Me (and the President) on Gay Marriage

A few days ago President Obama made history by saying that he supports the rights of gay couples to marry. Obama is the first sitting president in US history to make such a statement. I've heard a lot of specualtion since then on just why he made the statement at this time and there are a lot of cynical speculations from all sides. I imagine that the President had mixed motives (most people do for any big decision) but I do think he is saying what he honestly believes and that it was a good thing to say. Obama talks about an "evolution" of his attitudes toward gay marriage. I have to confess, I've been through a similar evolution. When I first learned about homosexuality (around 9th or 10th grade I think) it seemed strange to me and a little scary (different things are often scary.) I didn't know any gay people (at least, not that I was aware of) and it seemed strange to me that people could have an orientation so different than mine. Fortunately, I had wise parents and a good church who helped me understand that this was just one of the many ways people were made differently, like skin color, or left vs. right-handedness, or nationality. Gay people were people, and should be treated with the same respect and kindness as anyone else. That was very much the attitude of my church growing up. The focus was seldom on the nature of homosexuality but on how we, as people of faith, should treat others. As I went through college I learned a lot more. I still don't feel I have a complete understanding of the root causes of homosexuality, but I have learned enough to know that it neither unnatural (it happens in many places in nature) nor is it a "lifestyle choice" the critics claim it to be. I have learned a lot more about the Bible and homoseuality and feel I can speak with some authority there. I can say that the laws in Leviticus that condemn a man having sex with another man don't apply to the modern world any more than the laws phohibiting wearing blended fabrics, trimming your beard, or eating shellfish. These laws were meant to address the danger of cultural assimilation in ancient Israel and were never meant as eternal moral dictates. I can say with confidence that, while the New Testament condemns manipulative, abusive and indiscriminate homosexual behavior, it condemns the same behavior in heterosexuals in the same breath. In no place does the Bible condemn a loving and committed gay relationship. You have to manipulate the scripturrs to try to pretend otherwise. So, I've been generally supportive of gay rights, but gay marriage was an evolution. I never bought into the idea that gay marriage would somehow undermine heterosexual marriage. I've never heard even an attempt to explain how it could, for critics the unsubstianted claim seems enough. But it seemed to me that marriage was different somehow. I thought gay partners should have equal legal rights to married couples but I resisted putting the label marriage on it, and wondered why that should ne needed. It's hard to explain because it was more an emotional reaction than a rational one. I was also aware of some gay activists sayingthey didn't want to call it that because, for them, the word "marriage" carried a lot of baggage. I came to accept the term gay marriage a little reluctantly, but I realized that unless this was recognized as marriage, opponants would always have an easy way to undermine it. Then, I heard a gay speaker why swept away the last of my reservations. She pointed out that we really have only one term for people who want to commit themselves to a life long loving relationship, to proclaim their committment in public, and to ask God's blessings on it. She said that there is disagreement about whether to call it gay marriage within the gay community, but it's one that's that needs to be resolved there, not by straight people dictating what it should be. I don't know if President Obama's evolution has been like mine, though it sounds as if it may have. In any case, I sympathize with his struggles, I respect his sincerity, and I'm proud that he (and I) have ended out being fully supportive of this.

Great Commercial

Religulous-Part 2

Most of the movie Religulous consists of a series of interviews in which Bill Maher claims he is trying to understand religious people. Watching it, I came to the conclusion that he isn't interested in understanding at all, he just wants to find the most bizarre religious people he can find to embarass and mock. That's understandable, he is a comedian, and a particularly acerbic one.

At the end of the movie, though, Maher leaves comedy behind and launches into a diatribe that I suspect is his real purpose in making the movie. Here it is, with my comments following.

(Maher) The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live.

The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says, "I'm willing, Lord! I'll do whatever you want me to do!" Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.

And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don't. How can I be so sure? Because I don't know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not. The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that's what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong.

This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves.

And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers.

If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let's remember what the real problem was that we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That's it. Grow up or die.

