September 2011 Archives

Tonight, while reading Confessions of a Former Conservative, I ran across a blog called The Emotions of hdn666.  This blog is apparently a young Christian's attempt to parody liberals, atheists, and apparently anyone else who isn't just like him.  I've read a few posts and I have to say that I'm giggling a little bit.  What can I say, I love a good parody.

Except, I'm not laughing because it's a good parody.  In fact, I would be hard pressed to imagine what a worse parody would look like.  The author of this site has created such strawman arguments and caricatures of real liberals, atheists, and just abut everybody else that they bear almost (and I'm being fairly generous by adding the "almost") no resemblance to real live people.  To give you an example of what I mean, let us take a look at one of his posts, Atheism is Truth.

See, the Bible is full of holes. Evolution, well science, is truth. It is absolute.

This statement is somewhat accurate to many atheists' views.  Hell, it's somewhat accurate to my views, and I'm not even an atheist.  The problem is, the author doesn't understand what atheists and others (like me) mean when we say something like this.  This becomes clear as his straw-man representation of atheists' views continues.

People who believe the Bible are stupid morons.

I've known a few atheists who have said this very thing.  To the best of my knowledge, none of them were above the age of majority.  They acted their age in many ways, including calling other people stupid morons.  Interestingly enough, there were a number of adult atheists around that found these immature atheists as annoying as we theists did.

Adult atheists do find it hard to understand why someone would believe the Bible (especially "literally").  However, this is not the same as thinking that such people are stupid morons.  Atheists are perfectly capable of understanding that people can be intelligent and rational while still holding views that they (the atheists) don't "get."

They are believing stories that have come down the line from person to person and have changed very little or none since their first telling.

I don't fully get this statement.  The atheists I know actually challenge the idea that Biblical texts have been passed down unchanged over the centuries.  (And indeed, there are manuscripts that differ.  It's why certain passages are carefully footnoted in translations like the NRSV to indicate that said passage was not found in "earlier manuscripts.")  So I'm not entirely sure why the author through that bit in.

I can speculate, however.  I suspect that the author behind the parody is the one who believes that these stories have never changed.  In other words, this is one of those cases where the author interrupts the narrator to come out and say "isn't this totally stupid?"  In my opinion, it disrupts the parody.

Of course, I'll also note that the unchanging nature of "Biblical truth" is one of the points championed by conservative Christians.  In fact, it's often used as proof of Biblical truth's "superiority" over science, as the latter "is constantly changing."

What they author and most other conservative Christians fail to understand is that science's ability to change based on new evidence is a strength rather than a weakness.  A method of inquiry which can accept new data and revise its premises to accommodate the new data as necessary allows us to enrich, enhance, and even correct our understanding of reality.  It allows us to engage in an honest search for truth rather than insisting we already know it and pray to God we're right.

Compare this to conservative Christianity, which seems to maintain that if one little thing changes, the entire religion will shatter into a million shards.  This strikes me as a weak faith, a house of cards that will topple when enough new data which cannot easily be bent to support the presupposed and unquestionable beliefs of the religion accumulates.  I would think that the parody's author would do well to learn the strength in flexible systems of understanding.

Christians are believing in a God that they have never seen from people that they have never met.

This needs an "objectively" inserted in it.  Atheists are perfectly willing to accept that Christians and other theists of experienced something that they interpret to be God or some sort of Divine presence.  However, they argue that Christians and other theists cannot objectively demonstrate that their interpretation of their experiences are true.

As a theist, I have no problem admitting that the atheists are right about that.  I also think that any theist who is being honest would be hard pressed to disagree with that position.

But see, I'm an intelligent Atheist. I get my facts from real sources. You get your information from a book and I...well, actually I get mine from books too. Huh...well now I'm stumped.

Actually, atheists get their facts from several sources.  Among them are personal experience, their own ability to reason, the experiences and reasoning of others, and yes, even books.  Lots of books.

The thing is, atheists don't have to take any particular book (or set of books) as 100% factual.  What's more, they don't have to take a particular narrow interpretation of what a given book means and accept it 100% at face value.  They can critically examine the books they get their facts from.  They can cross-check those facts from the claims made in other books as well as their own personal observations and reasoning.  In the end, the atheist has quite an arsenal for gathering, examining, and refining the facts at their disposal.

The fact that our strawman atheist is stumped reveals his nature as a strawman.

