Parents sacrifice 4-yr-old girl to become rich

The couple, identified as Srikrishna and Ramdevi, were told by a “tantrik” (exorcist)that they would become rich if they sacrificed their daughter, according to police sources here.

Acting on the advice of a “tantrik”, a “havana kund”(a pit in which the fire is lit and yajna is performed), was prepared in the courtyard of the couple for the rituals late on Monday night.

The parents then put their daughter Kanni into the pit amid chanting of “mantra” and lit the fire. The girl, who was also mercillessely beaten, was half buried in the pit.

The parents had stuffed a piece of cloth in the mouth of the little girl so that her cries could not be heard by any one in the village, sources said.

No words.

(via)

Some of the arguments he uses are quite weak, being based on a combination of scripture and some fairly torturous logical leaps:

“Love is purity, he tells them. The Arabic word for love used in the Koran is related to the word for seed. No plant can grow without a seed – and so no pious act can grow without love. If love is the seed of every act of piety, then how can an act of hate like terrorism please God?”

On the other hand, he also delivers a message which I think is important:

“Get integrated into British society. It’s not against your religion. Has the word Pakistan been revealed in the Koran? If you can be Pakistani and Muslim, why can you not be Muslim and British?”

I wish this message was being repeated loudly in Mosques around the country. The question, of course, is whether it really isn’t or whether naysayers are simply drowning it out. Back to Dr Tahir ul-Qadri:

“Extremists and terrorists are in the minority in the Muslim ummah [brotherhood]. But they have always been vocal. The majority have always been against extremism and terrorism, but unfortunately they have always been silent. The Islamic solution is integration.”

There are some important points there which I would contend.

Firstly, are the majority really against terrorism? Drawing parallels with the Northern Ireland conflict, I know several people on the Loyalist (i.e. Protestant) side who never spoke out in favour of terrorism or sectarian violence against Republicans (i.e. Catholics), but whose silence on the subject had the unpleasant air of tacit approval. Are British Muslims any different, I wonder?

Secondly, the assertion that “The Islamic solution is integration”. This I cannot agree with. The evidence I see in news from around the world suggests to me that Islam has all the characteristics of what Iain M Banks calls a “hegemonising swarm” – it conquers new territory and replicates itself, leaving only copies of itself behind. Of course, I have to accept that most of what I see comes to me through a tightly controlled media filter with a hefty dose of bias – Stories about Abu Hamza are never likely to make many Westerners happy.

None of that, however, should take away from Dr Tahir ul-Qadri’s good intentions. It is refreshing to see a high-profile, well-respected Imam who actually speaks against cultural and religious isolationism and terrorism. It’s also encouraging to read that his lectures are well attended by young, British Muslims.

“PRIMARY school students are being taught that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together and that there is fossil evidence to prove it.

Fundamentalist Christians are hijacking Religious Instruction (RI) classes in Queensland despite education experts saying Creationism and attempts to convert children to Christianity have no place in state schools.

Students have been told Noah collected dinosaur eggs to bring on the Ark, and Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs because they were under a protective spell.”

Source story.

Wow. Just…. Wow.

Some observations are shallow, like noting the garish colors of the temple. One culture’s garish may be another culture’s favorite palate, though I imagine that the bright colors would startle those people who think of Buddhism as a religion in earth tones.

But I think the real point to be made is that Tibetan Buddhism shares a lot of the same problems as middle American Christianity. Sects and sectarianism, for example:

I excitedly lined up an interview with one of the monks and asked if he’s looking forward to the day when the Dalai Lama returns from exile in northern India. He patiently told me—dumb Westerner that I am—that he doesn’t worship the Dalai Lama, because he is a member of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism while the Dalai Lama is head of the Gelug school. Then there’s the Kagyu school and the Sakya school—making four in total—which have hot-headed disagreements and have even come to blows in recent years over which deities should be worshipped and which should not.

I don’t know why so many westerners idealize Buddhism so much. Maybe it’s because the bits that reach us are the good stuff. Maybe it’s just the magic of distance. But if the people involved are still human, then the religion will probably suffer the same problems that we see in more familiar religions.

“Answering questions from MPs on the Commons education select committee on Wednesday, Mr Gove [Michael Gove, UK Education Secretary] said: “One of the most striking things that I read recently was a thought from Richard Dawkins that he might want to take advantage of our education legislation to open a new school, which was set up on an explicitly atheist basis.”

It seems sometimes that the US and the UK, despite many cultural similarities [read: We're adopting big chunks of yours] have the exact opposite system of government when it comes to religion. To clarify: Ours is filled with pomp, tradition and religious ceremony and is even headed by the titular head of the Church of England – but in actual fact, religion has very little influence over us. We largely ignore it. On the other hand, the USA is explicitly secular by law, and yet you can’t seem to keep religion out of US politics with a crowbar.

