religious blind spot

by Julian Baggini

 

The humanist philosopher Simon Blackburn recounts a wonderful anecdote told to him by a colleague about a high-powered interfaith panel discussion. Each speaker took turns to explain some key ideas of their faith – Buddhist, Hindu and so on – and the response from other panel members was always along the lines of: “Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great.” The same response greeted the Catholic priest who talked of Christ and salvation, but instead of being pleased with their enthusiasm “he thumped the table and shouted: ‘No! It’s not a question of if it works for me! It’s the true word of the living God, and if you don’t believe it you’re all damned to hell!’”

 

“And they all said, ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great.’”

 

The puzzle for many of us is why this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often. The simple fact is that almost everyone who is serious about their religion believes that others have got it badly wrong. If they’re not going to hell, then they are at least missing out on life’s most important truths. So why the silence about the errors of other faiths?

 

The most obvious explanation is simple civility and a respect for different opinions. It would be rude and arrogant for a member of one religion to criticise another, so if they can’t say anything nice, they don’t say anything at all. But this doesn’t add up. Rowan Williams, for example, does not seem to think he’s being rude or arrogant when he criticises the government (especially since he frames it as “encouraging the present government to clarify what it is aiming for”). The Dalai Lama is not considered rude or arrogant for criticising capitalism for being “concerned only with gain and profitability“.

 

The Association of British Muslims was not rude or arrogant when it quite rightly criticised the UN general assembly for removing a clause abut the sexual orientation of the victims from its resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. It seems religious leaders have no problem finding civil ways of being critical of everyone apart from each other.

 

So there’s got to be something else going on here and it doesn’t seem uncharitable to suggest that it’s a kind of sticking together for self-interest, a version of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. A religion’s direct competitors are not the biggest threat. People rarely switch between them and because the traffic tends to be two-way, the net affect is usually negligible anyway. The real danger comes from people giving up on religion altogether. So religions have an interest in “sector building”, seeing promotion of the profile of their kind existential product as being more important than their particular brand.

 

It’s another symptom of what Daniel Dennett calls “belief in belief”. Sure, people do sincerely believe the specific tenets of their faith, albeit with varying degrees of intensity and selectivity. But whereas the exact contents of the creed are up for negotiation, that there must be one is not. What matters above all else is to be religious: how exactly you do so is mere detail.

 

Of course, this isn’t how people explicitly or consciously see it. But if we judge people according to what they do rather than what they say, this explanation makes most sense to me. And I think there could be some benefits if religious people were to acknowledge this.

 

First of all, it would provide an opportunity to question whether the tactical alliance is really the right one. If “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” then I think many people are confused about who their friends and enemies are. There are plenty of moderate Christians, for example, who have much more in common with sympathetic atheists than they do evangelicals. Gay Christians should be more critical of their homophobic co-religionists than of atheist materialists. Such people should leave the opportunistic coalition of faith and join a principled coalition of the reasonable.

 

Second, recognising that belief in belief matters more than belief is a way of moving religion more in the direction of practice and form of life, away from discredited supernatural creeds. As I’ve said more than once in this series, I’m all in favour of religion being more about practice than belief, but it is just wishful thinking to believe it already is.

 

However, I am not holding my breath waiting for either development to happen. The more depressing truth seems to be that for all their aspirations for transcendent truth and higher purpose, religions behave like any other worldly individual or organisation and end up doing what protects their secular interests, not what most aligns with their values. And I’d be a liar if I said: “Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great.”

(source)

 

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this IS christianity in singapore…

 

(source)

Thailand. The land of the free. The constitutional monarchy with a very well-loved and respected King. The country of smiles.

But did you know? Thailand is a place of little true joy. Buddhism is so much a part of the Thai national identity and permeates into every level of society and culture that only about one hundred Thais accept Christ each year in the country of over 68 million people.

Do you share the burden of being that one small change agent, bringing the gospel to the Thais, one at a time?

With its many temples and monks, it is hard to ignore the fact that Buddhism is Thailand’s national religion. With only 16% christians, most Thai students see christianity only as a foreign religion. The land of smiles needs to hear the gospel message. Come and share with Khonkaen University students that Jesus is the way, the true and the life!

Go Change. World.  

 

For someone who lives under the christian subculture in Singapore, it is easy for me to mock the online cacophony over the poster above as white noise. In fact, I invite any practising christian in Singapore, to challenge me on this – that the above IS REPRESENTATIVE, very accurately indeed, of grassroots christianity as subscribed (orthodoxy) and practised (orthopraxy) in this country.

