APRIL FOOLS’! Well, you knew that was coming, right? Now I’m going to enrich that predictably adolescent gag with a tidbit of extra trivia. “April Fools'” is called “Pesce d’aprile” in Italy – “April Fish.” I can only imagine it has something to do with this:
There’s a sucker born every minute. Save yourself; be skeptical.
Robert Ingersoll was one of the most eloquent voices for reason the English language has ever known. His words ring as true as ever today:
The government of God has been tried. It was tried in Palestine several thousand years ago, and the God of the Jews was a monster of cruelty and ignorance, and the people governed by this God lost their nationality. Theocracy was tried through the Middle Ages. God was the Governor — the pope was his agent, and every priest and bishop and cardinal was armed with credentials from the Most High — and the result was that the noblest and best were in prisons, the greatest and grandest perished at the stake. The result was that vices were crowned with honor, and virtues whipped naked through the streets. The result was that hypocrisy swayed the sceptre of authority, while honesty languished in the dungeons of the Inquisition. […]
If God is allowed in the Constitution, man must abdicate. There is no room for both. If the people of the great Republic become superstitious enough and ignorant enough to put God in the Constitution of the United States, the experiment of self-government will have failed, and the great and splendid declaration that “all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” will have been denied, and in its place will be found this: All power comes from God; priests are his agents, the people are their slaves. […]
We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins — they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day — of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago. […]
These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars — neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience – – and for them all, man is indebted to man.
Read the rest here.
Over at WashPo Susan Jacoby couldn’t resist having another laugh at the expense of the Catholic Church. But this is like sniggering at the shmendrick who drops his ice cream on the sidewalk: it’s too easy. Here’s Jacoby:
Let’s see. One in four American-born Catholics have left the church during the past 20 years. Parish schools are being closed throughout the country because many dioceses are strapped for cash after settlements with victims of priestly pedophilia. Seminaries are empty and nuns (those who are left) are in open rebellion against a male hierarchy that will not even consider ordaining women as priests. I guess it’s logical that the church needs more exorcists.
Talk about desperate. If I were the pope I’d be trying to make my church a bit more modern, a bit more humanistic and a bit more, well…serious. Exorcism is sheer buffoonery, like clown shoes. Did you ever see the pope walk out in public wearing something so silly as big, floppy clown shoes? Well, I guess you have.
Jacoby nails moderate religious belief as well:
The problem with “moderate” religion–as distinct from fundamentalists creeds that insist on the literal truth of ancient collections of fantasies–is that there is really no difference between “reasonable” and “unreasonable” supernatural beliefs. When you think about it, it is really no more absurd to believe that Satan can make us froth at the mouth than it is to believe that ashes will one day be reassembled and restored to life. Any belief for which there is no evidence apart from one’s own longings and fears is unreasonable. That is why I am an atheist.
She’s right, too. Why is belief in the recomposition of a decomposed body any less outlandish than belief in devils, demons and dybbuks? It’s all nonsense, and that’s the point. All religions are full of such beliefs, right down to the central one about God. If you think I’m being unfair (and I know a lot of people who hold on to God as a pre-teen boy holds on to his teddy bears) I’d like to know what you think the difference is.
And that’s one reason I, too, am an atheist.
While I was busy dealing with the first two weeks of fatherhood, I was also trying to follow the bizzarre “debate” over the GZM, or Ground Zero Mosque. A friend, whom I disagree with at times on this blog, put it succinctly: opposition to the Cordoba House is “like arguing that a black person should have realized they’d drum up ‘bad feelings’ by moving into a white neighborhood that ‘wasn’t ready’ for integration.” Now imagine a Muslim family moving in next door to the family of one of the victims (perhaps themselves Muslims); could that be opposed on the same grounds, that their feelings might be hurt? If you were robbed by a Haitian or a Filipino, can prejudice against Haitians and Filipinos be justified on grounds of hurt feelings if one of them moves in next door? There is no logical basis for such assumptions.
My modest proposal is to build, on the site of Ground Zero (or a part of it), the world’s first God Museum. That seems to me a fair way to include everyone on equal grounds and educate people as well on the dangers of religious fanaticism. It would be like the Museum of Natural History, only it would treat religion and its endless array of gods as the stuff of history and anthropology, not as eternal truth. This would be a good way to contrast houses of worship: a museum of worship. Before you get all uppity about your God and His truth, and start trying to block all the other gods and their truths, check out the thousands of True Religions that have fallen into disuse. I can only imagine this would be a humbling experience for any day trip to Manhattan, perhaps coupled with a show at the Hayden Planetarium. It would be perfectly tuned to the pluralistic, secular America we all want to be proud of, but so often makes us blush in shame.
Ron Rosenbaum has been getting his share of verbal spanking for the past week from the secret atheist police. They are always out to silence the opposition, even if the opposition is pretty much on their side. Atheists, the new Radical Agnostics say, will settle for nothing less than absolute unbelief. Anything veering from the path of the Truth (there is no God) is suspect and therefore mincemeat for the Atheist Inquisition, especially if you’re guzzling Templeton gelt. It’s only a matter of time before they set up the gallows in your hometown.
What is this radical agnosticism Rosenbaum has proposed, anyway? It is the assertion that WE DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING. It paints science as the pretension to a TOE – or Theory of Everything – and atheists as the henchmen of its church. Agnostics, feeling left out of the NYT bestseller list in the past seven years, want their share now, too. But how can you be radically undecided? This reminds me of one of those hollow political slogans you see at election time in Italy, Estremo Centro. Get it? Extreme Center. 
Enough fighting! We have the answer. We’re all just a bunch of ignoramuses. Scientists are no better than theologians. Life is a mystery. We’re all hypocrites. Even me. Even you.
What ever happened to the ancient, respectable art of making an argument and backing it up? Or is that just too fundamentalist for these troubled times?
Many people I know like to define themselves as Buddhists. Apparently, is has become the most chic religion in the west, partly because it is not a religion in the monotheistic sense. As a moniker, it seems highly compatible with a personal quest for spirituality and tolerance for others. “I’m a Buddhist” is shorthand for “Your thing is cool with me, as long as my thing is cool with you.” Somehow, Buddhism is challenging secular humanism as the choice ideology of the non-religious.
Despite the much-heralded rise in traditional religious belief, our monotheisms are going through a tough phase. For one thing, they can no longer accomodate the worship of nonviolence. Read the Bible, read the Koran. Read the Iliad, for that matter. Humanity has, until fairly recently, always flaunted and celebrated its ability to shed blood. It meant power, wealth and posterity. And–for the record–it appears that animals do it, too.
But are we seeing Buddhism as it is, or as we wish it was? Robert D. Kaplan has a recent piece in The Atlantic about his travels in post-bellum Sri Lanka, which sheds some light on our conceptions:
Buddhism holds an exalted place in the half-informed Western mind. Whereas Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism are each associated, in addition to their thought, with a rich material culture and a defended territory, Buddhism, despite its great monuments and architectural tradition throughout the Far East, is somehow considered purer, more abstract, and almost dematerialized: the most peaceful, austere, and uncorrupted of faiths, even as it appeals to the deeply aesthetic among us. Hollywood stars seeking to find themselves—famously Richard Gere—become Buddhists, not, say, orthodox Jews.
Well, they may not be deciding on orthodox Judaism, but many of them are drawn to things like Kabbalah for its promise of “spirituality.” The less daring go for a new-agey romp in Oprahland with The Secret. Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out called Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, and I look forward to thumbing through it.
Are we just looking for a bright-side which doesn’t exist outside of our own minds? Think Susan Boyle. Don’t think. Think again.
Marc Di Martino 