Much as there are many things I really dislike about my own nation… Things like this make me happy and just a little bit smug :-)

The Livingston Parish School Board looks like it may be first in line to test this hypothesis. According to The Advocate:

During the board’s meeting Thursday, several board members expressed an interest in the teaching of creationism, an alternative to the study of the theory of evolution, in Livingston Parish public school classrooms.

[...]

Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

While there is some mention of the ACLU, there is no sign that the board is thinking about the legal ramifications of this. Some of the arguments that were made are just odd, for example:

Martin, noting that discipline of young people is constantly becoming more of a challenge for parents and teachers, agreed: “Maybe it’s time that we look at this.”

I’m guessing that this is the standard “We need to teach them Christianity so they’ll be moral” argument, though it may just be a poorly written section of the article.

Marie Claire is not a magazine known for its hard hitting journalism. The article frames the story as an examination of Islam: religion of peace? or violence? Fortunately, The Last Psychiatrist does a better job of opening it up and looking at it. Even better, LP does a good job of getting to the heart of what “honor killings” mean in the culture:

Why didn’t he kill her when she when she first started talking to boys? Why didn’t he kill her when she started wearing American clothes at age 4?

The answer is: they lived in America for 16 years, where that behavior doesn’t shame him. He may not like it, but there is no one who would look down on him here. Shame is exposure, and as long as all these behaviors stay in Phoenix, no one knows what “s/he’s” done.

It all fell apart because he sent her to Iraq. When he committed to the all-in, hail mary plan of sending his daughter to Iraq to get married, where she either rejected five men as unsuitable(!) or worse, got married to one of them and then went on cavorting with men in the U.S. (!!!!)…

… never mind what Allah thinks, now everyone in Iraq knows what kind of a man he is.

For the record, America has had its own honor cultures, like in the Old South. The South Carolina politician James Henry Hammond said, “Reputation is everything. Everything with me depends upon the estimation in which I am held.” That’s as good a statement of what it means to live in an honor culture as any I’ve heard.

Living in an honor culture means being very sensitive to being “discussed,” to borrow a southern euphemism. You don’t want the neighbors talking about how you can’t handle your daughter. This can be serious business, since such things will affect your status in the society. But Noor‘s father was living in American society, and doesn’t have that excuse. Again, here’s LP with the diagnosis:

He doesn’t care that she’s Americanized or even an adulteress. He cares that people are laughing at him.

This is narcissism, and here I do not hesitate to spell it out explicitly. The obvious is that he sees her only as an extension of himself, only as she impacts his own existence and not as an independent entity. He’s not better than her, she’s just not a fully formed character, she’s an extra. But the more telling and scary part of the narcissism is that he thinks that by killing her, he has not merely stopped her but fixed things, erased his shame, as if it never happened. As if the people back in Iraq aren’t still snickering, as if human nature and reality are subservient to the magical thinking of a man who believes a Jeep can alter what God already saw.

(I like John Cole’s summary better: “Hitchens may have cancer, but he can still kick Braveheart’s ass.”)

We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.

[...]

Yet I still saw a report the other day about a fan site where the members were just beginning to ask, “What’s with him?” Why is there this reluctance to call something by its right name? It’s not as if Gibson was issuing a cry for help. On the contrary, what he is issuing is the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry—and sexual hypocrisy—that stretches from the Crusades through the Inquisition to the “concordats” between the church and Hitler and Mussolini. Yet he’s still reporting for work. When will Hollywood, and the wider society, finally decide to shun and spurn him utterly, both for what he is and for what he represents?

My guess is that Hitchens thinks that this in another case of the deference shown to religion; many people are unwilling to blame the schismatic sect of Gibson’s father for instilling Gibson with his paranoia, anti-semitism and racism.

But part of me is wondering if this isn’t another case of the “Polanski effect.” Is it maybe that people are unwilling to call out the “genius” behind the Passion of Christ for being a racist, the same way they’re unwilling to just admit that Polanski is a rapist on the run from justice? And if so, why?

Cracked.com has gotten ambitious and published a list of 10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On. And … eh, it’s Cracked.com. Not bad – I’d say he’s usually half right on both sides – but don’t expect anything deep.

For example, they do the classic comparison of theistic villains and Stalin:

Yeah, yeah, I know the Christians are saying that the guy who fights an unjust or needless war is violating God’s law, and thus isn’t a good Christian. Meanwhile, the atheists are saying that Stalin was merely bloodthirsty, separate and apart from his disbelief in a higher power. Both believe, then, that it is a corruption of their belief system that allows unjust slaughter to happen.

The problem is that atheism is not a belief system, and it has no moral dimension. I’m perfectly happy saying that atheists are just as likely to be horrible people as believers. But you can’t corrupt something as simple as atheism: you either hold a belief in a deity or not.