 

NUS student group says sorry for insensitive remarks

 

For anyone blissfully ignorant of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), of which the NUS (National University of Singapore) campus branch is responsible for the above advertisement (which caused much noise in the online community), it is an evangelical parachurch organisation founded by an already deceased William (Bill) Bright. Its main purpose is to spread (really, to proselytise) the christian religion all over the world. It has many branches, with sub “ministries” in tertiary campuses, all over the world. The main polytechnics in Singapore, namely Singapore, Ngee Ann, Temasek and Nanyang, have CCC ministries (I am not sure about the newest polytechnic, Republic) along with the two main universities, NUS and NTU (Nanyang Technological University).

 

I was a member in one of those branches during my school days.

 

And so let anyone accuse, dishonestly and deceptively, that I have no credibility to assert what I am asserting now. In fact, in the deluded madness of my youth, I wanted to enter the seminary to become a pastor. This led me to years of personal study and research (and anguish) into christian theology, biblical studies and historical criticism (which eventually led me to my free-thinking secular humanism). I suppose that is one of the reasons why I am still earnestly interested in the academic study of the bible.

 

Now, contrary to what CCC Singapore as well as the rest of the christian community who want to distance themselves from CCC claim; the theological premise which undergirds the alleged poster has always been constant in christianity, at least as practised and believed in this country; which is namely, that the person of Jesus Christ, as the Son of God (jews and muslims would disagree), is the ONLY way to personal salvation (of the soul) and thus upon death, the ONLY way to an eternity in heaven. This means that in the perception of christians, buddhists, muslims, hindus and free thinkers are all DAMNED to an eternity in hell. Full stop.

 

Now, a conniving dishonesty comes when a non-christian confronts the christian in a media or national capacity.  It is common for the christian to make the non-sensical statement that it is not up to him to judge anyone – only god knows – the destiny of all men. No streetwise christian would be so daft as to state the truth point blank that the poor interviewer will be damned to hellfire. But this is a red herring which distracts the public from the real issue – what does christian theology teach?

 

Classical christian theology has always been religiously exclusive – there is only ONE TRUE religion – and ONE TRUE scripture. It is precisely this very deluded view that compels practitioners to proselytise non-christians as much as possible – they are really sincere about it – they want you to go to heaven!

 

So let me be clear. Any christian who claims that CCC is not representative of christianity is being deliberately dishonest.

 

In making this assertion, I am not claiming that no christian in Singapore disagrees with the bigoted exclusivity of classical christianity; there are perhaps many who do privately. But as an institution and a social movement in Singapore, christianity is religiously exclusive, and theoretically unaccepting towards other religious or nonreligious traditions.

 

There is no point in interviewing, let’s say, a spokesperson for the National Council of Churches in Singapore. Or some lecturer in Trinity Theological College Singapore. Folks like these do not represent the average church pastor, let alone the christian person on the street. In classic Singaporean style, bishops and theologians would offer politically correct and nuanced views on the matter, deflecting any potential conflict.

 

Politically correct spin are nothing but half-truths and testicle-licking lies.

 

Anyhow, the alleged poster is very tame by my book. Just drop by any of the tongue-speaking, hand-raising, demon-casting and chriss angel-like magic mumbo-jumbo charismatic megachurches in Singapore and you will see that Jesus Camp and Teen Mania is more closer to the truth than meets the eye.

 

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inconsistent thinking

 

I had dinner at my parents’ house last night and as a ritual would laze in front of the telly in the sitting room after a quick meal. Not so quickly though, as my brother was seeking an opinion from my wife on wedding preparations in the dining area.

 

The later conversation in the sitting room soon led to medical scams promoted by MLM (multi-level marketing) companies in Singapore, especially ridiculous products like the bio disc and certain silver amulets that are purported to have healing properties. All of us agree that such claims are too incredible to be true and have to be subjected to rigorous tests like double blind control experiments.

 

As it was too tempting for me to resist, I passed a comment on how religious claims have to be subjected to the same quality of scepticism before sweeping statements on the all too incredible claims of religion can be made, especially claims of divine healing, miracles and the paranormal. Incidentally, the classic Poltergeist film was flickering on the telly and how that pissed my wife off as “there were children around”.

 

I personally opine that with the exception of explicit gore (bloody intestines, gauging out of eyes, cannibalism, etc), non-gory horror films are all right with young children as long as parents explain clearly to them that it is all creative imagination and that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GHOSTS. In this way, our children will not succumb to the nonsense that paralyses other southeast asian peoples under the spell of imaginary ghosts, spirits, superstitions and urban legends.

