Bill Maher Doesn't Have It Right?

There's a connection between magical thinking and not thinking clearly about practical issues...Sarah Palin is a Pentecostal. They believe the Holy Spirit can heal. So, why do you need health insurance?

--Bill Maher

Last night I watched the most recent episode of Bill Maher's Real Time program. One of his guests was acclaimed author and political blogger Andrew Sullivan. At one point, the two of them got into a heated argument about religion and politics. Maher claimed that too many Americans and American politicians are influenced by the "magical thinking" of Christianity and religion in general to solve our pressing domestic and international problems, and he implied that we'd be better off if we and our politicians rejected all religion and its nonsense.

Sullivan, a Roman Catholic, strongly disagreed. While he conceded that biblical fundamentalists like Sarah Palin might well be compromised by their simplistic religious beliefs, he argued that many religious people embrace much more sophisticated religious understandings that can be reconciled with the secular truths and approaches of the sciences, economics, politics, and so forth.

However, Maher vehemently disputed this. He argued that nonsense permeates all Christian beliefs and can't help but influence the way all Christians think about the world and try to solve its problems. At one point, he mockingly remarked to Sullivan: "You're saying God had a son, and he sent him on a suicide mission that he survived because he was really him." Sullivan bristled at this. "Don't describe my faith to me," he retorted. "You mean I don't have it right?" challenged Bill. "No, you don't have it right," Sullivan replied. Yet, the discussion continued without Sullivan ever elaborating on this.

It seems to me that Maher does have it right. Even "sophisticated" Christians believe Maher's characterization, whatever elaborate theological structures they build on this foundation and then, like Andrew Sullivan, try to fool us and themselves into believing that they don't do this. In other words, Christianity is based on nonsense.

The question is, does this, as Maher claims, inevitably taint the Christian's approach to all secular problems and concerns, or can wiser Christians do as Sullivan claims and realize "that there is a difference between heaven and earth. Some of us believe in that difference and can deal with the earth on secular terms and with our faith on religious terms."?

But doesn't one's "faith" concern both heaven and earth?

Christmas Reflections on Faith

"The adolescent is the one who wants to experience everything. The adult comes to realize that you can't experience everything. Mother Teresa never lost her faith, because she kept praying and going for spiritual direction. But she had to live by sheer faith--faith without a lot of consolation. But faith itself is consolation."

I obtained the quote above from an article in the National Post. The man who spoke those words was Fr. Eric Jensen, a Jesuit priest and author and the director of Loyola House in Guelph, Ontario. He and the article as a whole appear to argue that we all must and do have faith in something, because it's impossible to know everything and to live without taking certain things on faith that we don't know; therefore, the theist's faith in, say, the Immaculate Conception and all that follows from it is fundamentally no less well-founded than is a physicist's faith in the existence of unseen quarks or your or my faith that there will be a tomorrow.

I spent years arguing about Christianity with Christians on the Internet, and examples of it can be found in this blog. But not long ago I came to the conclusion that I needed to learn a lot more about what I was arguing against if I was going to make the most cogent arguments possible, and, furthermore, I needed to be more circumspect about my motives for indulging in these arguments.

Having said that, I sorely doubt the soundness of the Christian argument that faith in the Immaculate Conception, unique divinity, and salvific crucifixion and resurrection of the historical Jesus is equivalent to faith in quarks or the dawning of tomorrow, even though I'm not yet and may never be fully prepared to explain why. At the moment, I will only say that it seems to me that quarks and the anticipation of a probable future are more consistent with an intermingling of broad experience and reason than is belief in Jesus Christ. The notion that the Supreme Being of the Universe would choose to reveal Itself to us and redeem us through the historical Jesus and expect us to assent, with the skeptical minds that he gave us, to this revelation upon pain of eternal torment if we don't continues to strike me as ludicrously inconsistent with my experience and with any reasonable understanding of Reality. Thus, my faith is not in religious claims per se, but in my capacity to evaluate the plausibility of those claims.

