by Edd Doerr
The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture, by psychologist Darrel W. Ray (IPC Press, Bonner Springs, KS, 2009, 241 pp), presents a fascinating exploration of how most religions persist and spread, using throughout such biological metaphors as viruses, infections, vectors, natural selection, and competition. Ray writes from his personal experience as someone who grew up in a conservative Protestant milieu and evolved into a humanist, freethinker and psychologist. His analysis is quite persuasive, his warnings about the consequences of unchecked "God virus" infections useful and scary.
Ray tops off the book with a psychologist's sound guidance as to how to get along in a world infected by "god viruses" of various sorts.
Unfortunately, Ray's book stops short of acknowledging that "god viruses" can become attenuated and rendered less harmful (more benign?) or become "compartmentalized" and moved away from center stage. It is this attenuation and/or compartmentalization that makes it possible for humanists to work with a broad spectrum of people who bear assorted religious labels. Indeed, this broad working together across lines of religious/lifestance identification is the only hope for turning back the virulent drives to (in no special order) weaken women's rights of conscience on abortion and contraception; open pipelines between public treasuries and religious schools and other institutions; sabotage the religious neutrality of public education; undermine science; derail efforts to deal with climate change and global warming; ensconce fanatic theocrats in the seats of political power; return society to the neo-feudalism advocated today by whole phalanxes of aspirants to high office. I think that Darrel Ray would agree.
12 comments:
It is true that liberal/attenuated/comprtmentalized religion is an important phenomena that "makes it possible for humanists to work with a broad spectrum of people who bear assorted religious labels", and of course, people should, and people generally do, form coalitions with like minded people to advocate for particular principle/policies/laws. But it doesnt follow that disagreements should be censored or suppressed. So at the same time we participate in various coalitions, we can, and we should, also speak honestly and publically on topics of disagreement. That includes the disagreements we have over the arguments made by liberal religionists for their religious beliefs. The fact is that the logical/factual mistakes made by liberal religionists overlap with, are similar in nature to, or when different, are still just as seriously flawed as, the mistakes made by conservative religionists. To really get to the destination we want, giving liberal religionists a pass is counterproductive.
The key to making this a more humanistic world is found in these words: strategy, strategy, strategy, timing, sequence, framing, prioritizing. A bull in a china shop approach, like that of Madalyn O'Hair is what is really counterproductive. I knew her well and have seen the damage she has done to the humanist cause.
Young, and not so young, people don't know Madalyn O'Hair. Why are we worried about her? Why should we apologize because she claimed to be an atheist and she was not so cute? Why are we assuming that all atheists have some kind of collective responsibility? She was one individual among how many billions people? Anybody who does not believe that there are gods is an atheist. Being perfect is not a requirement.
Lord have mercy!
There is a difference between argument and insult, and that difference is not, I repeat, it is not, defined by double standard reactions of an audience that are rooted in intolerance, including intolerance among liberals. It is not a good strategy to accept intolerance because it is widespread or because it is found among people who are sometimes allies. and I say that if liberals were not intolerant in this way then the fact that atheist openly and public ally argue for atheism would be as irrelevant to these liberals as it when they each so argue for their beliefs or when they form coalitions with some conservatives on some issue, etc. every policy has its own mix of advocates and people don't choose their allies nor do they refuse to sign a petition if someone with different beliefs also signs the petition. It is simply unreasonable to set a different standard for atheists and their beliefs. That isn't strategy, it's surrender to prejudice.
Lucette: O'Hair is long gone, but she poisoned the water for many years. Some fundies are still circulating the myth that hse is somehow still asking the FCC to ban religious broadcasting, which was never the case. The FCC still gets complaints about this nonexistent matter.