Well, I know for a fact that the earth is millions and millions of years old! Trying to say otherwise is idiotic. What proof is there? Scientists say so. And we all know that scientists never lie.

Laying aside the ludicrous question of whether or not scientists ever lie, let's consider that our author (and his strawman atheist by extension) don't understand how science works here.  We know for a fact that the earth is millions of years old because everything we know about numerous and diverse fields of scientific inquiry point to that fact.  If the earth isn't millions of years old, just about everything we know about how the world works is completely wrong.  And considering the amount of time we've spent verifying, challenging, and reaffirming what we know about the way the world works is right, that's a pretty hard sell.

After all, they are all-knowing, right?

I know of no scientist who claims to be all-knowing.  In fact, I'm pretty sure most of them admit that there's a lot they still don't know.  If they knew everything, they wouldn't have a job to do anymore.  Our author is just making wild accusations.

Bible believers are taking someone else's word for what they believe and I...well actually, I'm doing the same thing.

And again, here's where the author doesn't get it.  Yes, we take scientists' word on certain things.  But we don't actually have to.  Assuming I had an infinite amount of time and resources at my disposal, I could go get a degree in microbiology and rerun all the experiments that every single microbiologist has ever done to confirm or further explain the mechanisms of evolution.  I could then do the same for biochemistry, the various geological sciences, and every other field of scientific inquiry.  Those scientists have even helped me out if I want to do this by recording their experiments, the procedures and materials they used, their results, and their conclusions.

I'm not going to do all that, even though I could.  I simply don't have the time.  But here's the thing:  scientists double-check other scientists' work all the time.  It's actually an important part of the scientific method.

So I'm not just "taking other people's word for it."  I'm taking the word of people who showed how they came to their conclusions, "showed their work," and had other people double-check, verify, and build upon that work.

In the end, an attempt to parody something that one does not understand will fail miserably.  Apparently, the author of The Emotions of hdn666 has yet to learn that lesson.

Cover of Carman

Harris begins chapter two of Raised Right with a description of a music video made by Christian pop artist Carman.  As I read her description, I found them eerily familiar, but could not place them until she mentioned the artist's name.  I spent my teen years listening to and idolizing[1] Carman and I'm sure I saw the video in question.

Harris uses the video to introduce the importance of "spiritual warfare" that was ingrained into her when she was a youth.  She speaks of singing a familiar Sunday school song ("I'm in the Lord's army") and learning the importance of fighting Satan.  She describes one event she witnessed:

While Pastor John was speaking, one of my parents' friends, Greg, came forward and lifted his hands to ask for prayer.  Pastor John reached out his hand and shouted, "I bind you, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ!"  The moment he said "Jesus Christ," Greg staggered as if shot through the heart and then fell flat on his back, lying spread-eagled on the floor with a smile on his face."

While I got involved in a Full Gospel[2] congregation while in college, I was raised in an American Baptist.  My church -- and as I understand it, Baptist in general -- don't really believe that "miraculous gifts" such as speaking in tongues, prophecies, or instantaneous healing.  They also tend not to believe in or expect to encounter demons in a direct manner as might be described in This Present Darkness or as recounted by pentecostal/charismatic believers.  So while I too sang "I'm in the Lord's army," learned to recite all the parts of the "armor of God," and was inundated in the same spiritual warfare terminology, I suspect that I took these things things far more metaphorically than Harris and her Sunday school classmates.

Of course, this left myself and my classmates trying to understand the metaphor.  We had an enemy we could not confront directly.  We had no demons to cast out.  So we were left wondering what "I'm in the Lord's army" really meant beyond being a silly song.  We wondered what it really meant to put on the full armor of God.  Sure, knew we were supposed to invite friends to Sunday school and church.  We knew we were supposed to read the Bible, pray, and be good.  But for what?  Surely these things were never meant to be an ends in themselves[3].

So in many ways, I think I was more primed for the transition that Harris describes as she continues telling her story:

Though I wouldn't have put it in these words at the time, I came to believe that our battle was not against invisible demons but against evil people who brought the fight into the real world.  They were the spiritual enemy clothed in flesh:  abortionists, feminists, secularists, humanists, the people conspiring to destroy God's witness by corrupting America.  Finally I had an enemy I could see and point out to others, one that didn't require a mysterious intuition or the spiritual gift of discernment to identify.

