I thought I had mistakenly tuned in to one of Southern California’s Christian radio stations last week when I heard a talk show host first issue the usual right-wing boilerplate about Obama allying with the U.S.’s enemies, and then follow-up with the pronouncement that the only hope for the country in the age of Obama was faith. ‘We need to fall on bended knee before something larger than ourselves,’ the host said. ‘America is God’s chosen country and everything we have comes from God.’
So began my first exposure to Glenn Beck, who recently started broadcasting on KRLA in Los Angeles. I have to admit that when he is not breaking new ground in anti-Obama paranoia and demonization, he is quite engaging, having mastered that flawlessly-timed banter with his in-studio assistants that Laura Ingraham pioneered. He seems to be ratcheting up the aggressive religion quotient on right-wing talk radio, even beyond the hostile, in-your-face “one nation under GOD [dammit!!!]” with which Mark Levin concludes his broadcasts or the more cheerfully triumphant “The greatest nation on God’s green earth” with which Michael Medved punctuates his broadcasts.
Unfortunately, Beck didn’t spell out how a greater engagement with faith would save the country from wrack and ruin under Obama. I can’t identify many devout countries that are in any better shape than the U.S. The populace of Mexico undoubtedly enjoys a much more vigorous relation to saints than the U.S. population, its faith in many cases unmarred by the slightest stain of Enlightenment skepticism. Ditto every other country in Central America and the Caribbean. As Sarah Palin would say, ‘How’s that workin’ out for ya?’ The prayer habits and attendance at houses of worship of the Egyptians, Indonesians, or the Afghanis would put America’s Sabbath mall-shoppers to shame. None seem like models to emulate. But Muslim nations may not count for Beck, since a Christian God might not acknowledge the prayers of the infidel. So what about Spain: its absolute fealty to the Catholic Church did not arrest its decline into a geopolitical non-entity following the Reformation.
Perhaps a lack of prayerfulness and faith led to the election of Obama, in Beck’s view. By implication, then, a greater prayerfulness may have given the country George W. Bush. That religious devotion didn’t prevent 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or the financial meltdown. But of course, the list of catastrophes that faith has not prevented is endless. To arbitrarily pluck just some recent misfires that neither preemptive nor post hoc religiosity could cure: the flash flood that killed at least 20 campers at an Arkansas campsite on June 11, the barge crash that killed two young Hungarians on a Philadelphia tour boat on July 7, or the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil that killed 11 workers. At present, putting one’s faith in Paul the octopus seems to be the wiser course.
Is it presumptuous to expect God to have prevented these catastrophes or to have intervened once he caught wind of what was happening? A believer might so reprimand us. Then why does Beck think that God will respond to anything Beck or his listeners may pray for now? Yet the governors of Alabama, Texas, Florida, and Mississippi declared a coordinated day of prayer in June to ask God for help with the oil spill. Wouldn’t God already have noticed that something was awry without the day of prayer? Or does he require a threshold number of bended knees before he rouses himself? Of course, at some point the oil spill will be contained, so if we just wait long enough, we will have clear evidence of God’s responsiveness to prayer. The many intervening human agents will be merely agents of his will. So did the neighbors of Abby Sunderland, the publicity-seeking, would-be world circumnavigator, see God’s hand at work in her rescue from the Indian Ocean this June, even though the crew and captain of the French ship Île de la Réunion might seem to be more proximate causes of her salvation than the Almighty. Let the 16-year-old forswear all human assistance the next time she capsizes, and we might have a better demonstration of God’s power.
If science and technology followed the logic of religious thought, we would be lucky to be living in mud huts. I posit that wearing fluffy sweaters prevents cancer. Here, in confirmation, are dozens of sweater-wearing people who didn’t get cancer. Oops! Just found some other warmly-clad sweater-wearers who succumbed to the disease. Never mind! Their fate is beyond human comprehension, but what I do know is that these other more relevant people were saved by their sweaters.
Is it unfair to hold religious belief to the same standards as scientific, rational thought? I don’t see why, since religion is making an empirical claim about the world, and since its most vocal proponents on the right love to sneer at non-believers for their obstinacy in rejecting religion’s truth claims.
Glenn Beck may think that faith will save America from Obama. I’d put my bets on old-fashioned politics.
