OUR FOUNDATIONS HAVE BEEN DESTROYED

Who won the presidential election is not the most important thing. Instead, what is important is that the glue, the shared principles, have dissolved, leaving us with antagonism and alienation. Even the common ideas of truth and justice are now up-for-grabs. If it was merely a matter of deciding what is truth and right, we might be able to talk about it. However, our differences are even more fundamental. For instance, we cannot even agree if there even is such a thing as moral truth and justice. For instance, one Facebook respondent insisted:

·       “People having unswerving anything is often a very dangerous thing. It is do or die when viewed like that. It can lead to the generations long feuds that are now meaningless, but people carry them on just because their family did. Progress only happens if someone finally says 'enough!' Why is justice so important? There are almost always two sides to a story.”

I responded:

·       “Unswerving anything is often a very dangerous thing.” Indeed, and we often use our ideals as a cloak for self-righteousness and one-upsmanship, as you have suggested. However, there is a way to be unswerving in a good and necessary way. For example, I am unswerving in my dedication to my wife. I will not cheat on her or my children. Even if she gets Alzheimer’s, I am there for the long run. She understands this. Therefore, we enjoy trust. We do not have to worry that our spouse will go elsewhere to greener pastures. We are there for the long-run.

·       Yes, there are usually two sides to every story. However, this doesn’t make the two sides equal. As a probation officer, I had found that just about everyone proclaimed his own innocence. Yes, the system is broken. Almost everything is the result of a plea-bargain. How do we correct it? First we need an ideal to which to aspire. However, if justice can offer no ideal, then there can be no positive change, just decay.

·       To abandon ideals like love and justice is to also abandon our common language and the glue that is supposed to hold us together. It is also to abandon our home to termites and rot. It is also a refusal to defend what is worth defending. Why? Because it is all relative to the individual!

I have had many such discouraging discussions. It is as if people, especially the youth, have been taken capture by an alien, a deadly parasite.

For many of us, it's hard to believe that there are malevolent spirits out there who can afflict us and even take us captive. We're often mocked for our credulity in this matter. However, the Science Times (Sept. 6, F3) reported on the illuminating example of the parasitic hairworm. When the larva enters a grasshopper, it consumes the grasshopper into a skeleton, eating everything nonessential to its host's life, as it matures into a worm. 

The next stage is even more horrific. The worm must return to the water for its survival; so it secretes two proteins into the grasshopper's brain, thereby taking mental possession of it. The deranged host then commits suicide by jumping into the water at the behest of the worm, at which point the worm eats through the corpse to its watery freedom. Ugh!

What then is the answer? Loving dialogue is an answer but not a sufficient one. As our mental captivity is the result of spiritual influence, the answer must also be spiritual:

·       And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. (2 Timothy 2:24-26)

Should Religion be Subject to Criticism?

Atheist Greta Christina writes:

• Why should religion be treated differently from all other kinds of ideas? Why shouldn’t we criticize it, and make fun of it, and try to persuade people out of it, the way we do with every other kind of idea? (alternet.org, 4/29/2012)

Christina asks a good question. I think that religion should be open to criticism, especially in our pluralistic society. To not be open to criticism is to be marginalized. If we are willing to be criticized, then we have no right to criticize others and their beliefs. If we try to maintain this imbalance, we will inevitably self-segregate, and I fear that we have done this to some degree.

However, I am struck though that Christina would even ask such a question. The Bible has been the object of intense criticism for almost 300 years, and, somehow, we’ve survived it – and I trust that we will continue to survive.

The Judeo-Christian tradition has always been open to rationality and, therefore, criticism. Our God has always been willing to enter into dialogue with His critics. He states through Isaiah the Prophet:

• "Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

Perhaps He might not enter into dialogue according to our schedules, but He does promise answers to those who are seeking (James 1:5-8; Matthew 7:7-8). Job had demanded an audience with his Maker, and he finally was granted it (Job 40-42). Even “doubting Thomas” finally received the confirmation he had demanded.

However, not all religions are as open to reason and criticism. The Koran warns:

• [Surah 33:59-61] If the hypocrites, the sick of heart, and those who spread lies in the city [Medina] do not desist, We [Allah] shall arouse you [the Prophet Mohammad] against them, and then they will only be your neighbors in this city for a short while. They will be rejected wherever they are found, and then seized and killed.

I was a bit provoked by Christina’s phrase, “shouldn’t we criticize it, and make fun of it.” Certainly, she has that right. However, she later asserted:

• We need to draw a careful line between criticizing ideas and marginalizing people. We need to remember that people who disagree with us are still people, deserving of basic compassion and respect.

As Christians, we certainly agree with Christina. However, I began to wonder what Christina meant by the term “people.” Some are highly educated, while others aren’t. Some say wise things, while others are willfully malicious and cause great pain. Why should they all be treated with “basic compassion and respect?” From a pragmatic point of view, some should be assigned a negative value, and if they have negative worth, then there can be no basis for “compassion and respect.”

However, according to Biblical revelation, we are all created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27), and therefore are greatly valued and beloved by our Creator (John 3:16). This makes indiscriminate “compassion and respect” for all a Biblical virtue. However, I wondered if Christina realized that her “faith” had a Biblical basis and also that it couldn’t be supported by her materialistic thinking.

Christina then insists that religious belief is more dangerous than other kinds of beliefs:

• But if religious differences really are more likely to lead to bigotry, tribalism, violence, etc., doesn’t that show what a bad idea it is? If the ideas of religion are so poorly rooted in reality that there’s no way to resolve differences other than forming battle lines and screaming or shooting across them, doesn’t that strongly suggest that this is a truly crappy idea, and humanity should let go of it? Doesn’t that suggest that persuading people out of it is a really good thing to do?

Of course, if religion always breeds warfare, then Christina is correct, and we should “persuade people out of it.” However, she commits several fallacies:

1. She claims that religion is a “truly crappy idea.” However, there are many different religions. Christina doesn’t refer to “crappy ideas” but a “crappy idea,” as if they are all one and all “will lead to bigotry, tribalism, violence.”

2. She also fails to see that we all have our religions. Even the atheists have their religions. If we define religious belief as those beliefs that can’t be proved by science – and many use this definition – then we are all religious. We all have values/morals, which science can’t prove. We all have standards we use to place a value on people and things. In fact, some atheists are willing to acknowledge that they too have their religion. The First Humanist [Atheist] Manifesto (Paul Kurtz, 1933) reads, “Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view.”

3. Christina also erroneously assumes that all religion lacks an evidential basis. She claims that they are “so poorly rooted in reality that there’s no way to resolve differences.” However, are the moral claims of secular humanism any more “rooted in reality than the claims of other religions? Hardly!

Sadly, out of defensiveness, we have been prone to fight. However, this should serve as a call to better acquaint ourselves with the evidential basis of Christianity – the reasons to believe – rather than to fight or abandon our faith, as Christina would like to see happen.

Besides, it is remarkable that she hasn’t acknowledged the very obvious fact that the atheistic religions have a worse track-record. Atheistic Communists have murdered a hundred million according to many estimates.

We don’t ask for different treatment - we should be prepared for criticism and even welcome it. We just ask for fair treatment.  As secular humanism has gained control of the media and universities, we have seen the Christian faith marginalized, Christians routinely portrayed as idiots, and Christianity construed as a “crappy idea” at best and the source of “bigotry, tribalism, violence, etc,” at the worst. And this is all happening without meaningful access to the media to rebut these unfair characterizations.

It is therefore astonishing that Christina needs to make a case for the right to criticize religion. It’s like as Eskimo pleading for more snow.