; Dec 2009)

Amazon Product Description: What makes religion so powerful? How does it weave its way into our political system? Why do people believe and follow obvious religious charlatans? What makes people profess deep faith even as they act in ways that betray that faith? What makes people blind to the irrationalities of their religion yet clearly see those of others? If these questions interest you, this book will give you the tools to understand religion and its power in you, your family and your culture. For thousands of years, religion has woven its way through societies and people as if it were part and parcel to that society or person. In large measure it was left unexplained and unchallenged, it simply existed. Those who attempted to challenge and expose religion were often persecuted, excommunicated, shunned, or even executed. It could be fatal to explain that which the church, priest or imam said was unexplainable. Before the germ, viral and parasite theory of disease, physicians had no tools to understand disease and its propagation. Priests told people disease was a result of sin, Satan, evil spirits, etc. With the discovery of microbial actors, scientists gained new tools to study how it spreads. They could study infection strategies, immunity, epidemiology and much more. Suddenly the terrible diseases of the past were understandable. The plagues of Europe, yellow fever, small pox, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. were now removed from the divine and placed squarely in the natural world. This book owes a great deal to Richard Dawkins concept of viruses of the mind, but it seeks to go a step further to personalize the concept of religion as a virus and show how these revolutionary ideas work in everyday life. The paradigm can explain the fundamentalism of your Uncle Ned, the sexual behavior of a fallen mega church minister, the child rearing practices of a Pentecostal neighbor, why 19 men flew planes into the World Trade Center or what motivates a woman to blow herself up in the crowded markets of Baghdad. Learn how religion influences sexuality for its own purposes, how and why it protects pedofile priests and wayward ministers and how it uses survivor guilt to propagate and influence and how it might influence a person’s IQ.

“Darrel Ray has made a marvelous contribution to our understanding of ourselves. The description of religion as a cultural virus is not new, Darrel is the first to put the virus on a slide and pull out the microscope. The God Virus goes beyond analogy, offering a fascinating and detailed look at the wiggling, maddening virus itself how it moves, how it survives, and how and why it continues to thrive.” – Dale McGowan, Author/editor, Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, Harvard Humanist of the Year (2008)

“For those hungering for more after reading the books written by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett, Dr. Darrel Ray’s The God Virus is a logical and thought-provoking follow-up. By extending the metaphor of religion as a virus, the reader gets a better understanding of the incredible power religion can have on anyone’s way of thinking (Dr. Ray shows that even your IQ is negatively affected!). Lest anyone think this is just a putdown of religion, it also gives excellent advice on how to live life without a God, from marriage to raising children. It’s a book that non-believers will enjoy and religious readers can only dare to read.” – Hemant Mehta, author of I Sold My Soul On Ebay (Waterbrook Press, 2007)

“Your book is a convenient handbook on how real life Atheists can stay sane while others are freaking out with religious madness and blaming it on those that challenge the true believer’s faith based system. You are most welcome to publicize my endorsement.” – Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director American Atheists, Inc.

Dr. Darrel W. Ray is author of three books, two on organizational team issues and his latest, The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. He has been a psychologist for over 30 years, practicing counseling and clinical psychology for 10 years then moved into organizational psychology and consulting. He has been a student of religion most of his life and holds a MA degree in religion as well as a BA in Sociology/Anthropology and a Doctorate in psychology.

Born into a fundamentalist family and raised in Wichita, Kansas, he was surrounded by religion while growing up. He had a grandfather who preached for 40 years, cousins who were preachers and missionaries, and his parents became missionaries when they retired. For decades, he has been intensely curious about the mechanics of religion, how it influences and infects people’s minds. He wrote The God Virus in response to a need for a simple and practical understanding of religious mechanics. Something anyone can understand. While Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett have written eloquently about religion, these authors are less accessible to those who have little knowledge of philosophy, biology or religious history. Of the thousands of religious books and hundreds of sociology and anthropology books, few if any explain the methods religion uses to infect and control people and cultures. The God Virus explains in common, understandable terms, religion and its consequences on individuals and society.

Darrel is the father of two adult children and has two grandsons. His hobbies include mountain climbing, flowergardening, and reading. In early 2009, he founded the rapidly growing movement called, Recovering from Religion. You can learn more about this movement at www.recoveringreligionists.com.