The only reason we need religion is to motivate an “us vs them” attitude towards the Islamic world, or more accurately, the imposition of Islam onto our nation.
“Faith” is what one is willing to believe without proof.
“Prejudice” has exactly the same definition.
Mr. Beck is merely the latest in a long line of people with “faith” in a God made in his own image, who wants in return “faith” in his opinions.
Earlier this year, my mother begun hinting to me the need to seriously think about getting settled down and having a family, and hinted that a return to faith might facilitate such an occasion.
Now, awhile ago I spent a year occasionally attending King County Young Republican events, whose demographic skewed male, single and devoutly Christian. I pointed out that many of the YRs were devoutly religious, but that such devotion had not seemed to assist this goal in their life. She responded by insisting that it must be attributable to their “lack of faith”. Such a notion deals in nothing more than blatantly magical thinking.
That sort of non-sophisticated approach to Christianity is what I’ve since coined “The Magic Jesus”.*
* This is a regular laugh riot when you hear me verbalize it as “da maschik jeshush”. Good times.
Although I gotta admit that I recently begun dating my first regular church-going girl in well over ten years. Smart, charming and adorable.
Also, a little hellcat in the sack. Go figure.
OneSTDV,
I have wondered if maybe the religious ferver of the Islamists, while being – on paper – idiotic, might give them a certain edge in the current … unpleasantness.
The TRUTH of religion is not at issue (at this point), but the efficacy of it is.
I have always been troubled by the claims of supposed “Constitutionalists,” most of whom are rather religious, and utilize the, “One nation under God” statement – a term that was forced into use in 1959, rather than 1776.
Ah, yet another person who is incapable of using a dictionary.
From Dictionary.com
faith /feɪθ/ Show Spelled[feyth] –noun
2. belief that is not based on proof
From TheFreeDictionary.com
prej·u·dice (prj-ds).
1.a. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
From RandyB:
Sounds the same to me.
Randy B.’s dictionary notwithstanding, faith and prejudice are miles apart. Although there are irrational prejudices (“Jews will always cheat you; it’s their way”), we make our way through life using reason, an imperfect form of which is prejudice, or prejudgment.
You are about to get on a plane. Three Arab men whom you saw heatedly discussing something in their native language in the men’s room are now pretending they don’t know each other on the plane. What is your prejudgment? Mine would be that something may be amiss, given the airports propensity to randomly search without regard to country or origin or religion.
You’re black. Your car breaks down near a trailer park where some bald-headed young men drink beer out of the back of a pickup truck, listening to Lynard Skynard and showing off their tattoos. In fact, they are members of the local swim team and would be happy to help tow you to a garage, but you’d be forgiven for an alternative prejudice.
As for OneSTDV’s comment about religion promoting an us or them mentality with regard to Islam, much of Jesusville, USA spends its time kissing Muslim ass. Witness the full-blown dhimmitude of the Catholic Church, the slobbering suck-ups in the mainline Christian churches (Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc.), the barely-disguised anti-Semitism of the Presbyterians, and many others.
It is ridiculous and cowardly to pretend to be against religion, then simply focus on those religious who’s politics you like the least.
And it mars a wonderful column by Ms. Mac Donald.
>>> It is ridiculous and cowardly to pretend to be against religion, then simply focus on those religious who’s politics you like the least.
This particular atheist has lived in a “Christian” society for about 45 years without ever experiencing the slightest twinge of fear that his lack of faith will get him into trouble.
So, given the choice between living in a society dominated by the religion that tolerates me, and one dominated by a religion that would not, I will indeed focus on the religion whose politics I like the most, and not think myself a hypocrite for it.
Thanks Christians! Sorry about the whole, not believing what you believe thing, but I do appreciate you letting me openly pursue my non (and even anti-) Christian pursuits. Very big of you.
Christians – at the very least – allowed a tolerant society to evolve around them. They may on some level regret it, but they tolerate us heretics quite nicely.
Is it unfair to hold religious belief to the same standards as scientific, rational thought? I don’t see why, since religion is making an empirical claim about the world, and since its most vocal proponents on the right love to sneer at non-believers for their obstinacy in rejecting religion’s truth claims.
