“I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into … the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked that question during oral arguments in Trump v. United States on April 25, 2024.
The wolf does not need every sheep to trust him. He needs them to distrust the sheep who can smell him.
Popular folklore tells us that the flock is protected by the "sheepdog"—the rare, fierce guardian who keeps the predator at bay. But the wolf’s most effective strategy is not to outfight the sheepdog; it is to convince the flock that the dog's bark is actually a conspiracy against them.
A lighthouse is an odd place to escape responsibility. Its keeper may never meet the people using its beam, never see their ships, never learn whether tonight’s work saved a life. The keeper tends the lamp without expecting a report from every ship that passes. The light travels farther than the keeper’s knowledge of its consequences.
When I was a graduate student at UF, I didn’t set out to become a “politics and religion” guy. I set out to restart a student group that had gone dormant, because it felt unhealthy—intellectually and civically—to let “religion” be treated as the default, unquestioned atmosphere.
The phrase Christian nationalism is having one of those weeks where it stops being an abstract grad-seminar category and becomes a live description of power.
"as of this writing, an alleged practitioner of radical Christian terrorism remains a state legislator in Washington."You really have to read about Matt Shea to believe it is even real:
"Last year, the chair of the Republican caucus in Washington’s state legislature acknowledged that he had written a manifesto on the 'Biblical Basis for War.' In that document, the lawmaker argued that – as far as Jesus Christ was concerned – American Christians have the right to 'kill all males' who support abortion, same-sex marriage or communism (so long as they first give such infidels the opportunity to renounce their heresies).Although they finally suspended him from the caucus when more information came out, the fact that Republicans in Washington kept a white Christian terrorist in their protective circle tells you all you need to know...notwithstanding my hyperbolic use of #AmericanTaliban.
The manifesto’s revelation cost its author, Matt Shea, his chairmanship. But Shea insisted that his writings were merely 'a summary of church sermons on Old Testament war that could help place current events in historical context.' And so, the Washington GOP did not call for Shea to resign or expel him from its House caucus. [emphasis mine]"
"At various points in his strange career, State Representative Matt Shea of Washington’s Spokane Valley has called for a holy war on liberals, advocated for eastern Washington to secede from the union, and spoken to meetings of the John Birch Society. Now, despite a new report that details his participation in a disturbing far-right group chat, Shea, a Republican, is clinging to power. His party seems reluctant to condemn him."I wrote about Christian theonomy about 13.5 years ago...jeez the more the change, eh?
"Nothing can produce more disastrous effects on human progress, as regards the destiny of individuals, than the very prevalent notion that one religion followed out in a pious spirit, is as good as another, and that if such and such doctrines are perhaps absurd when you look into them, the great majority of good people will never think of their absurdity, but will recite them in a blamelessly devoted attitude of mind." (Sinnett 1885, pp. 194–195; Guénon 2004, p. 126.)Sinnett, A. P. (1885) [1883]. Esoteric Buddhism (5th ed.). London: Chapman and Hall Ltd
"It is priestly imposture that rendered these gods so terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is the belief in God and gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them." (Barker 1924, Letter 10.)Kuthumi; et al. (1924). Barker, A. T. (ed.). The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. & K. H. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
On those who say religion is unnecessary, given humanity's growing scientific knowledgeThat last part rings true to me. Honestly I think that fear and emotion cloud these discussions so much on the part of religious people that they can't really talk about God in a grown-up way. They are too afraid they'll go to hell for doubting. That's the pathetic part of religion: mind control.
I think science and religion are at some point both about big questions of origin and wonder. And I think, for me, I've always felt that it's important for religious people to have the same kind of philosophical stance they use in their religious life as they do in the rest of their life. And a lot of times I think religion — religions — ask people to sort of turn off the scientific part of their lives and just go and kind of think about God kind of pre-scientifically.
I don't think we can do that. We've got to have a faith that is, in some sense, consonant with the way we think about the world scientifically. And again, I think one of the things the Pew study suggests to us is that if the church can get over its anxiety about talking about God in a grown-up way, we would actually reach out to and speak to more people than we do right now. [emphasis added]
A serious but startling statistical analysis by researcher Greg S. Paul suggests that if we include the unborn, more than 98 percent of Heaven’s inhabitants, some 350 billion, would be those who died before maturing to the point that they could voluntarily “accept the gift of salvation.” The vast majority of the heavenly host would be moral automatons or robots, meaning they never had moral autonomy and never chose to be there. Christian believers, ironically, would be a 1 to 2 percent minority even if all 30,000+ denominations of believers actually made it in.So...what's the point of this life, again? If we have these immortal souls that live eternally, why clothe them in physical form in this world at all? It seems that the vast populace of Hell is anyone who lives past the age of accountability (if there is such a thing), while the vast populace of Heaven is anyone who didn't make it that far.