That lays is out pretty boldly. Religious people are going to blow up the world because of their beliefs. Our only hope is to somehow stamp out religion before this happens.

He raises the spectre of Al Qaeda with nuclear weapons, which I think most people (religious included) are horrified by this idea. Al Qaeda is a dangerous criminal organization made up of religious extremists. The thing is that Maher's conclusion doesn't really follow. He doesn't say we should keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of dangerous criminal organizations, or of violent extremists, he suggests that the real problem is keeping them out of the hands of religious people.

I think that what Maher is trying to suggest is that all religious people are dangerously irrational. We are all violent extremists who want to see the world go up in a blaze of nuclear fire so that Jesus can come back. If we're not, we're certainly just a short step from it.

Ive heard variations of this before. The president is a literalist Christian but seems to be a decent and rational person. then, one night, the President has a dream in which God tells him to press the red button and start the end-times. In this scenario there is no difference in believing in the talking snake in Genesis and having a voice in your head that compels you to kill billions of people. Mistaken or non-rational beliefs are the same as serious mental illness.

I would agree that it is a bad idea to elect someone with a serious mental illness President of the United States. People who are hearing voices that tell them to kill others should not be allowed to play with nuclear weapons. But that's really not the same as Maher's conclusion.

And Maher's implication that George W. Bush based his decision to send troops to Iraq based on prayer seems to be a fantasy on his part. I can understand him objecting to the president's decision, and I can understanding him disliking the president's religious convictions, but there is no reason to draw a linkage like this between the two. No rational reason, anyway.

Maher says that we should no longer "indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people." He isn't specific about what he means. It sounds like he could be saying that religious people shouldn't be allowed to hold public office, or possibly religious people shouldn't be allowed to vote. But the idea that people from all belief systems can participate in the nation's decision making is not an indulgence, it is a pillar of American Democracy.

Maher says that faith means making a virtue of not thinking. Sometimes it does, and when it does, I can agree that this is a bad thing. But maher is making a blanket statement and his parade of religious oddballs does not justify it. Faith and critical thinking went hand and hand in my home, in my church, in my denomination, and in my denomination. Was Martin Luther King Jr. an "intellectual slaveholder?" Was Deitrich Bonnhoeffer a justifier of "lunacy and destruction" when he and his union of churches stood up to Hitler in Nazi Germany?The idea that believing in God automatically makes a person a non-thinking sheep is not just inaccurate, it is ignorant.

Maher says that people who are moderately religious (I think he means to say "religious moderates") are just enablers for the extremists. He says that we should resign our membership in our religion to protest the bad things done in it's name. This would make sense if, say, Christianity was monolithic, but it's not. Asking me to resign from membership in the Westboro Baptist Church because of their homophobic ideas makes sense; asking me to resign form my church because of the Westboro attitudes is not. Would Maher ask someone to leave the Libertarian Party because of a Republican scandal? I doubt it, buit religion is different in his mind.

A better metaphor might be citizenship. The United States allowed slavery in its borders for many years, sponsored the genocide of Native Americans, denied women the vote, and had done many other questionable things. Should we all resign our citizenship in protest? That would seem to follow Maher's logic and, in his words...

"To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers."

(BTW, I think it's hilarious how Maher is echoing the language of Senator Joe McCarthy here. He really didn't think that one through. :))

One thing I do agree with Maher about it the danger of arrogance. When a person or group becomes convinced that they have the absolute and only handle on the truth, it is a very bad thing. He rightly says that humility is the safest and most honest approach to dealing wit the world.

I agree completely, though I'd like to expand on it. First, being religious doesn't automitically mean you fall into this trap. Humility is considered one of the greatest virtues by Christianity and we are well aware of the need to remind those who are swept away by false certainty (it happens all too often.)

But neing non, or even anti-religious is no safeguard against arrogance and false certainty. You see it in political extremists, both liberal and conservative, in capitalists and communists, in animal rights activists, nationalists, anarchists, racists, Atheists, Cubs fans, Sox fans, even TV comedians are not immune. ism you can think of who believe that they, and only they, are the guardians of truth. Even television comedians can fall into this kind of intolerant arrogance if they're not careful.