Atheism is clearly no guard against bad behavior, but no one – well, no one sane – has argued that it is.

And some of is is mystifying, for example:

Atheists, even if you reject the idea of God completely and claim to live according only to the cold logic of the physical sciences, you all still live as if the absolute morality of some magical lawgiver were true.

Do what, now?

Sorry, that’s the southern expression of male bafflement. Have I actually claimed to live only by “cold logic”? I’ve got a microwave, I could warm it up. And the idea of dedicating oneself to living within the physical sciences is just … odd. “With the FSM as my witness, I shall always obey the laws of thermodynamics!” … yeah.

But the most painful part is the confusion of categories implied by his statement “absolute morality.” In this, and later paragraphs, he seems to be saying that if you don’t have God, you don’t have a basis for declaring anything morally good or bad. Thousands of years of thought into the matter of morality and ethics just … gone. You need a God or you got nothing.

Bishop Broadhurst, who is the chairman of the Forward in Faith organisation, declined to say whether he would leave the Church of England, because he said he needed time to talk to the priests under his pastoral care.

“My organisation has 1,000 priests and about 8,000 lay people in it. None of those priests are happy,” he said.

“Now people have to decide whether they will knuckle under – if they do, that is not a very happy situation for them or the Church – or whether they’ll go, or whether they’ll just defy it, and I can see that happening with many people.”

Part of me finds it hard to suppress a little soupçon of glee over this; as an atheist it confirms some of my opinions of religion in general so very nicely – particularly that some people simply use religion as a cloak for bigotry and that their bigotry is far more important to them than any faith they might profess. Most of me, however, finds it deeply sad that the laws of my country still permit exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation on religious grounds, effectively allowing organisations like the CofE to remain decades behind the rest of society in their attitudes towards equality and fairness.

Background story from the BBC.
Main story from the BBC.

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

[...]

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

The article focuses on what this means for democracy and the idea that an educated population will govern itself wisely. It points out that frequently it is those misinformed people who are most passionate about what they fail to understand. The author actually makes reference to an article in the Onion to explain the problem, Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be.

But it’s hard for me to get too worked up about this; after all, humans have always been this way, and American democracy has survived for over 200 years. But it doesn’t bode well for our attempts to promote science and reason. The more we push, the more pushback we can expect.

I questioned a very nice man yesterday who explained to me that he was recently saved. He had been told the story of God and Jesus as a child and never questioned the story. From his discussions about his early days, there were no books but the Bible, no music except what was in church and on the radio. There was no extended education and he joined the Navy during the Korean War. He is a very America-loving individual with strong family values. This man is now in his mid seventies, happily married, with many friends in the community. He is far more popular in our area than I am because he has accepted God and a promised spiritual life after he dies. I envy his assured life and future. He admitted that joining the armed forces may be the only choice for today’s American youth. Fighting and killing for America is a guaranteed job, insurance, retirement and a way to see the world.

This is a typical American man who is totally secure in his choices. I tried to locate a spark of interest in a deeper look at human values and there is nothing to spark. When I asked him about faith versus fact, he threw the old bromide at me that we should never discuss religion and politics. I asked him why and the conversation ended.

We can stop billboards for God and put up our own ads for our own truths but we cannot and should not expect a single conversion from a brain and mind who is totally content with what they learned as children.

These folks assume that Humanists have never read the Bible. If we had, we would believe as they do. They have no knowledge of the history of the various churches and how they used terrorism to sell God and Jesus. The history of the Inquisitions in Europe has never held an interest to them and Science is based on myths from outer space.

How do we approach this attitude? How successful were we as parents to stop the indoctrination of the promise of Paradise? Why do we need to?

If we take a look at what has triggered the massive wars and slaughter of people, it will take us back to “my God is good, and yours is bad.” We have several generations of Americans who believe that Jews and Catholics are the enemy. We search for the words of our founders for the truth and the interpretation of their words brought on a deadly civil war in America. It was the Christians churches who wanted to slaughter people of color including our American Indians. When this was prohibited by our Constitution, a war on homosexuals was started and innocent gays were tortured and killed. We have a man running for office today who wants the freedom to ban certain people from being served in public restaurants. Who is behind this reversal of civil rights? The Christians.

We are heading back to the dark ages. With our Christian-American values blasted all over the world, it is no wonder Islam wants us dead. We take pride in our Crusades to kill off others who never heard of Jesus. The history of the Missionaries in South and Central America is a tragedy of annihilation of the masses. It all starts when a head of the household teaches his children to massacre “those other people.” Many of our last three generations were not taught human values. They were given the information that they were chosen by God as Christians to work for the “end of times.”

In America it is now to the point of giving a litmus test to all our candidates before we elect them to guarantee that they know who the enemy is. It has been America’s dirty little secret since the end of WW2. This attitude has eased up somewhat but not nearly enough to claim that we Americans are free.