The theological implications are huge. Christian theologians typically explain evil by arguing that this was the best of all possible worlds, the only way to create free will and to develop moral virtues (like courage, compassion, forgiveness and so forth), to make us more Christ-like and prepare us for Heaven. But if we run the numbers, it appears that God didn’t need the whole free will—sin—redemption thing to fill his paradise with perfect beings because no suffering, evil, or moral freedom is actually required as a prelude to glory.
But love and understanding, even without knowledge, are tremendous gifts; and religious knowledge claims are hard to support. We should, then, make room for those who embrace a religion as a source of love and understanding but remain agnostic about the religion’s knowledge claims. We should, for example, countenance those who are Christians while doubting the literal truth of, say, the Trinity and the Resurrection. I wager, in fact, that many professed Christians are not at all sure about the truth of these doctrines —and other believers have similar doubts. They are, quite properly, religious agnostics.He presents such agnosticism as a sort of "middle way" between "no arguments" atheism, which is the presumption that the burden of proof lies on the religious, and the presumption by religion that faith justifies knowledge.
It may well be that physical science will ultimately give us a complete account of reality. It may, that is, give us causal laws that allow us to predict (up to the limits of any quantum or similar uncertainty) everything that happens in the universe. This would allow us to entirely explain the universe as a causal system. But there are aspects of our experience (consciousness, personality, moral obligation, beauty) that may not be merely parts of the causal system. They may, for example, have meanings that are not reducible to causal interactions.I would wager all my earthly goods that many people believe in religious knowledge claims because of these aspects of our experience. Religion has done a great job of packaging together some really hard-to-swallow claims about history and science with a much easier-to-swallow sense of appreciation for these aspects of our experience, and insisting they be taken together or not at all. Many believers I know have pointed this exact thing out to me before after a long dialog in which they may see that I have some good points/arguments in favor of rejecting some of their knowledge claims about history and science.
“The planet Earth, formerly called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of planets under the leadership of a despot ruler named Xenu,” said Hubbard, who was a best-selling science fiction writer before he became the prophet of a new religion. To suppress a rebellion, Xenu tricked the confederations into coming in for fake income tax investigations. Billions of thetans were taken to Teegeeack (you remember: Earth), “where they were dropped into volcanoes and then blown up with hydrogen bombs.” Suffice it to say I’m not hanging around Earth next time I’m between lives. Hubbard apparently could go on for hours — or pages — with this stuff. Wright informs us, as if it were just an oversight, that “Hubbard never really explained how he came by these revelations,” but elsewhere he says they came to him at the dentist’s office. Of the Borgia-like goings-on after Hubbard’s death in 1986, Wright says cheerfully, “Every new religion faces an existential crisis following the death of its charismatic founder.” He always refers to Scientology respectfully as “the church.”How can any sane person not understand that he was just creating more science fiction? What amazing revelation brought him this "knowledge"? It's really sad.
"The hard-core atheist," Prothero writes, "once a stock figure in American life, has gone the way of the freak show."This time he sounds a little better:
Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University and author of "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't," served as an advisor on the survey. "I think in general the survey confirms what I argued in the book, which is that we know almost nothing about our own religions and even less about the religions of other people," he said.But Alan Cooperman, of Pew Forum, nails it:
"[Atheists and agnostics] are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."And that's why we don't buy it anymore.
It's a long way from admitting that atheists deserve equal rights and lobbying that Christians do (I know, try not to laugh). But it's a hell of a lot better than the last guy who lived at the White House did. Also, check out this column from Kristof on the role of faith-based organizations in doing actual humanitarian work. It caused me to re-examine some of my prejudices.THIS WEEK IN GOD.... First up from the God Machine this week was a rare White House meeting, between Obama administration officials and prominent atheists. (via Ron Chusid)
President Barack Obama has burnished his Christian credentials, courted Jewish support and preached outreach toward Muslims. On Friday, his administration will host a group that fits none of the above: America's nonbelievers.
The president isn't expected to make an appearance at the meeting with the Secular Coalition for America or to unveil any new policy as a result of it.