The problem isn't a religious one; it's a human problem. It affects religion, just at is affects every area of human existence, but the answer isn't to stamp out religion. That's not a compassionate answer, it's not a humble answer, and it's not a rational answer.

Maher's message is ultimately, "There's nothing wrong with bigotry and intolerance, as long as it's targeted at the right people."

I hope no one is irrational enough to believe this.

Religulous

I just saw this movie by Bill Maher. Religulous begins with Maher's solemn pronouncement that religion is detrimental to mankind. He proceeds to show why in a string of comic interviews and rants. There is a special focus on Christianity but he takes shots at Judaism, Mormonism, Islam, and religions in general.

Maher is good at staging interviews in which ordinary people appear foolish and even better in choosing people who don't need any help to appear ridiculous. Some of these interviews are very funny (I particularly liked his interview with the world's rudest rabbi).

Throughout the film, Maher contrasts himself with people who believe in God. They are crazy, he is rational; they are bigoted, he is fair minded; they are absolutely certain they are right, he (implicitly) is humble.

I understand why Maher needed to go to the lunatic fringe for his interviews. First, he is a comedian and he wanted his movie to be funny. Second, you have to find some real egotists to make Bill Maher look humble by comparison.

Many of his targets deserve the pokes he gives them, though it's hardly fair to issue a blanket condemnation of religious people based on the motley crew he chooses to represent us. Maher's debunking of Jesus also says something about his presentation of himself as a fair-minded rationalist.

Maher (Speaking to an actor who portrays Jesus at a Bible-themed amusement park): Does it ever bother you that the story of a man who was born of a virgin, was resurrected--your bio--was something that was going around the Mediterranean for at least a thousand years. We've got Krishna, who was in India a thousand years before Christ. Krishna was a carpenter, born of a virgin, baptized in a river…

(Actually, the worship of Krishna is only traced to about 400 BC, not 1000 BC. I suppose that's not such a big deal, but it is an error.

Krishna was not born to a virgin. His mother, the princess Devaki, was a married woman who had already had seven other sons. The story says that Krishna was conceived through "mental transmission" rather than regular means, so maybe that's what Maher is thinking of.

As for being a carpenter, Krishna was a cowherd. And there's no story of his being baptized in a river or anywhere else. If you'd like to check it out for yourself, you can read the Hindu epic Mahabarata online. It is the primary source for the stories of Krishna and one of the sacred texts of the Hindu faith. Sadly, Maher doesn't seem to have read any of it.

Maher (continuing): …there's the Persian god Mithra, six hundred years before Christ, born December 25, performed miracles, resurrected on the third day, was known as "the lamb", "the way, the truth, the light", "the Savior", the Messiah."

It's harder to track down the claims about Mithra. Mithraism,/a> was a mystery religion that was popular in the Roman Empire at about the same time as early Christianity. I'm suspicious of the claim that he was called "the lamb", "the way, the truth, the light", and "the Savior" (The DaVinci Code made similar claims and I've never been able to track them down. I am dead certain, though, that Mithra was not called the Messiah. That is a Hebrew word and would not have been used by the Persians for their god-man.

Finally, Mithra was not born on December 25; for one thing, the Persians didn't even use the Julian calendar, for another. Mehregan, the day associated with Mithra in the Zoroastrian calendar corrosponds to October 2.

His followers believed that he performed miracles (though these mostly involved slaying monsters). His followers believed that he was immortal and there is no story of his death, let alone his resurrection. There's more on Mithra here.

Written in 1280 BC, the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes a god, Horus…
Horus is the son of the god Osirus…
…born to a virgin mother
…he was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer
…who was later beheaded
Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert…
Healed the sick…
The blind…
Cast out demons…
And walked on water…
He raised Asar from the dead…
"Asar" translates to "Lazarus"
Oh yeah, he also had 12 disciples.
Yes, Horus was crucified first…
And after 3 days, two women announced…
Horus, the savior of humanity…
…had been resurrected.
Horus is never referred to as the savior of humanity in Egyptian mythology.

