All Labor Day weekend, while I should've been living in 1926 Los Angeles (as that's when and where the novel I'm trying to finish takes place), I couldn't quit returning to mental and gut responses to the flack about Obama's talk to students.
As a parent, an educator, and a believer in American principles, I've been sickened to read and hear of people using, for the sake of partisan politics, the President's attempt to encourage students to stay in school, set goals, believe in themselves and work hard.
My big daughter, a high school assistant principal, had to endure enraged phone calls from parents. A teacher at her school reported that his pastor asked parents to refuse to allow their children to view the video. My little daughter's school district declined to show the video until they had the chance to censor it "if appropriate."
Media commentators have referred to the speech as "indoctrination" and "mind control." Should we broaden the definitions of those terms to include the content of Mr. Obama's speech (the text of which is available at www.whitehouse.gov), hardly a television show, classroom lesson, news article, or advertisement, and certainly no pastor's sermon, or parent's guidance, could escape fitting those labels.
All weekend, I kept recalling these lines from "The Second Coming," a poetic masterpiece by W.B. Yeats:
"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
I don't believe those parents who made enraged phone calls are "the worst." But perhaps those who encouraged them to do so are, no matter if they are pastors.
Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" between world wars, when frightened people were being recruited into terrible movements, while pastors for the most part stood by merely observing and declining to risk losing church members by speaking hard truths.
My current most fervent prayer is that our pastors begin to prove themselves braver than those.
39 comments:
Many of us have had it for a very long time, and it hasn't made a bit of difference. Maybe that's where some of the frustration and bitterness come from.
I cannot avoid noting that without a single exception every one of the people screaming and raving in hopes they can deny decent health care and adequate insurance coverage to each and every citizen of this country (which did used to be great) is a Christian and claims to be ranting in God's name. There is not one secular humanist among them. Without exception, I would bet the moon, every "concerned parent" on the phone whining to Darcy is a card-carrying Christian and is "protecting" their children from the Great American Satan in the name of Jesus. You will not find one secular humanist among their number.
I find it ironic in the extreme that non-faith-based thinkers uniformly support what is obviously a Christian message, if a Christian message means that often ascribed to the man of history known as Jesus, while more often than not, professed members of the faithful act flagrantly in obvious opposition to that message. You don't find that both ironic and thought-provoking?
I sure do.
It is as if such faith so barricades the paths of reason that such folk couldn't think their way straight out of a paper bag.
Don,
Though I'm not willing to buy your stats that all ranting voices are from people who call themselves Christians, I'd be with you in guessing that most of them are.
And if you feel frustrated and bitter, imagine how frustrated those of us must feel who get branded as lunatics, hypocrites, morons or whatever, because we attempt to follow the same master those folks profess to follow.
My writing and teaching careers have pretty much been defined by an attempt to awaken people to their potential for thinking and reasoning and rejecting the willingness to believe whomever yells loudest or plays upon their guilt or fears.
I'll continue to do that, but I won't reject the master on account of his thoughtless, fearful, ranting followers.
A question comes to mind... why are so many of "the master's (?)" followers thoughtless, fearful, ranting, wackos, and so few not? Is it possible that so much dependance on faith as knowing, instead of rationality as knowing, closes the door to the possibility of critical thinking on any subject? I have an answer.
Don,
No doubt you have an answer.
People come to faith for a vast number of reasons. Many come because they need comforting answers. When their comfort gets threatened they may react in fearful ways.
Others come to faith because they look at the faith closely enough to understand that it opens both the spirit and the mind to realms rational inquiry isn't inclined to enter. These are less likely to become what you call wackos, what I'd prefer to call confused and misguided.
How many fall in one category and how many in the other, I won't judge, because I can't see into people's hearts.
But I will testify that many, many, many churchgoers are kind, thoughtful, compassionate people.
Should you doubt my words, I'd suggest you try attending a church and looking for the good in it and in what it does.