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At long last, one has apparently come out of the closet and admitted it.

Atheist Barbie (Jen McCreight/Blag Hag; April 8)

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Have great sex with someone you love!

Is that not an option?

Here’s my second recommendation:

Pope Opera (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; April 7) Samantha Bee says the liberal media is torturing the Catholic Church until it renounces its so-called crimes of faith.

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But it still looks like an interesting read if you’re into “Dumb/Deluded Theist” stories.

God Made Me Do It: True Stories Of The Worst Advice The Lord Has Ever Given His Followers (Marc Hartzman/Sourcebooks; 288 pages; Mar 1)

Amazon Product Description: Does God, in His infinite wisdom, convince people to get rid of their car insurance? Does He encourage cannibalism? Does the God of more than six billion people actually have time to root for the Minnesota Vikings? According to some, yes. How do they know? God told them. Luckily, God also told Marc Hartzman to write this book, a collection of the most shocking, absurd, and hilarious things people have ever claimed God asked them to do, and to present them for your pure reading enjoyment.

Including:

—– The man that God told to perform surgery on himself

—– God’s generous offer to miraculously fill his believer’s gas tank

—– The fateful day God (assumedly feeling nostalgic for his teen years) asked a man to TP a police station

—– The woman God instructed to direct traffic – topless

—– And, sadly, many more….

According to ABCnews.com, Marc Hartzman is “one of America’s leading connoisseurs of the bizarre.” He is the author of American Sideshow: An Encyclopedia of History’s Most Wondrous and Curiously Strange Performers and Found on eBay: 101 Genuinely Bizarre Items From the World’s Online Yard Sale. He lives in New York, NY.

Regular readers might recall that I’ve posted many bizarre “God Told Me To!” stories myself over the years.

Here are a few that I’ve bookmarked but don’t believe I’ve had the chance to share before now:

—– Robert Montecelli (The Associated Press/JuneauEmpire.com; Oct 7, 2009) Montecelli is a Wasilla, Alaska man who allegedly told state troopers that gOd told him to set a Feb 2008 fire that displaced six of his relatives.

—– Paul Collett (CommunityCare.co.uk; Oct 16, 2009) Collett is a British social worker who says gOd told him to give cash to a vulnerable mother so that she could visit a Nigerian “prophet” after her five children had been taken away from her by the state. Apparently this “offer” of help was neither requested nor appreciated by the woman in question. Collett had previously acted as a guardian for her children. His behavior in this and other cases was under official review at the time this story was published.

—– Donna Redding (GreenvilleOnline; Oct 16, 2009) Redding claims Jesus told her to kill her live-in boyfriend after the boyfriend took the Lord’s name in vain. She accomplished the task with a shotgun blast to the stomach.

—– Seven (Metro; Oct 29, 2009) “Seven” is the name a would-be car thief gave police in Lexington, Kentucky after smashing a window at a car dealership. Seven explained to them that gOd wanted him to steal a Dodge Charger.

—– Matthew R. August (Saratoga.com; Jan 15) August allegedly stabbed his sleeping brother more than 20 times after gOd told him to do so in a dream. When mom tried to intervene, he naturally stabbed her, too.

—– Kathleen Aceto (FloridaToday.com; Feb 13) Aceto was charged with attempted murder after gOd told her to grab a gun and shoot at a family from their own back porch. Aceto had had Christmas dinner with them last year. No word on what they may have served her. (Perhaps fruitcake blessed by the local bishop?)

—– Vickie Jordan (NewsObserver.com; Feb 23) Jordan is a North Carolina resident who couldn’t think of a name for the new gun shop that she and her evangelist husband were setting up. “When she finally got to sleep, she said, she dreamt that God told her to name it after the Second Amendment – the constitutional right to bear arms – but to call it the Second Amen-ment Gun Shop. ‘I said, “All right, Lord, I get the picture”‘”…. Ha! Just the sort of half-assed suggestion one might expect from the creator of the platypus.