Taking these points in order:

1) The Egyptian
Book of the Dead doesn'tsay any of these things about Horus. It is a book of spells and amulets intended to guide the soul on its journey to the next life.

2) Horus mother, the goddess Isis, was not a virgin, though she did conceive her son in an unusual way. The god Set murdered her husband, Orisis, and cut his body into pieces. Isis was able to find all the pieces, except for Osiris' penis, which had been eaten by a crocodile. She patched the pieces together, magically created a new penis, and restored the Osiris to life. The two engaged in sex and Horus was conceived. It's not exactly the same as the story of Jesus' birth.

3) I can find no reference to Anup the Baptizer anywhere in Egyptian mythology, and suspect that he is a fabrication. The only mentions a web search turns up are the book, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Acharya S, and the movie Zeitgeist: the Movie. It's not clear where they got the story and I suspect it is a fabrication.

4) Likewise, I cannot find reference to any of the miracles Maher mentions Horus performing. The story of Horus mostly has to do with his struggles with his uncle Set to become king. Horus' mother, Isis, heals him several times in the story but Horus himself does not heal anyone.

5) There is no story about Horus resurrecting Asar (or anyone) in Egyptian mythology. In fact, there is no one names Asar in Egyptian myth. There is a story about Isis resurrecting Osiris and possibly this is what Maher is referring to.

6) I can't find anything in Egyptian mythology about Horus having 12 disciples.

7) There is a story about Horus dying and being resurrected, but it is very different from the story of Jesus. When Horus was still a little child, his evil uncle, Set sent a scorpion to kill him. His mother, Isis and his aunt, the goddess Nephthys, lamented Horus' death until the god Thoth came to earth to heal him. Thoth gave Horus a healing potion that drove the poison from his body. There is no crucifixion in the story, no announcement of resurrection, and Horus was never called the savior of the world.

Fringe theories like this normally amuse me more than irritate me. This one is a little different because Maher makes such a point of how gullible religious people are, clinging to absurd stories just because we like what they have to say.

Take a good long look in the mirror, Mr. Maher. you're trying to make your case with pseudo-history and conspiracy theories.

Love Wins

I got a copy of LOVE WINS for Christmas and finally got the chance to read it. Despite the difficult topics he covers, the book is a quick read thanks to Bell's engaging style and his use of ordinary language rather than theologese.

The idea behind the book is to raise questions about Heaven, Hell, and God's plan of salvation. Bell contends that there are a number of logical contradictions and departures from scripture in the ideas that so many people are used to. He brings out the idea that only Christians go to Heaven, that non-believers are doomed to eternal torment, and that most people are doomed to Hell and proceeds to show not only how mean-spirited they are, but also how non-biblical they are.

I loved this book because of Bell's unflinching, unsentimental, and insightful portrayal of God's love. I am often frustrated by the narrow and judgmental attitudes of many of my fellow Christians. That's not just because I disagree but because those ideas seem so poorly thought out and on such shaky theological ground. Bell points out just where these ideas go wrong better than I am able. He also does so compassionately, not trampling on the faith of those who hold such ideas, but inviting them to a grander and truer picture of God's love, especially as revealed in Jesus.

It's a controversial book, especially in Evangelical Christian circles and I've seen a number of articles, videos, and other books trying to debunk Bell and prop up the old orthodoxy. So far, I haven't seen anything that appears to have looked at his book in depth and with any real understanding.

Do yourself a favor. Don't be frightened away by hysterical warnings or superficial criticisms, this is a book that deserves to be read and discussed. If you're certain you have all the answers already, it will disturb you. If you are honestly seeking to grow in understanding and faith, it will reward you.

Things Ministers Hear

Please excuse the language but I had to post this. I've heard all of these before...every single one of them.

:-)



On review, I haven't heard quite all of these. I'll leave you to figure out which ones don't apply.