Ken, old friend, my brain just isn't wired to suspend its critical faculties and buy into any sort of belief system that cannot support evidentiary processes. In other words, I am not construed in a way to accept any sort of "blind faith," which is what all these superstitious beliefs entail. I have no idea what "the spirit" means. But I do understand how the mind works. The door you say faith opens is to all evidence in fact a door closed -- the door to critical thinking. I am best able to evaluate the evidence that my senses offer, and other sorts of "evidence" are bogus on the face of it. All the good you claim for those in churches is counterbalanced by the horrors performed by numberless others in the same buildings. I say again, the ONLY groups of people hell bent on making sure that the less fortunate among us are continued to be denied health care, the ONLY groups of people who are so exclusively in the grip of ignorance and fear in the US are those going to your churches, believing in that god, or at least one of those gods.
I also cannot see into people's "hearts," although I assume you mean minds, unless you have come to the conclusion that hearts have thoughts. What I can see, and what I can judge, is what people do.
If one needs a church to find human compassion, then one is indeed weak-willed. I have no trouble living a compassionate life at all, and I don't need superstitions to sustain it
This is an irreconcilable split between us.
Gosh there are so many things I want to address here but as a former student of Ken’s (from a few decades ago), a lifelong student of religion and someone who is not Christian, I think it is extremely facile to blame Christianity for what is wrong in American civil and political discourse. Irrationality is not exclusive to any one faith or school of thought, and history is also littered with reasonable decisions that were not humane.
From reading Ken’s blog I come away with a sense of someone who has a very thoughtful, extremely considered, and at times, almost Kierkegaardian sense of personal faith that informs everything he thinks is worthwhile and meaningful in his life. I get the sense that Ken’s faith is not simply an identity but a duty. It is the kind of faith that is work…hard work. Christianity is a big umbrella and I think it is a little too easy to lump Ken’s faith in with those who self apply the term Christian uncritically.
I guess what this conversation stirred up for me is the question of why in the US is there such a deep undercurrent of distrust, bordering on hatred, for heterodox opinions and ideas. That undercurrent is a useful tool for all sorts of nefarious purposes. If I remember correctly, Ken’s mother was also a teacher, so you have three generations of educators in the Kuhlken family that I know of. I find that impressive and when it comes to confronting the banality of evil, those are the kind of people I would want fighting for my side.
You've missed my point.
Ken and I have been friends since about 1983 or 84, and my comments about the characteristics of the box believers in superstitions put themselves in is not, from my side, a slap at Ken, specifically -- although I do admit that his aspect of his life totally mystifies me.
While this morning I do not have time to launch a philosophical debate about the clash between faith and reason, I would like to clarify the point I have been struggling to make on Ken's blog.
That is, anyone paying attention and giving thoughtful consideration to the reality of what people do (as opposed to what people claim) it is not at all difficult to make the case that once people get into the box of "faith as knowing" and close the lid, they do open themselves up to the possibility, even the likelihood, that heterodoxical opinions and ideas lead to producing minds easily capable of acting in such a way that Ken deplores in the post that begins this string of comments. Those actions by large groups of the faithful, actions that are in fact supported by the notions of their faith and a result of closing the lid against critical thinking, are what produces in the rest of us (actually we are comparatively few when weighed against the faithful) the feelings of distrust, even fear and trembling that you accuse us of having.
Getting into that box, the refusal to any longer apply fundamental critical arguments, even against the faith, is what shuts down thinking to a point where the people Ken rails against are made. That is my point.
PS: Why people who accept "faith as knowing" give up critical thinking, at least when it comes to what faith gives them, can be recognized in this paraphrase from Miguel de Unamuno's fine book, The Tragic Sense of Life --
Faith builds the house of life, while the icy blasts of reason batter it down. Reason will always destroy faith.
While I agree that the majority of Christians are Republicans, I have seen evidence of a growing population of more liberal Christians, including myself. ( I believe, as a WTF response to the war in Iraq) To assume that one group of people has mastered an avoidance of criticial thinking to me suggests an avoidance of critical thinking itself. Come to Austin, Tx, where people who love God believe in the compassionate approach to politics. Know that Ken's influence is deep, as I am a former student and am a teacher myself. The Kuhlken's are examples of intelligent Christians. Unless you are more interested in protecting your stereotype, you can find others.