—– Arthur Mijares (The Los Angeles Times; Feb 23) Mijares launched a campaign to change the name of a California mountain from Mt. Diablo to Mt. Reagan after the lOrd told him to do so during prayer time. Apparently the lOrd cares an awful lot more about the names of mountains (and gun shops) than he does about the world’s sick and starving children….

—– Ravin Baruthwaj (The Star; Mar 10) Baruthwaj is an extremely devout South African Hare Krishna who apparently hacked his sister to death in a religious frenzy. According to police spokesman Prem Balram, “He appeared disoriented and kept saying that God told him to do it. He said the voices told him to sacrifice his sister at midnight and to wake his nephew up and make him watch the act. We were confused and only realised what he was talking about when we went inside the house. We found a woman lying on the bedroom floor. Her face had been hacked and part of her skull chopped off. A panga [machete] was lying across her chest. She was already dead.”

(For my entry about what might be the best book of the year, go here.)

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(via Conversational Atheist)

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Still, I learned about the following book for the first time yesterday and it sure sounds like it’s gonna be a top contender for My Favorite Read of 2010.

If you get a chance to read it first, please be sure to tell me what YOU think!

The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature (Timothy Ferris; 384 pages)

Product Description: In his most important book to date, award-winning author Timothy Ferris – “the best popular science writer in the English language today” (Christian Science Monitor) – makes a passionate case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of liberalism and democracy. Ferris argues that just as the scientific revolution rescued billions from poverty, fear, hunger, and disease, the Enlightenment values it inspired has swelled the number of persons living in free and democratic societies from less than 1 percent of the world population four centuries ago to more than a third today.

Ferris deftly investigates the evolution of these scientific and political revolutions, demonstrating that they are inextricably bound. He shows how science was integral to the American Revolution but misinterpreted in the French Revolution; reflects on the history of liberalism, stressing its widely underestimated and mutually beneficial relationship with science; and surveys the forces that have opposed science and liberalism – from communism and fascism to postmodernism and Islamic fundamentalism.

A sweeping intellectual history, The Science of Liberty is a stunningly original work that transcends the antiquated concepts of left and right.

The History Book Club provides us with this rather more extensive summary:

Over the past few centuries, two revolutions – one in science, one in politics – have altered the thinking and the well-being of the human species. The scientific revolution has shed light on the workings of the cosmos and extended our lifespan, while the democratic revolution has spread freedom to nearly half the world. Furthermore, every scientifically advanced nation at the close of the 20th century was a liberal democracy. But how exactly are these two watershed transformations linked? This is the question that Timothy Ferris addresses in The Science of Liberty.

Ferris argues that science initially sparked the democratic revolution that swept across the world in the 18th century, while democratic societies in turn have nurtured the brand of free inquiry that allows science to sustain itself. To flesh out this thesis, Ferris first explores the historical link between science and liberty from the Renaissance through the end of the 18th century, maintaining that scientific skepticism is corrosive to authoritarian beliefs. He then traces the development of democratic and scientific societies from 1800 to the present day, and concludes with a look at the modern world, finding hope for the future even in an era that has, interestingly, seen powerful antiscientific forces that have challenged the progress made through the centuries.

Along the way, we see how the political ideas of Thomas Paine, which helped drive the American Revolution, were likely inspired by Paine’s exposure to science; how the French Revolution, which was initially driven in part by Lockean empiricism and Humean skepticism (both essential to science), descended into terror due in part to the embrace of Robespierre’s antirationalism; and how the rise of the science of economics (in the works of Adam Smith and others) helped transform our understanding of the link between wealth and individuals in a society. Ferris also demonstrates how forces ranging from the Fascism of the 1930s and 1940s to the religious fundamentalism that has taken hold today unite in opposition to science. And he speculates about the future with a look at global warming, a hot-button issue that has created new contention among extremists on both the left and right, and will likely play a significant part in defining the science-liberty nexus in the future. Ultimately, though, for all the challenges faced by both liberty and science, Ferris contends that they “have demonstrated an unequalled capacity for doing good.” And in this, he concludes, they are likely to prosper.

Provocative, erudite and inherently optimistic, The Science of Liberty brilliantly chronicles the ways that science helped spark – and could sustain – the spread of liberal democracy.