I can understand that, wholeheartedly.  While Harris had an unseen enemy, I had no enemy.  So latching onto a concrete enemy was a gift from God Himself.  Furthermore, this new, tangible enemy offered a tangible strategy for fighting back:  politics.

Suddenly, "fighting the enemy" meant speaking out against abortion, homosexuality, and premarital sex.  It meant voting for the "holy" candidates so that they could defeat the "evil" ones and stop their "evil" plans[4].  Suddenly, there was a way to become a righteous crusader with a clear path.

Ironically, while this gave me a tangible "enemy," what it did to my perceptions of the "enemy" was almost the exact opposite.  Adulterers, fornicators, homosexuals, and all those other people ceased to become people and became caricatures in my mind.  My "tangible enemy" turned into smoke and mirrors again.  I find myself wondering if Harris intended this chapter to explain the need to reconnect with "flesh and blood" people discussed in the previous one.

Related Posts

I have created a separate page to track all the blog posts I've made regarding this book.  If this post interests you, I would encourage you to go check out the other posts as well.

Notes

[1]  Well, insofar as a good little Baptist is allowed to idolize anyone or anything.

[2]  "Full Gospel" is the preferred term used certain charismatic/pentecostal churches.

[3]  I strongly believe that even "being good" for the sake of "being good" is meaningless and pointless.  "Being good" is about doing something for others because it has a positive impact on their lives.  It's about building a better world.  This is not something that I feel is always properly communicated to young Christians, nor do I feel it is emphasized enough.

As a former Sunday school teacher, I'd also like to suggest that this is in part that the much of the teaching materials for chidren and teen Sunday school classes are abysmal.  They do not treat the students like intelligent people who need to learn what it truly means to live a life that expresses the fruit of the Spirit and are ready to do exactly that.  If you are a Sunday school teacher, I would encourage you to re-evaluate your curriculum and honestly ask yourself if it insults, patronizes, and holds back your students.

[4]  I'm engaging in a certain amount of hyperbole here.  However, don't overestimate just how much.

Image via Wikipedia

While looking over C.S. Friedman's website as part of writing my blog post about her treatment of religion in her fiction, I ran across her commentary on slash fiction[1] that she included in her FAQ page.  Apparently, Friedman is not a fan of us gay people, and presumably other QUILTBAG individuals as well.  That may change my opinion of her, though it doesn't really change my opinion of or appreciation of her fiction.  She doesn't have to approve of my sexual orientation -- though I would love to challenge where she thinks she gets off disapproving of it, either.  After all, it's my life, not hers.  Not her life, not her business.

But what really got me was the following statement regarding slash fiction:

I admit to no comprehension at all about why this appeals to folks....

Personally, I admit that I cannot comprehend how someone can be that wrapped up in heterosexual privilege that they just don't get why at least gay people[2] might like to see stories about same-sex couples.  It leaves me wondering just how blind they are to gay people (and others in the QUILTBAG spectrum) and their basic humanity.  So while I doubt Ms. Friedman will ever read this, allow me to offer a simple explanation:

Some of us like slash-fiction because we like to see relationships and sexual activities that mirror our own interests and desires.

Is that really so hard to comprehend?

Seriously, think about this for a moment.  For many people, part of the enjoyment of reading is to identify with the characters, to put yourself in their shoes.  I often either imagine myself as being one of the characters or being there with them.  I think most people like characters whose minds and bodies we can slip into and share.

That illusion, that experience of identification, can be severely stunted for me when the character I identify with suddenly starts romantically pursuing or becomes sexually involved with a woman.  Suddenly, we are very different people at a very basic level.  They are doing something that I wouldn't do and wouldn't want to do.  I'm left behind, separated.

And almost every single book I read is filled with characters whose romantic and sexual pursuits are foreign to me.  It can be frustrating and lonely.

So when someone takes a world and characters that I absolutely love and identify with on so many levels and adds in romantic and sexual elements that I can identify with, that's pure gold to me.  To be honest, I'm surprised I don't write slash fiction myself.

Of course, what really gets me is that having just read The Magister Trilogy -- which explores sexuality as well as its intersection with power and violence quite extensively -- I admit that I'm quite tempted to pick up my pen and write about gay characters in the world C.S. Friedman created for the series.  Quite frankly, the series is begging for someone to do it.  At least that's my opinion.  The series brings questions to my mind.  What would happen if a male ikati bonded with a gay human?  Would such a mating even be possible?  If so, would two gay men each bonded to an ikati be able to form a relationship of any kind with one another? Would there ever be such a thing as a gay ikati?  How would that effect the mating dance and the species' overall aggression?[3]

These questions seem obvious to me.  These questions nag at me to the point that I'm seriously considering a new writing project.  And while I can certainly understand that these question may not interest Friedman in they way that the interest me, I am astounded that she's completely blinded to such questions' very existence or the idea that for some of us, those questions would be hard to ignore.

