Stein Ignores Facts to Promote Religion

Stein

A dear friend posted an essay by Ben Stein, the one-time entertainment attorney turned laconic actor.  It demands a response.

Stein started by saying that, although he is Jewish, he doesn’t mind saying Merry Christmas or seeing holiday-related items.  He is hardly alone. Most people don’t mind Christmas ornaments.  They are hard to miss anyway.  Christmas lights and decorations abound; Christmas music fills the airwaves and stores.

In our neighborhood, some homes are already decorated with Christmas lights just days before Thanksgiving.

Most of us shrug off such outward demonstrations of religious belief.  The objection people have to Christmas – a concern endorsed by the U.S. courts and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution – has to do with the placement of religious symbols on public land.  Many people rightly feel that public money should not be used to support someone else’s religious teachings. 

The Santa Monica creche

That’s why there’s a court case involving Santa Monica right now.  The city annually puts up a Christmas religious scene.  After recent objections, officials allowed other religious groups to put up decorations and signs.  However, they objected to atheists doing it.  The idea that what’s fair for one is fair for all doesn’t have any impact in Santa Monica or with other Christians who think that they can present their religious ideas but no one else can.

Santa Monica joins a long list of communities learning that taxpayers object to tax dollars being spent on crèches and other religion-related items. I would imagine Mr. Stein might object if the holiday in question was Ramadan, for example, and his tax dollars were being used to support the activities of that Islamic holiday.

He then insisted that, as a result of the absence of such religious artifacts, the country is now atheistic.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The last survey I saw on the subject this year showed 92 percent of Americans believe in God.  Besides, the Constitution specifically prohibits Congress from passing laws that infringe on religion.  This idea developed because members of one Christian sect wanted to impose their religious views on others.  The choice then was one or none.  Having seen what religious wars did to decimate Europe, our forefathers wisely opted for none.  Later Supreme Courts then created the concept of separation of Church and State. 

Nothing in that can possible be construed as atheistic.  God is enshrined on our coins and in our Pledge of Allegiance, for example.

Besides, there’s no connection between belief in God and the public support of religious beliefs.  There are more atheists and more people unaffiliated with any religion, however, which is all the more reason to stop wasting money to support any faith.

Equally, there’s no limit on worshiping God.  Anyone can, anywhere, including public facilities.  Prayer is not banned in school, contrary to repeated claims.  What’s banned is forced prayer that everyone is obligated to participate in.  As a result, schools have clubs formed by people of various denominations.  They meet, discuss their religious views, pray and hold activities.  They just can’t require others to join them.

Such rules are absolutely necessary in a polyglot society.  Sadly, historically, any monotheistic religion that gains control of society immediately dictates religious views.  No monotheistic religion is exempt.  As a result, the framers of the Constitution prevented that from happening here.

Damage from Sandy

Mr. Stein then claimed that the impact of restrictions on religion has forced God “to punish” people by sending such natural disasters as Hurricane Katrina.  Does he mean all natural events are signs of God’s anger?  What did the devout Catholics of Haiti do to deserve such torment?  How about the Moslems in the Philippines, the followers of Confucius in China? They have suffered horrifically from earthquakes, tsunamis and/or floods.  The followers of the Shinto faith in Japan who endured devastating earthquakes and tsunamis?   How about Hurricane Sandy, which severely damaged parts of New Jersey and New York?  What did the people there do so terrible as to receive God’s wrath?  What about Hurricane Bill?  That one caused no damage.  God had second thoughts?

Was the Holocaust God’s punishment?  If so, then the Nazis must have been His messengers.  Forgive me for finding that especially absurd.

Moreover, when we do start acknowledging God’s wrath?  After all, natural disasters have been around before mankind existed.  They are easily traceable in the rocks that make up our planet.  Was God sending a warning to dinosaurs or to the creatures that preceded them?

Not everyone in the Northeast was badly affected by Sandy.  Was that a warning to only some of the residents?  Residents not hurt by the storm must have been good, right?

The absurdity is obvious.

Natural events happen.  As population increases, hurricanes will affect more people; so will tsunamis, tornadoes, volcanoes and the various other natural disasters the Earth produces on a regular basis and has through history.  That doesn’t require God.

O'Hare

Then Mr. Stein blamed the late prominent atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair for lack of prayer in school.  He forgot a few people, like the Supreme Court, who sided with her viewpoint.  He also noted slyly that O’Hair was murdered, as if, I suppose, that renders God’s judgment.  Bertrand Russell, a philosopher and an atheist, lived to be 98.  Was that God’s judgment, too?  Isolated incidents do not serve as proof of anything.  Besides, as noted earlier, prayer has not been removed from school; forced prayer supporting a single faith has.  There is a vast difference.