You see, here's the problem. We can't even have this discussion because we come at it from different frameworks of thinking, we use language differently. We have different ideas of what constitutes intellectual inquiry.
The whole idea of a god, any version of god that isn't so ambiguous as to be trivialized into silliness, makes no sense to me when approached from any rationalist position of thinking. Faith is nothing more than believing the unbelievable. I don't make that leap. There is probably a good reason the bulk of these old superstitions are unbelievable, but also why they persist as an aspect of human life. Whether this notion is called Apollo, Allah, Thor, or any of the other names history offers, it remains the case that all these notions of gods, the superstitions surrounding them, that have not one shred of an ability to be verified. Not in any way that can possibly make objective, verifiable sense.
Were I to claim that god is an omniscient, omnipotent green worm on Saturn, and I worship and pray to that, how can you prove I'm wrong? If you tell me you believe that god is the old gentlemen we see in church paintings, living in a pearly house with a golden street running along the front, who has the power to decide everything -- who lives, who dies, who prospers, who suffers, which leaf falls from which tree when and which butterfly flitters across the Tigris day after tomorrow ... what can I say to that? Or you my green worm.
People who believe in one or another of the various gods available are assigning an infinite degree of truthfulness to something they cannot at any level and to any degree show anyone with a brain that it exists in any way at all.
This is not about Ken, although I will certainly always be mystified that he believes things like this, it is about what happens to the vast majority of human beings who buy into these tales and then KNOW what this idea, this god, wants them to do, wants them to think, how they should act, who they should hate and who they should kill in his or her or its name.
If I heard voices telling me what to believe, how to think, how I should act, how I am to judge right and wrong, I think, if I was aware at all, that I would need treatment and medication.
The people Ken has "had it" with, are these people, and they are driven exclusively by their belief in these superstitions, and the manipulation of their minds by those who speak for one or another of the gods -- that being any priest, any minister, any mullah, any whatever they call themselves.
This is argued far more extensively and persuasively by a number of brilliant, extensively well educated authors who have taken on the dangers posed to us all by religion, far better than I am capable of or willing to take the time to (try to) do. If you really want to open the lid of that box for a glimpse outside, you could try reading Hitchens' "God is not Great," or Dennett's "Breaking the Spell," or Dawkins' "The God Illusion," or Harris' "The End of Faith."
Those of us who believe in the rational powers of the human mind to seek out and make sense of facts about the world, including myself and those mentioned above, have read and studied the central texts that drive religious superstitions ... how many of the superstitious are capable of taking a chance on what lies outside the box?
This is not about Ken. We are old friends and I care for him and respect his immense talent. It is about the horrors of religious beliefs.
I don’t think I missed the point. I understand your frame of reference very well and we could have that of faith v reason discussion and reach the same impasse that has stood ever since Martin Luther proclaimed faith as something antithetical to reason. I get it. I will add though in reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, Johnathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and anything by John Calvin that these men of faith also understood a Tragic sense of Life.
I guess the far more interesting question to me is how the American right has co-oped (or for that matter created) a notion of Christianity and uses this as one of its many tools to sell its brand to the American public. I do make a big distinction between the sort of faith seeking understanding that Ken writes about in his blog and the religion peddled by the American conservative party. I find it to be a mostly a case of symbolism over substance and it seems to work wonders in getting people to vote, time and again, against their own interests. Whatever you do don’t forget to wear your faith on your sleeve and a flag in your lapel or there will be hell to pay.
We live in a Wag the Dog world and things like struggles with faith, reason and even truth matter less and less. Look at Sarah Palin, she was selected not because of her expertise or competency but because she could so Natty Bumppo in drag. Since American identity is in large part ideological, those who wish to exploit it will insist upon an orthodoxy. I happen to live in the UK currently, and while each country it has many idiosyncrasies, and most definitely the UK is no exception, it would be unthinkable to brand someone un-British because of the way they thought or what they believed in or how they voted, let alone have something akin to The House Committee on Un-American Activities. I have to wonder why, as Americans, we allow our political preferences to merge with our national identity in a way that others do not?