How do we become free? We can start with education.

The State of Texas has decided that the academics in their schools must include a Christian God. The fear is that their children may catch a touch of freedom from those sinners in California is being challenged by the Texas Supreme Court and should be a problem for the U.S. Supreme Court before the Union is split over freedom of religion.

America is heading for another religious war waged against non-Christians and the kick off was seen in the Republican Primary of 2008. All the Candidates had to expose their lack of belief in Evolution. The question was offensive and the answer was a tragedy.

The experiment in the development of a free nation has failed. The first generations of Americans were fabulous and the following generations were the developers of scientific discoveries that would lead the world in many subjects. We went from the horse and buggy to men walking on the moon.

A similar growth was seen in the Middle East where we all recognized the growth of math and science and in Europe where art and music brought on our culture. What happened?

The Catholics hit Europe and music, art, architecture all fell under the rules of the Pope; in the Middle East Mohammad took over the science and development of the Muslims. In America the Christians began to promote prohibitions of freedom of religion and the development stopped except in the development of killing and torture weapons. Many writers have exposed this destruction of the human mind that will destroy our planet.

When will it stop? If one takes a look at which God out numbers the others, the Christians will win in anticipation of Armageddon. This is not a new fight as we have seen what Christian soldiers can do to enemy gods. It is not enough to kill others, but to demolish depictions of their Gods.

I’m sick with worry that so few humans can see where all this fighting can lead. When Rome took over the British Isles, it was total destruction and sent millions into hunger and agony. Has anyone read about this horror? Crown heads of England massacred millions of humans when the Pope tried to issue laws on the Tudors. Even the art of the Renaissance was in jeopardy. Slaughter of humans hit a new high under the various Popes who tried to change humans into clones of the saints. These books are covered in dust in many libraries where people have no interest in human values.

It is long past the time when all humans must talk about religion and politics. What is it in their minds that cannot explain what and why they believe as they do? I understand blind faith but not blind killing of innocent people. I understand people wanting to sell Jesus to their children but how can they explain the consequences for killing innocents? The answer is that in the minds of Christians there are no innocent people.

What do we do?

My hope for humanity is that the next 3 generations can see through the hypocrisy of the churches, mosques and temples. I believe that this will erupt in America and the rest of the world will join us in dividing our species into groups who will fight for the end of civilization. Winner gets into heaven.

The problem is that there is no place left for Humanists. I will never take up a weapon to kill another human. Of course I am at the end of my life and my kids are survival trained to protect themselves. The human species has lost by default and I can only hope someone has written down all this emotional war mongering based on superstition and the supernatural. We ignored the great Aristotle and the other great masters of logic and reason. We ignored the brilliant mind of Shakespeare who exposed the hypocrisy of his day. We ignored the emotional expression of love given to us by Verdi, Puccini and Mozart. We look at the Roman statuary in the Vatican and wonder why someone would hack off the sex organs of those glorious men.

This action should prove to all humans that our Christian leaders are sexually stimulated by looking at Greek and Roman Porn. It is nothing but poorly programmed brains instilled from childhood on human beings. It is no wonder our Priests cannot be trusted.

The future of Humanism will never be accepted in America. The whole concept of individual freedoms for all humans is being attacked by all phases in all religions.

I will do what my friend did yesterday and simply shrug and walk away.

* * *

[The following is a series of extracts from letters to the "Kleicomolo," (October 1916 and April 1917). a round-robin correspondence group that included Lovecraft, Rheinhart Kleiner, Ira A. Cole ("Mr. Co") and Maurice W. Moe ("Mr. Mo"). Lovecraft argues that the standard Christian conception of God is full of implausibilities and paradoxes, but goes on to say that widespread disbelief would probably be harmful to society. Lovecraft also engages in a vigorous defense of the pursuit of “absolute truth.”

Editor's note: These selections make for a long blog post. For the sake of readability, I have separated the solid block of text into sections and paragraphs. The section headings are my own. -Vorjack]

God’s Domain

Pullquote: “The whole structure of our chieftain’s orthodox Christianity is built upon the relation of Deity with the one crawling atom we call man; and no theologian can sustain his religion unless he can prove that this speck in infinity is the central point of all creation.”

Concerning the ultimates of time and space, I fear no philosopher would be quite satisfied with Mr. Mo’s light rejection of considerations beyond our own terrestrial globe. The whole structure of our chieftain’s orthodox Christianity is built upon the relation of Deity with the one crawling atom we call man; and no theologian can sustain his religion unless he can prove that this speck in infinity is the central point of all creation. Mr. Mo leaves us in perplexity whether his God is absolutely omnipotent, or whether he is a local deity, presiding over this particular little world or universe as some minor hamadryad presides over some particular tree or grove.