Dr. Spock

Then, he blamed the behavior of today’s children on the late Dr. Benjamin Spock.  He is hardly unique.  Dr. Spock is a popular and convenient target. However, all Dr. Spock did is offer a proposal of a way to raise children.  He was not the first one to do so (or the last), but his timing, coming as it did during the Baby Boom, was excellent.  He may have been right, partially right or wrong.  Regardless, his ideas struck a chord.

It is ridiculous to blame him for the way children are.  Just for starters, complaints about the younger generation can be found in literature for more than 2000 years.  Plato was very angry at the children of his day, for example.  The reality is that generations change.  Mr. Stein’s generation went through the cauldron of the Depression and World War II.  That will affect anyone. 

The next generation – the one Dr. Spock addressed -- was determined that their children would not suffer.  That worked until the Viet Nam war, which was widely protested in the same way previous wars were protested.  There were anti-war riots in New York City during the Civil War, for example.  Such events change people. 

The next generation, growing up in abundance and opportunity, naturally was different than Mr. Stein’s.  They knew nothing of war protests and Depressions.  They didn’t have the same experiences or the same ideas.  How could they be the same?  Their values are different, too.  That’s not better or worse; that’s simply different.  There’s no point railing against them, because the next generation will be different, too.

Finally, Mr. Stein insisted that comments about God are not acceptable while anti-religious jokes are.  I suspect some of that comes from commentaries like his.  Nevertheless, he’s also wrong.  There are literally millions of pages on the internet devoted to God and religion. As a religious historian, I can think of no time in history where more people had access to more religious material and ideas.

Pope John Paul II

The problem for Mr. Stein is that scientific study is also available.  That means, we now have a good grasp on how the universe, Earth and life appeared.  It all can be done without a God.  Even the Roman Catholic Church now acknowledges that: Pope John Paul II accepted evolution, conceding Adam and Eve never existed.  Pope Benedict XVI has endorsed the Big Bang Theory, which did not require divine action.  He was reduced to saying the universe exists “in the mind of God.”  Intense and widely available investigations into the Bible by noted scholars have verified the non-historical nature of the religious texts.  As such, the Catholic Encyclopedia, the compendium of that faith, admits that the Gospels represent not history, but the belief of the authors.

That kind of documented research is what is undermining faith, not the legal restrictions.  The number of people leaving churches is soaring.  They are not necessarily becoming atheists; they are searching for meaning in a world increasingly threatened by climate change, pollution and overpopulation.  Mr. Stein would do well to search for God’s plan in such potential global calamities than to attempt to fix blame on a few people who do not accept current religious beliefs.

Perhaps it will be a consolation to him to know that humans have frequently changed their religious ideas throughout history and will again in the future.  That’s human nature, just as it is to try to find someone else to blame for natural events and changing cultural mores.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

Pity the Poor Evangelical Christians

Robertson

That paragon of wisdom, Pat Robertson, has done it again.  The right-wing minister, who previously said Hurricane Sandy was God’s response to homosexuality, now says that evangelical Christians are undergoing a holocaust “just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews” but this time at the hands of "liberal" America.

“It’s no different.  It is the same thing,” he insisted.  “It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians.  Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed against any group in America today.  More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.”

To accept that claim, you’d have to ignore the fact that the House of Representatives is dominated by Christian Republicans and that the media is actually quite conservative – an estimated 90 percent of media outlets are owned by arch-conservatives.  You’ll also have to pretend that evangelical Christians are the only Christians.

Those quibbles aside, you’ll also have to completely shun history and real facts.

Victims of the Holocaust

In the first place, evangelical Christians are not being discriminated against.  The same law that protects blacks, Jews, women and other people from discrimination protects evangelicals, too.  Evangelicals, like Muslims – funny putting them in the same context – have been asked not to infuse their religion into their workplace, but no one should impose their religious beliefs on anyone else.

Second, more importantly, there’s no comparison to the Holocaust.  Today, that term refers to the about 6 million Jews systematically slaughtered by the Nazis during World War II.  However, it should include Gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals and, yes, Pat, religious leaders also murdered by the German thugs.

In all, close to 12 million people died in Nazi concentration camps, from slave labor and from other abuses.  When the war ended, the Nazis had enough poison gas stored to kill another 6 million more.

Their victims wouldn’t have minded a little more bigotry and a little less murder.

After all, the real “most abused minority,” Jews, had endured centuries of withering scorn from Christian evangelicals like Robertson.  Jews know what real hatred is.  They have learned to survive.  They just didn’t have weapons against gas chambers and SS bullets.