My question then would be, what makes some people (and it is a massively large group of people, and all over the world, not just in the US) so susceptible to this kind of ideological manipulation while others (a far smaller group, sadly) are immune?
I cannot answer my own question, but do have an idea about it, and refer back to my comment about accepting a set of beliefs that result in the believer being in an intellectual box, the lid closed.
Once one goes for the notion that there is a reality of some kind that is both unbelievable and indescribable, that is beyond both reasoned analysis and criticism, one climbs into the box and closes the lid.
I refer to Karl Popper's theory of negation, which, intensely summarized (but I hope not too diluted), is that knowledge and intellect progress on facts that can be negated, that always contain the possibility of being shown wrong. That is why we are always testing our knowledge.
So, accepting a set of "facts" that have no possibility of being negated, of being shown wrong -- which is religious belief in a nutshell -- is the antithesis of knowing, of intellectual inquiry, and once done, leads the believer into a corner (or a box), which opens the door (pardon the mixed metaphor) to ideological manipulation.
It ought to be easy to see what people who have already fallen for religious superstition would be more susceptible to this than people who depend on reasoned, thoughtful inquiry for decision-making.
I hope this provides at least one sort of answer to the question you raise here.
Ken, I have linked to this post on my blog. Just wanted to let you know.
"They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember the horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them. Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: 'Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!'"
I think the Grand Inquisitor knew quite well why most people allow themselves to be manipulated.
Dallas Willard, a USC philosophy professor and Christian author and lecturer, a smart fellow, writes a lot about discipleship, or the benefits of attempting to live like Christ and his disciples did by following certain disciplines.
He's a popular writer, yet firmly implied in his work is the recognition that discipleship is for leaders in the church, who will then lead their followers in ways that can change the world for the better.
In agreement with Willard and the Grand Inquisitor, I maintain that it's useless blaming the folks for being followers, because they are going to follow something, whether it be religion, popular science, the cartoon version of some political philosophy, or whatever. So it's the leaders who need to be addressed, and in this case awakened to or reminded of the fact that the right wing/Christian symbiosis has gotten way out of hand, and threatens to get ever more so, and it's up to them to disavow it.
To your point, and it is an interesting one to consider, I will add that it has always seemed to be that leadership implies some degree of power, and power is a heady drug. And the other problem is that there is nothing implicit in a person reaching a leadership position having any degree of intelligence, education, or reasoning ability beyond those being lead, and often times it is less. One of the oddities of the flocks need to follow. Anything or anyone.
Don,
I certainly agree that leaders aren't always the wisest. In fact, it seems the primary qualifications are salesmanship and skill in public speaking, neither of which guarantee intelligence or integrity. And, I suspect, many leaders are themselves essentially followers.
Which makes the role of leaders who have wisdom and integrity even more crucial. If they exhibit the courage to lead people toward charity and compassion, away from the loudmouths and sloganeers and those who twist the truth to promote selfish agendas, some leaders with less wisdom will follow.
Well, Ken, I suspect that the kind of leaders you dream about are as rare ethical pundits on Fox.
Wouldn't it be better if we grew out of the need to be lead around? Wouldn't critical, independent thinking be a wiser way to live?
What did you think of my blog rant?
And what happened to your trip way down south?
Ken,
Here are John Piper's comments about speech.
http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1989_ive_read_the_presidents_speech_amazing/
and previously here
http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1986_i_hope_my_daughter_hears_the_presidents_speech/
I think he's got a good perspective on the speech.
As for my part, hopefully, I'll be brave!
Ed
Don,
I left a comment on your blog. Swell rant, and no doubt cathartic.
Ken
Ed,
Thanks. I subscribed to the Piper blog.
Ken
Okay, Ken, I went to the Rev. Piper blog, read the post mentioned, and then went through a selection of the comments attached to it. Scary stuff. Or silly. I can never make up my mind between scary and silly, when it comes to religion.