First comment back here in awhile… after reading the comments so far I decided to finally respond, even though it may sound like a broken record pressed by Capt. Obvious:
Faith is not incompatible with reason or rationality, any more than the concept of infinity is incompatible with mathematics. The trouble with faith, specifically as it relates to an eternal hereafter and the believer’s own standing in it, is that it has the same effect on any otherwise perfectly rational thought process as does introducing infinity to one side of a mathematical equation: It inevitably, irrevocably skews the equation in one direction, namely the direction perceived as leading toward eternal salvation as opposed to damnation.
Do literal religious “truthers” who look down upon skeptics like us really do so because they honestly believe they’re factually right and we’re factually wrong, or merely because, as far as they’re concerned, the fact that they believe such things and we don’t means they’re going to heaven and we’re going to hell? I’m not so sure the latter isn’t the case.
Profession of religious belief — in the West, at least — comes in two basic forms:
1) A warm emotional blanket in which the true believer can wrap himself, thus ignoring the cold calculus of mortality. The vast majority of Christians you know are in this category, though very few ever realize that their “faith” stops at the edge of the blanket.
2) A basis for power and control. Televangelists and the Vatican fall into this latter category. So do *some* radio talk show hosts. Not all, but some; use your noggin to figure out which ones…
Well, Obama is actually a Fabian Socalists like Beatrice and Sidney Webb of England in the 1930’s. David Horwitz not a very religous person has a lot of info on his website on Obama’s association with far left people since college days. Anyway, Obama is more limited in today’s enviroment than 40 years ago when you could just simply nationalzed industries. Obama allowing the New Black Panthers in voter precints during the primaly against Hilley Clinton this is in a documentary produce by Democractics in the high level of fraud and intimadation by Obama’s people during the primarly against Hilley Clinton and everyone knows JOhn MCCain in the general elections. Granted, Evangelical Christians are not well verse of the left’s hated of religion going back to the French Revoluation and earler but they sense that something is wrong. Granted, there are some religous leftist but in US today the non-religous rule and they hate religion. Evangelicals are closer in politics to William Gladstone than Karl Marx or the Webbs.
We should indeed apply standards of logic to faith. The principle reason for this is expectations. If you believe in a magical god-being who intervenes in your life it means in many cases you will feel entitled to his intervention and not work hard.
Matthew,
“Faith,” by definition, is a rejection of logic.
So, applying logic to faith will only re-inforce what logically-oriented people already knew, and provide the faithful with yet more motivation to invent more arcane, complex, metaphysically sophisticated apologias, which they will scold us simpletons for “not getting.”
Be that as it may, I don’t think there is any net difference between the work ethic of the faithful and that of us heathens.
@ Snippet: I just finished reading Karen Armstrong’s “Islam: A Short History” (Modern Library Chronicles, 2000) and was surprised to learn that Islam’s intolerance of other faiths is a pretty recent development — certainly not part of what Mohammed himself preached. The book was written before 9/11 and is interesting in its lack of hyperbole; the argument could be made that attempts to quash Islam are making it more intolerant, more dangerous.
Religion exists because most humans cannot tolerate the thought of eventual nothingness and anihilation. It gives great comfort to some and acts as a vehicle of violence for others. Thus will it always be. I do wish, however, that the conservative movement could be divorced from religion, but that’s not likely to happen.
This is not related to the above subject. But Heather MCDonald, I saw you debate Stossel on immirgation. Stossel is incorrect, Mexicans represent about 14 percent of the legal population while a educated South African represents only 1 percent of legal immirgants in the US. Also, the safest cities in the US, have Mexican populations below 30 percent. Mission Viejo at only 16 percent, and Lake Forest only 23 percent and Irvine at only 9 percent. Irvine proves your point, a highly educated population that is foreign born mainly asian and it also has a low percentage on school lunch programs. You should have told Riley that poverty has increase with the growth of illegal immirgants. And the program he doesn’t mention that has the highest numbers is the free and reduce lunch program. Santa Ana at 90 percent and Los at 90 percent, El Paso at 90 percent, Anaheim at 85 percent. Sunnyvale at a low 6 percent, Ivine at a low 6 percent and Mission Viejo at about 8 percent. You are correct about Orange County-most legal and illegal immirgants apply to welfare than the native born. In fact OC has a white poverty rate until the recession at about 5.0 percent and hispanic about 14 percent and illegal hispanics about 20 percent.