Burning heretics

Evangelical Christians have nothing to complain about.  Ever since Christianity was named the lone legal religion of the Roman Empire in the late 4^th century, Christian leaders have willfully massacred and harassed anyone who did not accept fundamentalist teachings.  "Heretics" were burned at the stake for daring to question the fables in the New Testament or offering a different theory about God and/or religion..  They were tortured for not living up to standards set by conservative religious leaders.

Entire communities were annihilated in the misguided effort to make sure everyone believed exactly the same mythology.  Wars were fought.  Millions died solely for religious reasons.  Many still are being killed today for the same nonsense.

What has happened to evangelicals in this country?  Absolutely nothing.  They are free to worship and even to spout absurd opinions.

It’s not abuse to have the media reporting the latest finding in biblical research, all of which contradicts official teachings.  It’s not abuse to have scientists explaining newly acquired knowledge of the universe, which shows how outdated the Bible is.  After all, it was written before the writers even knew that the Earth went around the sun. 

It is not abuse to have society guarantee equal rights to people evangelicals don’t like, such as homosexuals.  God created them, too, remember?

The reality is that Robertson is scared.  He has spent his life believing is something that modern research has fully demonstrated is not based on a single fact.  It’s not even based on history.  With his world shattering, he is lashing out at everyone and everything in a panic.  He doesn’t want anyone to know the truth.

Had he become that agitated 500 years ago, those who disagreed with him would have been rounded up and summarily executed.

These days, we can only shake our heads and express pity.

Guess what, Pat?  It’s only going to get worse as new discoveries, new research and new understandings will eventually confine your outmoded beliefs to the trashcan of history. 

That’s not “wholesale abuse and discrimination or bigotry.”  It’s simply inevitable.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

World War I Continues to Affect Us

Called the “War to End All Wars,” World War I never lived up to its billing.  Besides, it wasn’t the initial world war.  Wars stretching across continents were fought before, such as the French and Indian War and the later battles against Napoleon that included the War of 1812.

Sunday marked the 94^th anniversary of the end of World War I.  It stopped at the11th second of the11th minute of the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918.  The time was specifically selected to be sure the day would be remembered.  That didn’t work.  Today, no soldier who fought in that war is alive.  The last known combatant died in February.  Few if any people who have first-hand memories of the war are still living.

Everyone else doesn’t seem to care. Most people don’t even take off Veterans Day.  The national holiday was original called Armistice Day to mark the end of the war, but that was before World War II showed up.

Maybe World War I would be better off forgotten, except that the impact of the war continues to affect our lives and will into the future.  World War I created the modern world and many of its ongoing problems.

No one should forget it.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

The war started in 1914 when Ferdinand,  archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife were assassinated during a visit to Sarajevo, Serbia.  By the time the war ended, four empires had been obliterated, the United States had become the most powerful country in the world, the center of world’s finances had changed, the political environment was completely altered and a host of new ideas began to dominate.

In Europe, Russia became the first country affected.  The Czar of Russia and his family were assassinated by the Communists, instituting a new regime that became the American adversary for close to 80 years.  The Germans had hoped to destabilize Russia by allowing the Bolshevik militant Lenin back into the country in 1917.  They succeeded admirably.

Lenin and his cohorts established a Communist government, pulled Russia out of the war and began their efforts to convert the world to their philosophy.  Much of American foreign policy since then has been devoted to countering Communism, while verbal attacks on dissenters and outspoken opponents of this government have continued virtually unabated since. Remember "Love it or Leave it?"

The Red Scare of 1919 led directly to the blacklisting of actors and Hollywood writers as well as the McCarthy era.  Today’s attempts to curtail civil liberties continue the process.

France, until then a world power, lost its preeminence in the carnage of a war fought mostly on its soil.  That country has never recovered.

England was so heavily in debt after the war that the financial center of the globe shifted from London to New York, where it remains today. 

People worldwide began to demand independence.  As a result, England increasingly lost control of its many colonies and, in the ensuring decades, granted freedom to many of them, including India.

In Europe, the war forced the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of new, smaller countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, itself destined to splinter after the fall of the Soviet Union. 

Hitler

In Germany, the war altered everything.  The German government had not been honest with its people, so the loss came as a shock.  A wounded Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler, a modestly talented artist who had tried to avoid conscription into the war, was convinced that people inside Germany had caused the loss, not the Allied armies.  He swallowed erroneous eugenic ideas about lower types of people undermine genetics and spoke tirelessly about cleansing the country of such dangerously weaker non-Germans.