The latter conception, of a God who is confined in action to our visible universe, leaves us to speculate as to what God or forces may preside over the rest of creation—or if we adhere to the commandment of Scripture, and believe only in one God, we must assume that the rest of space is godless; that no personal loving father-deity is there to bless his sons and subjects. But then, if this be so, why did the personal all-wise parent select this one particular little universe wherein to exercise his beneficence? I fear that all theism consists mostly of reasoning in circles, and guessing or inventing what we do not know.

If God is omnipotent, then why did he pick out this one little period and world for his experiment with mankind? Or if he is local, then why did he select this locality, when he had an infinity of universes and an infinity of eras to choose from? And why should the fundamental tenets of theology hold him to be all-pervasive? These are monstrous uncomfortable questions for a pious man to answer, and yet the orthodox clergy continue to assert a complete understanding of all these things, brushing inquiry aside either by sophistry and mysticism, or by evasion and sanctified horror.

Orthodoxy

Pullquote: “The word “Christianity” becomes noble when applied to the veneration of a wonderfully good man and moral teacher, but it grows undignified when applied to a system of white magic based on the supernatural.”

Why must men of sense thus delude themselves with notions of personal and “loving” gods, spirits, and demons? All this sort of thing is good enough for the rabble, but why should rational brains be tormented with such gibberish? It is perfectly true that the conception of a personal force is a vast help in managing the millions, and in giving them much hope and happiness that truth does not convey. Viewing the question in that light, I am a friend of the church, and would never seek to disturb or diminish its influence among those who are able to swallow its doctrines.

I even wish I could believe them myself—it would be so comfortable to know that some day I shall sprout wings and go up to Heaven for a talk with Alexander Pope and Sir Isaac Newton! But, provided a man cannot believe in orthodoxy, why grate on his sensibilities by demanding that he believe? We cannot do what we cannot—at least this has been the general idea since the abolishment of the Popish Inquisition.

It is only the forcible propagation of conventional Christianity that makes the agnostic so bitter toward the church. He knows that all the doctrines cannot possibly be true, but he would view them with toleration if he were asked merely to let them alone for the benefit of the masses whom they can help and succour. The agnostic becomes bitter only when someone presumes to affront his reason by demanding that he believe the impossible, under penalty of censure and ostracism.

The word “Christianity” becomes noble when applied to the veneration of a wonderfully good man and moral teacher, but it grows undignified when applied to a system of white magic based on the supernatural. Christ probably believed himself a true Messiah, since the tendencies of the times might well inculcate such a notion in anyone of his qualities. Whether his mind was strictly normal or not is out of the question. Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts. It is well known that psychologists group religious phenomena with other and less divine disturbances of the brain and nervous system.

Whether, as the novel of Mr. Moore implies, Christ was alive after his nominal execution; or whether the whole Resurrection legend is a myth, is immaterial. Very little reliable testimony could come from so remote a province as Judaea at that time. For the sensitive mind to harass itself over ancient and mediaeval conceptions, to strain over such questions as how many angels can stand on the point of a needle, (this was actually debated in the Middle Ages) or to wear itself to fragments trying to accept that which it can never accept, is as cruel and reprehensible as to deprive the masses of their spiritual and orthodox solace.

Absolute Truth

Pullquote: “..can thinking men ever be satisfied with a truth short of the ultimate and absolute? Dangerous and hurtful as may be this particular brand of truth, mankind has a shockingly perverse way of chasing after it!”

I think that Mr. Mo really has the same basic conception of creation that I have, save that his long grounded orthodoxy forbids him to express or even to think consciously the stark, bald facts. Mr. Mo’s great argument for orthodoxy is that it accomplishes vast good; an argument which neither affirms nor denies its foundation in absolute truth. Many false beliefs have wrought incalculable good—the observed effects are the effects of the belief; not of the possible truth or untruth that may lie behind the belief. Because a certain preacher has helped reform a drunkard, we have no grounds for acclaiming him as vice-regent of some other person or conscious spirit for whose existence we have no other evidence.

Mr. Mo’s summing up of his own case may be adopted without change as the summing up of my case. “In the face of these phenomena, what does the nature of absolute, ultimate truth matter to you and me? Christianity pure and undefiled is the truth to this world, for it works!” That is, Christianity is “truth to this world”. All men may perfectly agree when they admit the existence of more than one kind of truth. Christianity is not necessarily logical or actual truth, but it is “terrestrial truth”, and that is enough for the majority. Let us be thankful if anything can govern such an unruly race as man.