I can only write it off as immense heterosexual privilege.

Update:  For anyone interested, I have talked further about some of my ideas for playing in C.S. Friedman's world over at WdC.

Notes:

[1]  For those who may not be familiar with the term, slash fiction is a special category of fanfiction that describes and explores same-sex romantic and sexual pairings.  For example, I understand there are a large number of slash fiction stories in which Harry Potter and Draco Malfo either get romantically involved or just plain get freaky.

[2]  In reality, I also know of heterosexual people who like to see same-sex pairings for a multitude of reasons.

[3]  Of course, the whole premise of the ikati species is predicated on the presumption gender essentialism.  How would the introduction of transgender individuals (either human or ikati) challenge or change the whole premise?  I bring this up in a footnote because I simply don't feel I am qualified to address this issue beyond asking it and hoping someone else might choose to tackle it.

For that matter, I think there could be some interesting points of analysis of comparing and contrasting the characters of Siderea, Gwynofar, and Kamala from a feminist perspective.  That is something I might consider attacking, though I'll gladly hand that project over to any of my readers who are much more grounded in feminist thought.

Last night, I finished reading C.S. Friedman's final book in her Magister Trilogy, Legacy of Kings.  It was a compelling and captivating end to a fantastic (pun not intended) series of books.  In many ways, I feel sad leaving behind the world of Souleaters and Magisters and the people (and creatures) that inhabit those worlds.

However, as I think of the series as a whole and her equally excellent Coldfire Trilogy, what really gets my notice is the skill, criticality, and sensitivity with which she writes about religion.  In both series, she writes about characters who follow diverse religions and yet work together.  And in both series, she describes one religion (though unique to each series) that is monotheistic in nature and, in my opinion anyway, bears numerous similarities to Christianity (or at least certain expressions of Christianity).  Whether it is the authoritarian church created by Prophet-turned-traitor Gerald Tarrant to tame the chaotic and deadly fae or the Penitent Church of King Salvator that believes the soul-devouring ikati are the punishment of the Destroyer for mankind's sins, the monumental religion in question takes on trapping that are reminiscent of the dominant monotheistic faith in our own society.

What I find interesting about Friendman's treatment of these religions is that she offers a thoughtful and critical -- yet not damning -- analysis of these monotheistic religions, and Christianity by analogy.  She seeks to explore what she clearly believes are both strengths and weaknesses of the faiths of her creation, offering a commentary that is neither too harsh more too fawning.

One of the methods she accomplishes this is through the stories characters who practice these faiths.  She explores how their faith influences their actions and how the trials they face challenge, strengthen, and occasionally alter their faith.  In effect, she creates deep characters of substance to occupy and portray these religions rather than strawmen to prop them up or tear them down.  Damien Vryce, Gerald Tarrant[1], and King Salvatore are all (relatively, in Gerald's case) sympathetic characters who put humanity to faith.

Of course, their actions and portrayal of the monotheistic faiths are strengthened by their interactions with people of the other religions in these two worlds, the polytheistic, pagan idol-worshippers[2].  The monotheists sincerely struggle with how to interact with the other people who make up their world, even when confronted with things that are forbidden by their own faith.  In turn, the polytheists are given voice by Friedman to express, explore, and revise their opinions of the monotheistic religions and how those religions affect those followers.

In effect, Friedman writes a beautiful yet realistic world in which the realities of pluralism are negotiated and dealt with.  If only we could do so well here in the real world.

[1] Granted, one might argue whether Tarrant can still rightfully be called a follower of the Church he founded.  But I seem to recall that he arrogantly claimed at one point in the Coldfire trilogy that he still served the Church in his own way, and I'm inclined to grant him that conceit.

[2] Interestingly, neither Friedman nor her characters seem to use this term in a derogatory manner, but in a more technical manner.  And while I might nit-pick whether people actually worship their idols in the technical sense, I applaud Friedman's apparent lack of denigration.