Over the years I’ve repeatedly encountered theists who say that our democratic ways have their roots in theism and religion, that America’s system of government is based on the Bible, etc. Such claims have never made any sense to me (among others). You can read from Genesis clear through to Revelation without ever once coming across any of the most basic elements we associate with the way we govern ourselves today. Democracy, republic, republican, vote, ballot, ballot box, secret ballot, majority, legislature, Congress, constitution, bill of rights, human rights, free speech, amendment, representative, mayor, convention, campaign, caucus, committee, impeachment, veto, executive branch, judiciary, separation of powers, politics, and political party are just a few of the terms intrinsic to the American way of life that you won’t find anywhere in the King James Version. Eden is by no means described as a democratically-run realm, and neither is Heaven (the ultimate dictatorship). The ancient Hebrews were led by prophets and kings, usually chosen by gOd himself – not duly elected representatives of the people who had to campaign for votes in order to obtain an office of clearly defined powers for a fixed period of time. Jesus, we are told, had his apostles and disciples – not his committeemen or council or members of a board of review who could block or overturn his decisions by majority vote. Few, if any, religious cults have been run as democracies – and neither is the Catholic Church (as defenders of the Pope and his old, all-male politburo are rather quick to remind us with pride rather than embarrassment). The most religious ages can hardly be called the most democratic (far from it!) while some of the least democratic places on the face of the earth today might best be described as brutal theocracies.

At the same time, it has sometimes been claimed that Christianity was somehow responsible for the development and spread of science rather than its enemy – a claim that I’ve dealt with extensively before (perhaps most notably here).

Ferris seems to take on all these issues in a way that just might deepen our understanding of the true nature of religion and the negative impact it has on both our minds and our society.

There certainly are worse ways one can spend one’s time.

My next entry will chronicle a few of them.

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Every. Single. Day.

Here’s the most bizarre thing I’ve come across thus far today (thanks to a book club catalog that came in the mail):

An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town
(David Farley/Gotham; 304 pages; July 9, 2009)

Amazon Product Description: “In December 1983, a priest in the Italian hill town of Calcata shared shocking news with his congregation: The pride of their town, the foreskin of Jesus, had been stolen. Some postulated that it had been stolen by Satanists. Some said the priest himself was to blame. Some even pointed their fingers at the Vatican. In 2006, travel writer David Farley moved to Calcata, determined to find the missing foreskin, or at least find out the truth behind its disappearance. Farley recounts how the relic passed from Charlemagne to the papacy to a marauding sixteenth-century German solider before finally ending up in Calcata, where miracles occurred that made the sleepy town a major pilgrimage destination. Over the centuries, as Catholic theology evolved, the relic came to be viewed as something of an embarrassment, culminating in a 1900 Church decree that allowed the parish to display it only on New Year’s Day. An Irreverent Curiosity interweaves this history with the curious landscape of Calcata, a beautiful and untouched medieval village set atop four-hundred-fifty-foot cliffs, which now, due to the inscrutable machinations of Italian bureaucracy, is a veritable counterculture coven. Blending history, travel, and perhaps the oddest story in Christian lore, An Irreverent Curiosity is a weird and wonderful tale of conspiracy and misadventure.”

From Publishers Weekly: “Until one mysterious day in 1983, the foreskin of Jesus – once one of the Catholic Church’s holiest of relics – lay nestled in a box in a small church in Calcata, a village in the hills of northern Italy. On that fateful day in December, however, priest Don Dario announced to his tiny congregation that the foreskin had disappeared. What happened to this holy relic? Who could have taken this piece of the divine that medieval saint Catherine of Siena was purported to have worn as a ring around her finger and about which writers as diverse as Joyce, Stendhal and José Saramago have written? In this humorous narrative, journalist Farley sets off to solve the mystery of the missing foreskin. Part travelogue, part mystery story and part religious history, Farley’s tale involves local winemakers, actors and priests, many of whom are tight-lipped about the relic’s disappearance. In 1900, the Vatican decreed that anyone who talked about the holy foreskin would face excommunication, and thereby cut off its status as a holy relic. Farley discovers that no one really knows whether this piece of holy skin ever existed in the first place, and that no one knows its whereabouts now. Although Farley’s often repetitious tale might have been sufficient as a magazine article, his fast-paced storytelling and winning humor raise thoughtful questions about the nature of faith.”