My point of issue with Mr. Mo is, can thinking men ever be satisfied with a truth short of the ultimate and absolute? Dangerous and hurtful as may be this particular brand of truth, mankind has a shockingly perverse way of chasing after it! An arch-pessimist like myself would naturally wish to avoid the true kind of truth, yet it has the same fascination for me that it had for Copernicus and Galileo! But this is the fault of the age. Why are philosophical studies permitted if their result is so disastrous? We may say of true truth what Mr. Pope said of Vice:

“But seen too oft, familiar with its face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace!”

[. . .]

Value of Orthodoxy

Pullquote: “Truth is of no practical value to mankind save as it affects terrestrial phenomena, hence the discoveries of science should be concealed or glossed over wherever they conflict with orthodoxy.”

To conclude this weighty discourse, I shall state my attitude toward orthodox theism and Christianity in my own cold-blooded words. I truly believe that Mr. Mo’s opinion, if spoken with equal directness, would be precisely the same:

(1) Orthodox Christianity, by playing upon the emotions of man, is able to accomplish wonders toward keeping him in order and relieving his mind. It can frighten or cajole him away from evil more effectively than could reason. Because of its hypnotic and auto-hypnotic power, this faith should be preserved as long as it can be propped up with arguments or diffused through rhetoric.

It is a crime publicly to attack the church, since upon that institution rests more than half of the responsibility for maintaining the existing social order. On this account, it is well to refrain from open utterances concerning religion, and at times even to pretend belief. Truth is of no practical value to mankind save as it affects terrestrial phenomena, hence the discoveries of science should be concealed or glossed over wherever they conflict with orthodoxy.

It is wisest to invent an artificial sort of “truth” which conforms to the well-being of man. It will never do us any good to know the dimensions of space or the aeons of time, so let us forget all about the universe and the infinity outside the universe. The notion of personal, affectionate Godhead works best with the masses, so let us gently adapt what we know, to what we ought to think. Anything is justifiable in the interests of humanity.

Reality

Pullquote: “We know that yesterday in time our universe and race did not exist. We have no reason for assuming that it will remain in existence save for another moment of eternity.”

(2) As to naked reality—we only know that we are a speck in the engulfing vortices of infinity and eternity. We know that all creation obeys certain laws or principles whose source we know not, but which apparently result from the interaction of material particles, or modes of motion. It is utter quibbling to differentiate betwixt Nature, and a Deity immanent in nature. The distinction is purely one of words.

We know that yesterday in time our universe and race did not exist. We have no reason for assuming that it will remain in existence save for another moment of eternity. Of our relation to all creation we can never know anything whatsoever. All is immensity and chaos. But, since all this knowledge of our limitations cannot possibly be of any value to us, it is better to ignore it in our daily conduct of life. It is dangerous, and therefore, should not be spread broadcast. But every man has a right to think what he thinks and to believe what he believes.

I am interested in Mr. Co’s researches concerning the occult and the supernatural; particularly so since I have encountered several reviews of poor Oliver Lodge’s book “Raymond”—a work which I confess I have not perused at first hand. It may be well to state that Sir Oliver, as well as Sir William Crookes, have received little faith since they turned their attention to [the] fallacy-ridden realm of the supernatural. Their speculations in this direction may well be taken as evidences of freakishness—and in Sir William’s case, of senility; since he is now eighty-five years of age.

It is Lodge, however, who is under consideration, and he cannot plead old age, since he was born in 1851. Of his reported phenomena, and of other cases of a like nature, it is safest to say that insufficient evidence throws them out of court. Disturbed mentality, auto-suggestion, and deliberate charlatanry will be found at the base of most alleged spiritualistic and telepathic manifestations. They most generally occur amongst the ignorant, or amongst those who ardently wish to have them occur.

Skepticism and Imagination

Pullquote: “The very vagueness of human reason, and the very subjectivity of human thought, should warn the student to pay scant attention to the fleeting fancies of the mind. Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.”

Many of the most plausible cases resolve themselves into the most deliberate imposture upon impartial and authentick investigation. More than one “broad-minded” dupe of spiritualism felt the throes of sheepishness when the exceedingly clever Eusapia Palladino was exposed as a fraud; yet each victim might have known that such magic as she exhibited was impossible according to the recognised principles of Nature. Open-mindedness becomes a fault when it fails to take into account the fundamental probabilities of things.

I abhor the sickly attitude of a certain soft-headed class of investigators, who so fear the imputation of bigotry, that they will make fools of themselves by wasting serious thought over obvious cheats and impostors. The very vagueness of human reason, and the very subjectivity of human thought, should warn the student to pay scant attention to the fleeting fancies of the mind. Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.

I have encountered many instances of children who, without conscious falsification, confuse the real with the unreal, and relate in good faith experiences through which they have not passed. It is reasonable to assume that many apparent instances of supernatural manifestations were devised subconsciously in the brains of the narrators. Atavism hath implanted many dark fancies in man; it needs but a little relaxation of intellectualism to bring up the old ghosts of the past, and revive that intense faith, or tendency to have faith, in the supernatural, which originally grew out of our ancestors’ attempts to explain nature.