Instead, several administration officials will sit down quietly for a morning meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus with about 60 workhorses from the coalition's 10 member groups, including the American Atheists and the Council for Secular Humanism. Tina Tchen, the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and representatives from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments will participate.
Coalition leaders are billing their visit as an important meeting between a presidential administration and the "nontheist" community.
The Secular Coalition for America called the meeting "the first time in history a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American nontheist community."
The Catholic League, which is offended for a living, condemned the gathering. "People of faith, especially Christians, have good reason to wonder exactly where their interests lie with the Obama administration," professional complainer Bill Donohue said. "Now we have the definitive answer." Donohue described attendees as "anti-religious activists" who would like to "crush Christianity if they could."
But a recent article by researchers at the University of Rochester shows that experiences with nature can affect more than our mood. In a series of studies, Netta Weinstein, Andrew Przybylski, and Richard Ryan, University of Rochester, show that exposure to nature can affect our priorities and alter what we think is important in life. In short, we become less self-focused and more other-focused. Our value priorities shift from personal gain, to a broader focus on community and connection with others.As people spend less and less time outdoors, I fear we'll see these encouraging results affect smaller portions of the population. I think if we all spent more time in nature that issues like global warming and pollution would be far less polarized. We'd all feel connected to the issues more personally.
To demonstrate this effect, they ran a series of studies. In their first study, the researchers randomly assigned individuals to view a slide show that either depicted scenes of human-made or natural environments. The slides were matched across a variety of characteristics, to eliminate the possibility that the results were due to things like color, complexity, or brightness of the images. The participants were instructed to try to immerse themselves in the images—to notice the colors and textures and imagine the sounds and smells. After watching the slide show (which took about 8 minutes), the participants completed a series of questions about their life aspirations.
Of particular interest were responses to extrinsic life aspirations , like being financially successful or admired by many people; as contrasted with intrinsic life aspirations , like deep and enduring relationships, or working toward the betterment of society. The results showed that people who watched the nature images scored significantly lower on extrinsic life aspirations, and significantly higher on intrinsic life aspirations. The effect was particularly strong for participants who reported being “immersed” in the images. This basic effect was further explored in three subsequent studies. The later studies showed the same effect for true nature experiences: being in a small room with plants, for example.
So many claims of this nature are based on negative evidence. That is, if science cannot explain X, then your explanation for X is necessarily true. Not so. In science, lots of mysteries are left unexplained until further evidence arises, and problems are often left unsolved until another day. I recall a mystery in cosmology in the early 1990s whereby it appeared that there were stars older than the universe itself—the daughter was older than the mother! Thinking that I might have a hot story to write about that would reveal something deeply wrong with current cosmological models, I first queried California Institute of Technology cosmologist Kip S. Thorne, who assured me that the discrepancy was merely a problem in the current estimates of the age of the universe and that it would resolve itself in time with more data and better dating techniques. It did, as so many problems in science eventually do. In the meantime, it is okay to say, “I don’t know,” “I’m not sure” and “Let’s wait and see.”I want to believe in the cyclic universe, but I'm quite willing to admit that no one knows, and that we may never know with any degree of certainty, how our universe came to be as it is today (although it may have never "come to be" at all).
...Most people (scientists included) treat the God question separate from all these other claims. They are right to do so as long as the particular claim in question cannot—even in principle—be examined by science. But what might that include? Most religious claims are testable, such as prayer positively influencing healing. In this case, controlled experiments to date show no difference between prayed-for and not-prayed-for patients. And beyond such controlled research, why does God only seem to heal illnesses that often go away on their own? What would compel me to believe would be something unequivocal, such as if an amputee grew a new limb. Amphibians can do it. Surely an omnipotent deity could do it. Many Iraqi War vets eagerly await divine action
...There is no positive evidence for [the origin of the universe], but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question—God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. If God is defined as that which does not need to be created, then why can’t the universe (or multiverse) be defined as that which does not need to be created?
In both cases, we have only negative evidence along the lines of “I can’t think of any other explanation,” which is no evidence at all. If there is one thing that the history of science has taught us, it is that it is arrogant to think we now know enough to know that we cannot know. So for the time being, it comes down to cognitive or emotional preference: an answer with only negative evidence or no answer at all. God, multiverse or Unknown. Which one you choose depends on your tolerance for ambiguity and how much you want to believe. For me, I remain in sublime awe of the great Unknown.