In the first place, from the point of view of a person that is pretty much convinced that all notions of all gods are nothing more than superstitious leftovers that someday humans will outgrow, a blog devoted to "desiring god" is not likely to come across as sensible.
But the blind insensitivity appearing in the first lines put me off right away. It's one of the obvious things that tends to make rational people wary of all god's mouthpieces.
"Given that he is not directing them to Christ, which would be the best counsel, his advice is a wonderful gift of common grace from God to the students of our land."
Is this proposing that the President of the United States make a public speech in a public educational institution in which he "directs (students) to Christ?"
Does the reverend suppose that every student in every public school is a Christian? Are there not Jews -- how about directing them to Christ? Are there not Muslims? Are there not Animists and Buddhists and a sprinkling of atheists and agnostics?
Obama's advice is a gift from god? Huh? How is that? Unless of course every single thing is thought to be a gift from god, even the gift of a pile of dog shit on the sidewalk, leukemia in a child, and George Bush.
No, Ken. I can wrap my mind around stuff like this. It is too far out on the extreme edges of any hopeful sense of reality for me to go there.
I cannot believe any intelligent person can take a web site like this seriously. That some apparently do is indeed scary ... not silly.
Ken and company, I am sure you have plenty of time for surfing religious sites like reverend Piper, I would like to suggest you watch this video conversation (two videos because it is long), and then I would like to discuss with you what you think of it. It is long, so find a time when you can relax with a beer, put your feet up, tune out the mundane daily adventures, and see if you can wrap your mind around this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DKhc1pcDFM&feature=player_embedded
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaeJf-Yia3A&feature=player_embedded
Don
Don,
Piper is a follower and minister of Christ, who called his followers to evangelize. Of course he'd prefer that whenever possible, all communication be directed toward that end.
I didn't read the comments, as my time is limited. But suppose all the comments are from wackos, to slam him for the comments doesn't make any sense to me.
Should I retreat from this discussion back to 1926, it's partly for the sake of my novel and partly because the discussion keeps circling back to the premise that Christians are nuts for believing, ergo , , ,
I wholeheartedly endorse your digression to 1926 for the sake of your novel, and always will.
But when you find yourself with an hour or so without being in your novel, and away from your myriad responsibilities, have a look at the video links I have provided. I know you are a fan of listening to massively intelligent, supremely well educated, literate men having a conversation and a few drinks around a table -- we used to do that, remember?
Then let's talk about what's in the videos.
Don,
First chance I get, after I meet this novel deadline, I'll try to watch this video.
Meantime, would you like me to recommend some books.
Ken
Sure. I have already read, much of it twice, the main source for Christians, the bible. I have also read I think all of Karen Armstrong's analyses of main religions and key religious figures. I am not interested in preachers, who tend to be self-serving in the extreme. I do prefer books and articles by obviously intelligent, well-educated, thoughtful authors on these subjects, which defines all the ones I read from the devil's bookshelf. So send me a list and I'll get to work. I would be happy to find one reasonable, sensible, and rational argument to explain the phenomena of religious belief. I have been on this quest for all of my thinking life, and would love to find even one reasonable answer. So far, not even close.
I should hasten to add, in case these are some of the works you have in mind, that I have already read --
all of Kierkegaard
most of Tillich, Buber, and Neibur
all of Augustine and Aquinas
all of Unamuo
a good deal of Gabriel Marcel
too much of Boethius and St. Anselm
most of William James on this subject
most of C. S. Lewis on this subject
a valiant but failed attempt to read the Koran
and probably some more I could remember with a it more thought.
I am curious to see your suggestions.
Don,
As the reading of all those good folks apparently hasn't cracked your noggin (although I suspect that much of the reading might belong to decades back when you majored in philosophy and might well be returned to with a mature, humbler perspective and ever more open mind), maybe fiction's the ticket.
How about some rereading of Dostoyevski, say Crime and Punishment, in which a character strangely reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens gets taken back a step, or The Brothers K, especially the parts toward the end where the question gets asked, if there is no God, who do we have to thank?
Or if you're weary of Dostoyevski and perhaps haven't lately read The Power and the Glory, you might want to look at the world through the eyes of a truly Christlike character.