The progress of science will eventually, I believe, enunciate at least two laws, which will forever put an end to spiritualism amongst the educated and even the half-educated. They are:

(1) Life, animal and vegetable, including human life, is a mode of motion which ceases absolutely upon the death of the body containing it.

(2) The future, so far as organic beings are concerned, can never be predicted, since individual and unfathomable caprice has power to direct events into any of the innumerable channels possible under the natural law.

[. . .]

Effects of Science on Religion

Pullquote: “Not that science positively refutes religion—it merely makes religion seem [so] monstrously improbable that a large majority of men can no longer believe in it.”

As the Mo-Lo theological controversy narrows down to fewer points of difference, it may be correspondingly given a smaller and smaller space in each successive epistle. I perceive that my erudite opponent challenges my assumption that scientific progress must be “concealed or glossed over” in order to ensure the preservation of religious belief. He declares that the church is willing to admit all the discoveries of science, reconciling them to some increasingly vague theistical plan—that is, to use plainer language, altering religion to suit science, and making of God a plastic character to be remodelled whenever obvious truth disproves one of His original legendary attributes.

This I am willing to admit; but I am not equally willing to abandon the basic idea of my statement, that it will be found necessary in the end to minimise science in order to preserve faith. Not every man is as happily incurious as Mr. Mo; and for many persons, a mere knowledge of the approximate dimensions of the visible universe is enough to destroy forever the notion of a personal godhead whose whole care is expended upon puny mankind, and whose only genuine and original Messiah was dispatched to save the insignificant vermin, or men, who inhabit this one relatively microscopic globe. Not that science positively refutes religion—it merely makes religion seem [so] monstrously improbable that a large majority of men can no longer believe in it.

And to go a step further—sooner or later the relation betwixt organic and inorganic life will be discovered. It will be clearly demonstrated how carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements combine to form substances possessing vital energy. Probably the chemist or biologist will be able to create in his laboratory some very primitive sort of animal or vegetable organism. This will be the death knell of superstition and theology alike; and unless it be sacredly concealed, the church will cease to exist save amongst the very ignorant. But of course, since this has not yet come to pass, I am aware that it forms no truly legitimate part of my case against orthodoxy. However—the probability is strong!

When Mr. Mo charges me with inconsistency in asking whether thinking men can ever be satisfied with make-shift terrestrial truth as opposed to stark absolute fact, I fear he misapprehends my meaning. I did not ask, can a thinking man be so satisfied; my question relating to thinking men as a class—to the majority of the scientists and philosophers of today and tomorrow. Surely Mr. Mo does not deem me so ignorant as not to know that many men of vast culture and attainments are devoutly orthodox.

Indeed, there is much in pure humanitarian culture, as opposed to rigid scientific training, which encourages absorption in the affairs of mankind, and more or less indifference to the unfathomed abysses of star-strown space that yawn interminably about this terrestrial grain of dust. Perhaps I am a barbarian at heart—sometimes I believe I am—to be so anxious to know what is, and not what ought to be. I cannot attach so much importance to mere mankind as I should—the “Homo sum” sort of enthusiasm never appealed greatly to me.⁶ I am not very proud of being an human being; in fact, I distinctly dislike the species in many ways. I can readily conceive of beings vastly superior in every respect. But to be orthodox, one should have less imagination!

Pragmatism and Absolute Truth

Pullquote: “The pages of history are red with the blood of those who have died for their intellectual convictions. Truth-hunger is a hunger just as real as food-hunger—it is equally strong if less explicable;”

Mr. Mo’s frank admission that he is satisfied with the empirical “truth” which results from an evasion of astronomical facts, is in a way surprising to me; yet after reflection I can understand the mental attitude, the direct opposite of my own, which enables him to make such a statement. He is to some extent, consciously or unconsciously, a disciple of that not unknown Oxford don, Prof. Schiller, concerning whom an article lately appeared in THE INDEPENDENT. This philosopher, like our Appletonian comrade, has a rather elastic notion of Truth, giving that supposedly inflexible abstraction a curiously adaptable nature. In a word, he is a pragmatist of extreme type.

Until I read of Prof. Schiller, I was unable to understand how such theories could be held; but I now perceive that there is a not inconsiderable school of pragmatists, who hold to similar ideas. This controversy has taught me many things, foremost among them being my own comparative ignorance of formal philosophy and its subdivisions. I intend to give some attention to this subject in future, in an endeavour to comprehend views which seem to me now too absurd for credence on the part of thinkers. I have a notion that I shall become ardently interested in this subject, for I am a born speculator. (In the academic, not the financial sense!)