Explicit: A example of bad strategy bad timing and bad sequencing is Michael Newdow's "crusade" to dump the "under God" phrase from the pledge. Shortly before he argued his case before the Supreme Court the ACLU sponsored a sort of debate at the U of Md with Newdow and me one side and two inconsequential conservatives on the other. By the luck of the draw I was first up. I said that while the "uG" in the pledge raised First Amendment issues, if Newdow would win his case there would be a stampede in Congress to amend th Constitution to put the phrase back in, AND the new amendment would probably contain such objectionable features as school prayer, creationism in science classes, tax support for religious private schools, and a ban on abortion. Such an amendment would be unstoppable in the 38 states needed for ratification. Thus, one successful lawsuit could turn the US into a theocracy. Fortunately, the Court found a way to simply not rule in the case.
Strategy, timing, sequencing, priorities, avoiding stupid mistakes. That is the advice of the experts. You don't have to believe me, but I speak with 60 years of experience fighting these battles.
We should ignore the "In God we trust" for at least one other reason: There are a lot of much more crucial and urgent issues on our plate. We have to pick our fights.
As Lucette notes we have more crucial and urgent issues on our plate than altering The Pledge. We are always faced with multiple problems and scarce resources which require prioritization and thinking through approaches. This is part of what is implied in the ideas of a strategy that Edd articulates.
On the other hand I also agree with our Explicit Atheist that principled stands are important so we can speak honestly. It takes a deep wisdom to balance these 2 realities.
Explicit: A example of bad strategy bad timing and bad sequencing is Michael Newdow's "crusade" to dump the "under God" phrase from the pledge....
That is not the only risk. There is also a risk in not occasionally challenging long standing violations. Judges sometimes assert that because a practice has continued for a long time it has become a deeply rooted tradition and therefore it is no longer stoppable. Even though many of the ongoing establishments of monotheism began only six decades ago, judges have made this argument that these practices are now such traditions.
Some of these 1950's laws are in the tax code. That may be a safer target because those laws favor some religions over others in wording, if not in practice. But the fact is that almost any challenge to any establishment of monotheism will be high-profile and widely resented. And the fact is that this is not unique, other civil rights type battles were also initially very unpopular and to this day there are still people who resent long ago civil rights victories by various minorities. Furthermore, the people who sought minority civil rights sometimes lost, but they persisted, public opinion changed, and they eventually prevailed.
So I agree with you that these lawsuits are very risky. But I also think that we should support them because they are correct on the merits and if we are to eventually prevail we must be willing to publicly speak out against popular opinion. There is an ongoing process here, I think the notion that we control that process with strategy that takes us somewhere better in a clean, no mess, direct, pre-arranged, per-cleared, no risk, path is a myth.
I think that we need to be clear about the nature of the risk when we challenge the legal bias toward rekigion. Edd Saturday suggested that if the Supreme Court were to rule against "under God" in the Pledge that a Constitutional would zip through Congress in a matter of weeks and before the next year was out there would be 38 states which ratified it. This is not even "risk" because we can be certain that we would lose. Not only would we lose, we can be certain that the loss would be leveraged to move us down the road to theocracy.
I do love to listen to Michael Newdow with the clarity of his legal thinking. However, it is possible that he is the single biggest threat to our cause with the certainty of the response if he were to win. We need to press for results where our chances are much better.
The FFRF files such lawsuits also, it is not just any one person. As long as the laws from the 1950's remain, as long as federal and state governments keep elevating belief in god into a government favored and promoted belief and linking this belief to good citizenship, I cannot see how a "strategy" of "framing" the issue into non-existence can work. The issue is real, it exists, it isn't going away, like it or not, we have to deal with it, and none of us will be able to stop this. So the real issue is not does this happen or not, or even will it happen today or 100 years in the future. It is now and maybe also 100 years from now. The only issue, as I see it, is how we react to this while it is happening. Given that we have very little, if any, control over when or what, my reaction is to look at the merit, and to take the side in the dispute that is favored by merit. I think we are shooting ourselves in the foot if we keep going around in circles with this don't side with the victims because they cannot win "strategy". That is not going to improve our odds of a good result or reduce the odds of a bad result.
I have read FFRF's material from its beginning and was a speaker as one of its conferences. They do interesting work. But their monthly tabloid does not deal with the hottest topics on the Religious Right and GOP agendas, attacking reproductive choice and diverting public funds to religious schools. It all goes back to strategy, sequencing, and priorities.
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