He was helped by a sick economy ravaged by reparations demanded by the wining Allies, which created raging inflation as the government simply printed more money.  Once in power, Hitler inaugurated mass murder and World War II.  His satanic work completed the effort started during World War I to alter global politics.

In the Middle East, the changes were equally dramatic.  In its bid to defeat the Turkish Empire, England promised independence to nationalist groups throughout the region, without the slightest intent to fulfill any promise.  However, led by young English linguist T.E. Lawrence, who believed his government, Arab guerrillas harassed the Turks and helped the English Army win.

England and France promptly split up the spoils, ignoring requests for independence.  Only later, did they allow the kingdoms of Jordan and Saudi Arabia.  In addition, they carved such countries as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan from the hide of the moribund empire.   The boundaries cut across tribal and religious lines, guaranteeing the turmoil still roiling that region of the world. 

The Jews, also promised a homeland, finally were given Israel by a vote of the United Nations after an exhausted England gave up trying to hold on to any authority in the region after World War II.    The result has been a constant state of war between the Jewish nation and its neighbors since 1948.

After World War I, the English and French were determined to ensure their superiority over other nations.  Their heavy-handed efforts to control military in other nations outraged the Japanese, whose army and navy were limited to second-class status.  The Japanese response led to the rise of militaristic-minded leaders and subsequent attacks initially on Korea and China, and then against the Philippines and the United States.

Roosevelt

The war created profound changes in this country.  The U.S. suddenly became the most powerful country in the world, a unexpected shock to Americans.  While Democrats pushed for a “just and lasting” peace under President Woodrow Wilson, the Republicans turned away from the progressive policies of Theodore Roosevelt that lead to minimum wages, 40-hour work week and child labor laws, along with efforts to guarantee clean food and to end monopoles. 

Instead, the GOP blocked American participation in the League of Nations, which was Wilson’s way to provide a forum to discuss disagreements outside of the battlefield.  Without the U.S.’ involvement, the idea foundered.   In addition, the Republicans grew increasingly conservative, rejecting industrial controls and helping precipitate the Great Depression.

Republicans who had pushed for annexation of Hawaii and demands that this country become a world presence now insisted on isolationism.

Little has changed since.

World War I had more effect in less-obvious areas.  The war, which mixed so many people together, helped encourage the spread of the influenza epidemic of 1918, which led to the deaths of millions while foreshadowing the rise of AIDS and other pandemics. 

At the same time, technology guaranteed that World War I would herald the start of modern warfare.  Horses were replaced by tanks.  Airplanes began aerial bombing, grounding balloons that had been used for that in the Civil War.  Radio increased communication, and improved weaponry guaranteed the slaughter of millions.  Submarines that first appeared in the Civil War became sophisticated hunters of ocean shipping.

At the same time, the unpredictability of war undermined religion.  The idea of God was so entrenched that the word “atheism” wasn’t even invented until the 1800s.  However, the obvious unpredictability of such massive battles seen in World War I ensured that religion would be questioned.  The effort to find proof of the Bible stories, a field called Biblical Archaeology, was born after World War I, while evolution, which had been largely ignored for several decades, returned to the fore.

Scopes' courtroom

The debate would culminate in 1925 with the trial in Dayton, Tennessee that pitted fundamentalists who accepted every word of the sacred texts as true against those opting for less supernatural answers.  That debate has continued, but fundamentalism increasingly is losing.

Their position has been undermined by scientific discoveries that demonstrate the random nature of life and events.  That process began during World War I when German physicist Albert Einstein introduced his special theory of relativity, which eventually led to the atomic bomb.

Meanwhile, the horror of war and the fact the consequences could neither be predicted nor were distributed evenly forced American institutions to change.  Top universities like Yale and Harvard changed their curriculum to de-emphasize religion and to eliminate quotas on types of students. 

In addition, culture began to accept more-universal ideas.  Showboat , the first great Broadway show, attacked the idea of racism, something unheard of prior to the war when the U.S. was rocked by repeated race riots. Soon after, Porgy and Bess presented Black life in a humanistic light.   It would take decades for the impact to spread, but the process was underway.

Today, of course, few people realize the role World War I plays in global politics and life.  History these days has lost its charm.  That’s why Republicans can conveniently ignore the economic problems that are the direct result of the Bush Administration policies and instead insist they are Obama’s fault.  Politicians are fully aware that few people today know anything about history or care.

That’s all the more reason to study such events like World War I and to understand how they have affected our lives.  We may not be doomed to repeat them, as philosopher George Santayana famously said, but we are left without any understanding of our world and how it arrived at its present situation.  Without that knowledge, we also have no clue where we are going or why.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1