Mr. Mo’s final statement: “All your argument has not shown me why it (absolute truth) interests you,” brings to my mind an interesting train of thought. Is there, then, no genuineness in that instinct of truth-seeking which we commonly suppose to reside in the human mind? Does nothing matter which has no direct bearing on our daily life? Were the Papists right in torturing men who believed in the Copernican system? Verily, it matters little to man whether the earth revolve around the sun, or the sun around the earth! No one has really shewn why this matter should interest us! It is sufficient if we eat, sleep, and worship!

But with all due respect to Mr. Mo, I must reiterate my belief in the necessity of truth to the human mind. [M]y argument does not need to show why truth interests me […] The fact remains that it does interest me, as it has interested thousands of other men. The pages of history are red with the blood of those who have died for their intellectual convictions. Truth-hunger is a hunger just as real as food-hunger—it is equally strong if less explicable; indeed, who can assign a direct reason for any of the obscurer desires and aspirations of man? It is all according to the plan of Nature.

In flouting the absolute truth because of its lack of application of the affairs of mankind, Mr. Mo reminds me of the Florentine astronomer Sizzi, who thus argued against the existence of Jupiter’s satellites: “Moreover”, quoth this sage in the course of his argument, “the satellites are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore can exert no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless,and therefore do not exist!” ‘Twas vastly inconsiderate of Galileo to see these troublesome orbs, after they had been conclusively demonstrated not to exist at all! How complex is the mortal brain!

I had forgotten about those terrible words until a friend reminded me of it. We made that pact together in high school, when we were young evangelicals with a “zeal for Christ.” We were bible-toting, Jesus-shirt wearing, tract-giving, church-obsessed dumbasses. Like all dumbasses, we believed what we were told without skepticism. And, as extremists, we would go great lengths to win the approval of God and men.

Our friendly Baptist mega-church taught that homosexuality was an abominable sin. People were not born gay — it was a lifestyle choice that was a result of their rebellion and hatred of God. It was “disgusting” and “unnatural.”

We were told that “the homos” were trying to turn Christian children gay by brainwashing them at public school functions. They were child molesters and should never be left alone with children —and to let them adopt would be the worst thing imaginable.

“God doesn’t hate the sinner,” we would say, “He only hates the sin.” But the distinction didn’t really matter, and God would send them to hell unless they repented of their evil homosexual ways.

We swallowed this whole. We never even thought to question it. The Bible said it, our leaders taught it, our parents believed it, and the congregation followed it.

My hatred of homosexuality finally subsided when I began questioning the Bible — the ultimate source of my hatred. Without the Bible, there was no reason to hate homosexuality. It was a natural desire, and though I didn’t have that desire myself, I wouldn’t want to be persecuted if I did. It didn’t hurt anyone and in fact made people happy. It was not rational to oppose it.

Now both my friend and I are both vocal supporters of gay rights — and that means other people just as crazy as us can turn around too.

Not so long ago, fundamentalists opposed equal rights for blacks and fought hard for segregation. Jerry Falwell once said, “The true Negro does not want integration. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race.”

But in the end, they came around. The moral progress of secular values prevailed and they were forced to change. Unfortunately their bigotry remained and they targeted gays instead — but that will change too. Our moral progress continues and soon it will be as natural for some people to be gay as it is to be black or white.

And maybe this time the fundamentalists will turn their attention to persecuting real evils, instead of their fellow human beings.

The change to Christianity left the basic outlines of this practice intact. Gods were replaced by saints who were associated with different cities or regions. The stories, rituals and miracles continued as each city tried to elevate their saints over their neighbors.

It was particularly good for the city to claim some great disciple as having visited, established a church and, if possible, died and been buried in the region. Mark was said to have gone to Egypt and Thomas to India, while Rome could claim both Peter and Paul. Not only did this elevate the city, but gave that region’s church some claim to extra authority among it peers.

Not satisfied with that, some folks created more elaborate stories. The grail myths of Britain could probably fit into this genre. The most famous, and maybe most extreme, is the modern myth that the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks are descended from Jesus through Mary Magdalene. All this has been called “biblical fanfic.”

But of course the ultimate would be to have some claim over Jesus himself. Joesph Smith did it, and there are certain old stories that have Jesus visiting Britain as a young man. That’s the context for this story from the BBC News:

Tourists flock to ‘Jesus’s tomb’ in Kashmir

A belief that Jesus survived the crucifixion and spent his remaining years in Kashmir has led to a run-down shrine in Srinagar making it firmly onto the must-visit-in India tourist trail.

In the backstreets of downtown Srinagar is an old building known as the Rozabal shrine.

[...]

Officially, the tomb is the burial site of Youza Asaph, a medieval Muslim preacher – but a growing number of people believe that it is in fact the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.

They believe that Jesus survived the crucifixion almost 2,000 Easters ago, and went to live out his days in Kashmir.