 

Anyhow, my sister became visibly disturbed and went on a diatribe against human reason, arguing for the superiority of divine revelation over reason. But I wonder – she is simply assuming the revelation of the christian religion – what about that of Islam? Or Judaism? Or other non-revelatory human-centred traditions like therevada buddhism or certain forms of hinduism?

 

I put forward to her that while she was using “human reason” as well as empirical evidence to debunk the medical scams, she now turns her back on these reliable methods and claim that revelation is superior. I also mentioned that while a few thousand years of monotheism had done nothing to improve the human condition, a few hundred years of empirical rationalism has given humankind so much.

 

My peeve was very simple. While I respect the general ethos of all the main world religions, monotheistic and otherwise, I do not subscribe to the religious exclusivism as well as biblical literalism of the christian evangelical worldview that often spurns reason and the scientific method. It is very inconsistent on my sister’s part to use empiricism on a daily basis (and not one ounce of “revelation”, whatever that meant) and yet when it comes down to christianity, empiricism and reason are conveniently chucked aside.

 

What the hell is my problem then, she asked (the word “hell” is mine). No problem at all, really – the problem is people like her and for that matter, my entire family. She accused me of “thinking too much”, of which I disagree, mentioning to her that there are many people out there who have similar ideas about life and philosophy as I do. Somehow it is people like her who “think too little”, or at least cherry picking on issues to think or not think about.

 

Of course, my father chose to avoid the discussion although it is obvious whose side he’s on. He was probably thinking in his heart how far astray his poor son has gone and how he would be frying in hell. As for my wife, she was rolling her eyes.

 

Her darned husband and his big mouth.

 

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where religion has gone nuts

 

Welcome to a world where fantasy and reality collide, a world where Halloween becomes real and zombies walked the earth. It is not Universal Studios at Sentosa.

 

Welcome to the world of the Vatican.

 

 

…and the deluded mind of its former CHIEF exorcist, a Father Gabriele Amorth.

 

I would rather leave him alone with his schizophrenia but when loony religion starts to impose itself on the wider culture, that is where I get pissed.

 

This old man was at a film festival about two weeks ago introducing the US film, The Rite, which is about exorcism, when he made these comments:

 

“Practising yoga is satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter.”

“In Harry Potter the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses.”

Not surprisingly, one of the favourite films of this 86-year-old priest is the 1973 classic, The Exorcist, which also happened to be one of my favourites as well, although I contend that the plot is nothing but fantasy and the fruits of the human imagination. Of course, the producers of the film claimed that the story was based loosely on actual events of which the demonic protagonist was in fact a boy of Lutheran parents – but anecdotes like these are never to be accepted hook, line and sinker.

 

‘Harry Potter and Yoga are evil,’ says Catholic Church exorcist

 

Anyhow, the notion that yoga has dodgy origins is not unique to the Vatican. There are many evangelical christian books in the market that espouse a similar nonsense – and some of these books claim that even the Roman Catholic Church is one big demonic enterprise, the pope being the Anti-Christ!? And of course, the equally ridiculous myth that the visions of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) were inspired by the devil and that the poor Arab might have been epileptic.

 

There are still churches in Singapore (some of them megachurches) which still hold on to an animistic and premodern belief that many of our vices and “bad habits” can be caused by evil spirits and demons – and would often conduct healing services where an expert in “deliverance ministry” (the evangelical term for exorcism) would try to cast out “demons of lust, demons of smoking, demons of masturbation, demons of pornography, demons of doubt, demons of violence, demons of anger,” etc…and parishioners would then be seen vomiting (as a sign of the demon leaving the body), convulsing on the floor, screaming, etc.

 

And mind you – they are not being metaphorical.

 

And the government of Singapore beware – such books are aplenty in bookshops all across our small island – and circulated within the evangelical community here. Grassroots christianity in Singapore is not as civil and religiously tolerant as the National Council of Churches Singapore want us to believe – many do not view the other religious faiths in a good light.

 

Am I making a sweeping statement? No – I myself am still part of the community!!!

 

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US anglicanism at all time low

 

For christians who identify themselves as critical thinkers, humanistic and pro-scientific, it is a sad time in which to live, apart from the dark centuries of christian theocracy in medieval Europe.

 

Already, christianity is but a relic of a bygone era in much of Europe, the slightly more religious Britain included; among the reasons one of which is the probable “rise” of modern liberal theology in these places.

 

Although christianity boasts of being the largest religious grouping in the world, of over two billion adherents, the vast majority of active practitioners belong to the African continent, China, South Korea and much of Southeast Asia. Sadly, these places remain bastions of premodern religious thinking and practice, holding on to a christianity that is often exclusivist, homophobic, biblically literalistic and downright anti-science.