Image by B.S. Wise via Flickr

Chapter 1 of Harris's book, Raised Right:  How I Untangled My Faith From Politics, bears the title "Flesh and Blood."  I assume it was chosen for the chapters attempt to show the need to see not issues, but people.  Harris starts the chapter by describing a scene where she, her parents, and her younger siblings picketed an abortion clinic together.  After describing that scene, she speaks of her past, offering the following insight:

I had been picketing since before I could walk.

When we read Old Testament passages like the story of Rahab and I asked my mom what a prostitute was, she said, "Women that men paid to act like their wives," which conjured confusing pictures of paid cooks and housekeepers.  When I asked how the single mom in our church had a baby without a husband, she said the mom "acted like she was married."  Apparently, I was too young to know how people made babies, but not too young to know how they killed them.

As the crowd yelled, I would at times forget that these were supposed to be prayers until I would catch an "Almighty God!" or "Lord we pray!"

I couldn't help but think of the kind of ostentatious prayers Jesus chided:  "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men."  He must have meant, Pray to Me and not to the cameras.  When you pray, talk to Me.

Then I realized why these efforts at love sounded hollow -- because this love was not the way I experienced love every day.  Even setting aside the arrogance suggested by viewing all other sinners as children and saved sinners as the world's in loco parentis, I know my parents love me because they sacrificed to feed and clothe me every day.  In the end that burden of labor and sacrifice is what gives them any right to be heard or believed when they say "I love you" after they say "you're wrong."

Unless you are smuggling soup to the Jews in your attic, I think a political act can't be an act of love.  It can be a good act, even noble and heroic, but love is not something that takes place behind a barricade;  it happens in the breaking of bread and the passing of cups.  Political love is theoretical, directed at some vague "humanity," and Jesus didn't say to love humanity, but to love your neighbor.

Image by Amarand Agasi via Flickr

Last Thursday, Fred Clark of Slacktivist fame wrote a fantastic review of Raised Right:  How I Untangled My Faith from Politics, a book by Alisa Harris[1] that was released today.  I was fascinated enough by Fred's review and the quotes from the book he selected that I decided to purchase the Kindle edition of the book.  I started reading it tonight and decided I'd start blogging about it.

What interests me most about the books is that in many ways, Harris and I come from very similar backgrounds.  I was raised in a conservative evangelical community, was raised to believe that homosexuality was an abomination[2], abortion was murder, and good Christians voted Republican.

Where my upbringing differs from that of Harris is that while I was raised to believe all the same things, my family was not very politically active and did not consider it our duty to be so.  Certainly, my parents voted -- and always for candidates who promised to stand "on the right side" of various issues.  They considered (and to the best of my knowledge, still do) both their civic duty as well as a part of their service to God.  But they were not people to carry picket signs, write letters to elected officials, or even give to various political organization.  In fact, if my parents gave to anything other than their church, I suspect it would be the Family Life Network, which runs a number of radio stations whose coverage includes the county my parents live in.

I think this is in part because my parents understood there is more to Christian life than the political machinations that Harris writes about.  My parents are far more community-oriented and understand that Christian life is about building and serving community as much as -- maybe even more than -- it is about stopping "the gay agenda" or shouting down doctors who perform abortions or women who seek out their services.  In some ways, I consider it an advantage to having grown up in a very rural area.

I think growing up in that rural area is another part of the reason for why activism didn't play such a big part in my childhood, though.  Where my parents live, all that "political stuff" happens somewhere else, places like New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco.  Sure, there were gay people and women who had abortions around, but it was -- or at least appeared to be -- something extremely rare.  People in our community were "good people" whose exposure to such things was minimal and possibly even nonexistent.  So picketing is something that would have involved long drives.  And with Boy Scouts for me (until I quit when I was about 14) and twirling baton in parades for my sister who had time for all that traveling to exotic and dubious places?

On the flip side, I suppose this makes my family and me typical members of the religious conservatives' "target audience."  I was someone who knew nothing about what gay people were like, who knew nothing of the issues of abortion, or anything else the religious activists beat their drums about.  I had no way of evaluating what they told me for accuracy or honesty -- or at least I had no idea how to go about doing so.

So I come to Harris's book as something of a kindred spirit, yet as someone who's experience is slightly different.  We have come to similar places -- though she retained her Christian faith while I moved on -- but by slightly different routes.  And that is what I would like to explore as I go through the book, hopefully chapter by chapter.

[1] To the best of my knowledge, the author and I are not related.