Thus, Christmas doesn't have the special meaning for me that it presumably does for most Christians. In fact, aside from being grateful to have the day off from work, it has no more special meaning for me than it does for my Buddhist wife and her relatives with whom we'll be spending this evening. Perhaps it would if I had kids or a big family with whom I could meet and partake of secular festivities. But I don't, partly by choice and partly by necessity. My wife's at work as I write this, and I'm home alone. Yet, I'm still happy to be alive and to be able to sit here writing this on my 55th Christmas day.

The Discussion Continues

The discussion of Catholicism I've reported in previous entries has continued. Here is what I posted to the message board today:

You keep saying that when I express my misgivings about
Catholicism, I don't know what I'm talking about and am arguing
against straw men. You say that I need to spend at least several
months intensively studying and meditating on its key teachings before
I'm qualified to challenge them or the faith from which they issue. I
admit that I don't know reams of facts about the finer details of
Church teachings and history, but I don't concede that this makes the
arguments I've posed here against Catholicism unsound. Furthermore,
if these arguments are sound, I contend that they provide ample reason
not to waste my time engaging in the kind of intensive study of
Catholicism you say I should.

Let us take just one of my arguments for now. I argue that if the God
worshiped by the Catholic Church really existed and wanted us to know,
love, and serve him with total devotion in this life and join him for
blissful eternity instead of suffering apart from him for eternity in
the next, it's legitimate to assume that he would make sure we know
that he exists from the very outset instead of requiring us to seek
out what seems like a fairy tale to many of us; therefore, he probably
doesn't exist and there is no compelling reason to seek him out.

You counter-argue that God transcends such "simple logic" and that he
doesn't make us certain of his existence because that would compromise
our free will. I counter-counter argue that my faith that a real God
who wants us to embrace him would make us certain of his existence is
at least as sensible as your faith that he wouldn't, and I ask why we
still couldn't have the free will to obey or disobey God even if he
made us certain that he exists.

Now you can dismiss my argument, counter-counter argument, and
question as ignorant and "sophomoric," but I don't believe that they
are, and I think they provide ample justification in themselves for my
not spending months or years poring over scripture and Catholic
theology before I further challenge Catholicism in places like this
with this and many more arguments and questions. And if I'm wrong
about this, then surely a wannabe Jesuit like yourself can do a better
job of addressing my comments and questions than you have so far so
that I might begin to see enough of the light that I'll want to
investigate further to see more of it.

A Skull Full of Mush?

Earlier, I posted something about my discussion on a religious message board concerning my skepticism over the ambiguities of interpreting implausible scripture. I've continued to have a discussion with that gentleman, and the crux of his reply to my objections is that I need to do my "homework" in terms of open-mindedly studying scripture and the teachings of the Catholic Church before I engage in further straw man arguments against the Church in particular and Christianity in general.

This is how I recently responded to him:

I confess that I take it on faith that a real God would not
require us to "do our homework" in order to make clear sense of the
sacred texts that speak for him, or, if he did, he would first make us
indubitably aware of his existence and of the fact that the Bible,
among all so-called sacred texts, and the RCC, among all religious
institutions, are the only sacred text and religious institution that
bear his official seal of approval. This way we could do our homework
fully confident that our efforts, guided by the divine authority of
the RCC, would yield worthwhile results rather than, to paraphrase
Professor Kingsfield from "The Paper Chase," a skull full of useless
theological mush.

Why would someone do his homework or join the Church and take the
Church as his spiritual guide if he has strong and legitimate doubt
that the biblical God exists, much less that the Church and Bible
speak for him, and how could a supremely loving, just, and merciful
God require that someone do this or suffer eternal, excruciating
torment if he doesn't?

My faith tells me that he wouldn't. My faith tells me that such a God
does not exist and that any scripture or institution that teaches
otherwise is to be viewed with a healthy dose of profound skepticism.

What do you think?