Of course I expect a reply to the effect that fiction is one thing, reason and rationality another.
To which I'll go ahead and respond that reason and rationality are the boundaries you set, none of mine.
All good choices, and I have already read all of them, multiple times in some cases, and yes, some old, some revisited, some recently. Also Turgenev's and Checkov's stories. While we were in DC, I got on a Graham Greene jag and read all his novels again, are am still in the process (Power and Glory last year) and am on The Honorary Consul now. A Burnt Out Case remains my favorite.
Ken, I am a moderately educated person and have been a literate reader for a ways approaching 50 years, and have even written a few moderately literate books myself.
Besides, I have been in pursuit of the riddle of the hold of religious superstitions on the human mind since I first began to notice it about 50 years ago. At first I was just fascinated by something that seemed to me so odd, but as I matured and came to more fully understand how much power, how much destructive energy religion held, I tried more systematically to understand it. I have been at this for five decades. This is not a new toy.
After you have seen that video, we will have interesting things to discuss, I am sure.
Answer to this particular stupid question, among many stupid questions in The Brothers K, is -- your own self dufus. What would make one think otherwise. It is the root source of existentialism. Thank yourself, blame yourself, be yourself. The propensity for the human mind to go off the deep end trying to assuage rather legitimate fears will never cease to amaze me, and even after 50 years of diligent searching, studying, reading, and hoping, it still comes out the same -- we love our superstitions, regardless of how senseless they may be. Ken, what happened to you while I wasn't paying close attention?
Don,
Lot's has happened, and through it all, I've wised up.
To prevent further name calling, I'll sign off this discussion.
What let's consider doing is, since we're both writers of narrative, we sit down for some months and tell the stories that got us to where we are. After we've read each others,
maybe we can discuss legitimately. Until then, in my view, we're arguing out of ignorance.
I'll leave that to the talk shows.
Sure. I understand. It happens all the time.
But my narrative already exists and continues, my story, my experiences, are the in the content of all my novels. The most direct of those is the one that will come out next. But Possessed by Shadows and The Common Bond, which both came out within the last five years, are pretty fair indicators of who I am and why I am and what concerns me.
Any new narrative I might write would be more or less a rehashing of what I have already written, both past and the two future books.
We'll save any further conversation until we can have it face to face in a cafe.
I feel slightly bad that I did not respond to a good conversation in a timely matter. I have had a family illness that has taken up my time. I would like to say I thank you for the intelligent responses in this blog. You don’t get that often and it is nice and rare when you do.
I was trained in rational philosophy, so much so that my area of expertise was Immanuel Kant. You can think with him you can think against him but you can not think without him.
But…I also had Freud. The irrational is not something you can eradicate in any of us, let alone my thought.
I studied philosophy and theology as a student. I had the good fourteen to have a historian thrown in because he thought me to ask questions in terms of context and not just by my philosophical bias.
So has good as your responses have been why do you think we Americans merge the political and the personal in the way they do?
Ken, I just posted my last response but as a non-believer I was really pumped by your Hitchens thingy. I can't stand that guy. Not only is he a zealot he is as pompous as hell.
Sorry about the fourteen. I have big ass fingers and spelling was never my strong suite but still...
Anabelle,
Thanks a million for interposing your wisdom between Don and me, else who knows how out of control at least one of us might've become.
Yeah, it's a shame when somebody who writes as well as Hitchens gets so full of himself the stuff becomes largely unreadable.
Your question about why do Americans merge the political and the personal, I'll take a stab at once my brain recovers from the restraint a discussion with Don requires and from rereading Day of the Locust.
Wisdom?
You two can pat each other on the back all you like, but the facts remain facts. And one of these facts is that Mr. Hitchens is capable of arguing your myths into shreds.
Try listening to those videos before you take off half-cocked.
Ken, what happened to you?
Ken, I have read your books, and hundreds more with similar themes. After you listen to those two videos, then we can compare notes. Until then, I am the only one fairly armed.
Oh, and I will follow Kahlil Gibran's wise advise and withdraw from such faux arguments.
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