From Amazon Reviewer Rob Hardy: “There must have been a good deal of early Christianity that the Romans found weird, but Christian fondness for the body parts of deceased heroes and heroines seemed particularly perplexing. Christians actually dug up bodies of martyrs and kissed the bones. When St. Cyprian was beheaded, his followers rushed to sop up his blood with their clothes and then ran off with their sanguine mementos. Of course, some Romans didn’t mind being bribed to give up a body for its parts rather than doing away with it in some normal Roman fashion, but reverencing cadaver pieces still seemed peculiar. It is still practiced, and it might still seem peculiar, and if so, the most peculiar of such veneration is the subject of An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town (Gotham Books) by David Farley. Farley, raised Catholic and perhaps not as devout as he used to be, visited Calcata, Italy, an ancient town that sits on a 450-foot cliff, thirty miles from Rome, and accessible only by foot, or by mule. It was there he learned that for centuries the town had been a place of pilgrimage because it was the home of an especially sacred piece of a body. But in 1983, the piece was stolen. Farley’s curiosity was up: the sacred item was nothing less than Jesus’s foreskin…. The cast of villagers includes, to get to the point of the book, the bibulous priest Don Dario, who was on duty when the Foreskin of Jesus disappeared. It was last seen in a shoebox in the bottom of Don Dario’s closet. This was in 1983, or maybe 1986, and maybe it was stolen, or maybe it was sold. Maybe the Nazis got it, or the Satanists. Or maybe it was reclaimed by the Vatican, which is not so interested in corpse parts as it used to be, and wanted to hush everything up. Or maybe they took it so that a clone could be made, and this would be the Second Coming. After all, Don Dario had been put under orders not to show the relic to anyone and only bring it out for a procession on the Feast Day of the Holy Circumcision. In fact, he claims he can’t even talk about it, and doing so might lead to excommunication. The fate of the holy prepuce is as murky as its history, which Farley reviews at length. The severed foreskin would be something special, because if Jesus was assimilated bodily into heaven, it would be the one part of his flesh left behind. Or would it? There was an ancient debate on the issue, with some saying he was made whole (his foreskin was returned to him) before his ascension. Farley does his best to untangle the provenance of the snip of tissue, which involves, among other things, being wound up in the legends about Charlemagne. Sometime after that, St. Catherine, who fancied herself the spiritual bride of Christ, wore the circular tissue as her ring. The prepuce in Calcata wasn’t the only one; there were a dozen or so others in other churches, but the one in Calcata might have the best claim of authenticity. According to the story here, it was stolen by a German soldier at the Sack of Rome in 1527, and after it was found it filled all the air with the sweetest of perfumes and it spread glistening stars all around. This particular foreskin also was vouched for by St. Bridget, who had a vision of the Virgin approving the veneration of the tissue. In 1954 there was a conference at the Vatican to discuss the Holy Foreskin, and although there was a vote in favor of promoting Calcata and its relic, the petition was rejected. Instead, there was reference to a 1900 decree that discussing holy foreskin would be a crime worthy of excommunication. Perhaps the church didn’t like irreverent curiosity, and perhaps the church was taking an enlightened view that it was a mere “medieval fantasy,” but perhaps the church was protecting it because they knew it was the real one. There are a thousand “perhapses” in this delightful book, and anyone who picks it up wanting to know for certain what really happened to the real foreskin is going to be disappointed. Farley’s rollicking search for the truth, complete with picturesque setting, mysterious Vatican library chambers, a relic collection in Turin, secretive priests, and a town full of weird ones, is more substantial than any legend might be. We might, in all this lore, discount for sure at least one version of the foreskin’s fate. The Greek theologian and physician Leo Allatius piously argued in the seventeenth century that the foreskin had arisen with Jesus, but that it became the rings of Saturn.“

To learn a bit more about the unfortunate tendency of religion to warp the way people see and treat relics from the past, see the entries I posted on Jan 22, 2010 and Aug 30, 2004 as well as the links they contain.

To report the discovery of Jesus’s holy shit, piss, boogers, dandruff, or earwax, please contact your local Catholic Church – NOT me.

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