 

Singapore included.

 

Yet it is precisely this version of christianity that is exploding all over the world, having taken the imperative to proselytise the entire globe literally, so as to be “spiritually” ready for the “imminent” second advent of Jesus, along with the end of the world. Sects belonging to this vast grouping would include the largest US denomination, the Southern Baptists, as well as the Pentecostals, independent Charismatics, the Reformed (calvinistic) and the dispensational churches. Theological institutions that promote these theologies have the highest student cohorts in the world.

 

In contrast, theologically and scientifically astute christians are teeny weeny in numbers, residing predominantly in secular Europe and the United Kingdom. And despite the air of prestige and affluence that these christian communities hold in the US, it is statistics that reveal a much more depressing truth.

 

Recently, the Episcopal church in the US has released a report that reveals a membership that has dropped to below two million, a first in decades. And it is common knowledge that the Episcopal church is one of the powerhouses of civilised and enlightened christianity, a community of people who upholds inclusivism, gender equality, Enlightenment thought, and social justice.

 

Episcopalian Church Membership dips below 2 Million

 

Will more and more liberal christians descend into atheism and agnosticism, which is the probable trend, or will the rise of fundamentalist religion spell the death of civilisation as we know it?

 

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some thoughts on the religious mindset

 

I often wonder why, if the human soul is distinct from the functions of the mammalian human brain, when damage is inflicted to certain portions of the brain, certain elements of our “soul” ceases to exist?

 

It would be fair to say that it is entirely possible to “convert” a religious zealot into an atheist by simply tweaking portions of the brain that are responsible for religious thought. Real-life cases do exist of religious persons becoming atheists after suffering some damage to their brains due to accidents.

 

If that is the case, is it fair to claim then, that the concept of the “soul” is but a function of the physical brain – an “illusion” of consciousness that is a product of our human evolution? We think that we are separate and distinct from our bodies because our brains “deceive” us into perceiving it as such.

 

The common evangelical disagreement to this would be that such an idea is not a scientific or empirical one but a philosophical one. We are simply presupposing a naturalistic premise – that the material world or nature is all there is. But if we allow for another layer of consciousness that is beyond the material world, then believing in a “soul” distinct from the brain is possible and reasonable.

 

In theory, such an argument is reasonable. But empirical evidence does not allow such a notion. Why are people able to lose their religiosity, their “christian-ness”, their “muslim-ness”, after a damage to their brains? Why are people able to lose their innate “identities” when suffering from Alzheimer’s? If the soul is distinct from the body, a chemical imbalance or problem to the brain should not affect the “soul”.

 

But that isn’t the case.

 

Besides, studies have also shown that religious and mystical experiences can be evoked by simply applying electromagnetic waves to the brain, especially the temporal lobe. People whose temporal lobes are particularly sensitive can be easily manipulated into experiencing fear, numbness, mystical ecstasy, “supernatural” presences, “ghosts” and other paranormal activities by interfering their brains with electromagnetic waves.

 

This can actually explain the numerous so-called “haunted” places in the world – they are simply places that have higher concentrations of electromagnetic radiation – probably due to underground wirings or some other sources of radiation nearby.

 

People who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy are also known to experience religious or mystical experiences, even when some of these patients were atheists. Thus there are scholars who controversially believe that the great mystics of the ancient and present world could be people who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy.

 

People like St. Paul, Ellen G. White (a seventh-day adventist “prophetess”) and perhaps even the founder of Islam.

 

Notice how such mystics claim to experience “seizures” of sorts while having their episodes of “visions” and “dreams”.

 

Although scientists are quick to assert that such research do not negate God as an experience of tremendous value to humankind (they have to make such a claim anyway to appease the religious crazies of the world), it does put into question the very notion of God and the supernatural as metaphysical realities.

 

God and the sacred might very well be products of our own human consciousness, inherited via our evolutionary genes. The “God-centre” in our brains exist so prevalently in homo sapiens because such a mechanism had aided humankind in our survival and thriving as a species.

 

The God who is the “Beyond in our Midst.”

 

One common experience that most practitioners of the mystical traditions claim to have is the losing of self, the diminishing of self-consciousness.

 

Just think of the nirvanic experience of buddhist meditation, the cloud of unknowing in Catholic contemplative prayer and the communion with God of tongues-speaking in Pentecostal prayer.

 

Such similarities do extinguish the childlish idea that any one religion is the sole arbiter of truth, such as the exclusivism of evangelical Christianity and Islam.

 

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