{"id":6000,"date":"2011-06-08T14:36:29","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T14:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=6000"},"modified":"2011-06-08T14:36:29","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T14:36:29","slug":"magical-thinking-watch-gods-private-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/magical-thinking-watch-gods-private-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"Magical Thinking Watch: God’s private messages"},"content":{"rendered":"

A conservative Republican Congressman from North Carolina\u2019s military and Bible belt, Walter B. Jones, opposed the war in Iraq and is now calling for a pull-out from Afghanistan<\/a>.\u00a0 For such a courageous stance against party conformity, he should be congratulated.\u00a0 Among likely presidential contenders (leaving aside Ron Paul), the stance on U.S. war against countries we have no hope of transforming and no stated desire to conquer ranges from \u201cWe\u2019re not doing enough invading\u201d to \u201cWe\u2019re not doing enough invading or enough shoveling of tax dollars down the gullet of the Pentagon.\u201d\u00a0 I heard Tim Pawlenty do his tough-guy routine against the Syrian President\u2014\u201cWe give him an ultimatum: \u2018You\u2019re gone tomorrow\u2019\u201d\u2014several weeks ago to a group of influential New York neo-cons, who\u00a0rewarded his promise of aggressive militarism with an enthusiastic round of applause.\u00a0 All the other major Presidential candidates would have said the same thing.<\/p>\n

But however much I admire\u00a0 Rep. Jones\u2019 intrepid individualism, I cannot help puzzling over his understanding of how he arrived at his anti-war stance.\u00a0 He voted for the authorization of military force in Iraq in 2002, then started having misgivings about the invasion and in 2005 publicly called for troop withdrawal.\u00a0\u00a0 The reason he changed his mind, he said, was that God led him to do so:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thank God that he made me feel guilty about my vote on Iraq,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

he told the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This statement raises a host of questions.\u00a0 If, in Jones\u2019 view, God is anti-war and thus led him to that Godly stance, why are there so many equally devout Americans who are just as convinced of\u00a0 the justice of the Iraq war?\u00a0 Is Jones uniquely attuned to God\u2019s will?\u00a0 The implication is unavoidable that those pro-war believers are mistaken about God\u2019s will\u2014why is that?\u00a0 Does the fault lie in themselves and in their disordered prayer lives?\u00a0 It must, since presumably God would not send readable messages about the injustice of the war to some people and inscrutable messages to others.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Or perhaps God sends completely different messages to different people\u2014pro-war to some, anti-war to others–just for the sake of spectator sport? George Bush claimed divine mandate for the Iraq invasion, since freedom is God\u2019s gift to humanity, which he, Bush, was assisting with the Freedom Agenda.\u00a0 Presumably, Jones would say that Bush was mistaken in his reading of God\u2019s will.\u00a0\u00a0 But how does Jones know that he, Jones, is right and Bush is wrong?\u00a0 Both appeal to the identical and sole piece of evidence: Their personal sensation of God speaking to them.\u00a0 But again, if Bush is wrong, why did he get it wrong?\u00a0 If you were God, and the unjustified loss of American lives (we won\u2019t even mention Iraqi lives) were important to you, wouldn\u2019t it be equally important to get the message out, clearly and unequivocally?\u00a0\u00a0 Either God screwed up in his messaging or your fellow Christian war hawks are screwed up in their ability to receive God\u2019s will, but I have never heard a believer confront this fact explicitly and either berate God for being coy or accuse his fellow Christians of lacking access to God\u2019s message.\u00a0 Nor have I heard anyone offer a theory as to why there should be disagreement about something so fundamental as God\u2019s will\u2014about war, in this case.\u00a0 If the problem is that man\u2019s fallen state prevents him from perceiving God\u2019s clear messages in all their unequivocal splendor, Jones is therefore implying that he is less fallen than his fellow Republican religious war supporters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when pro-war believers hear Jones\u2019 claim, do they believe it?\u00a0 And if not, why not?\u00a0 Do they say: Jones is mistaken about God\u2019s making him feel guilty about his vote in Iraq?\u00a0 How could a believer be mistaken about his access to God\u2019s will?\u00a0 If Jones is wrong, how do they know that they are right?\u00a0 Do they propose any method for resolving such disagreements?\u00a0 As usual, a believer dismissing another believer\u2019s claim of divine insight is temporarily adopting an identical stance towards that mistaken believer as a non-believer does:\u00a0 \u201cShow me the evidence!\u00a0 Your mere claim of access to God\u2019s will is insufficient; you are projecting your own beliefs onto a fictional external reality.\u201d\u00a0 And yet that same believer, skeptical of his fellow-wrong believer\u2019s false claims of religious inspiration, would have the non-believer suspend his skepticism when judging the believer\u2019s own claims of revelation and accept the identical quantum of evidence for it that he finds insufficient in his fellow wrong-believer: the sensation of access to God\u2019s will.<\/p>\n

In the past, the religious had the courage of their convictions and killed wrong believers.\u00a0 God\u2019s truth should be worth such a sacrifice.\u00a0 Today, since we live under the reign of secular Enlightenment tolerance (which is not a religious virtue), believers adopt the \u201cYeah, whatever, I\u2019m OK, you\u2019re OK\u201d stance towards wrong believers, thereby increasing civil peace while betraying the splendor of the word of God.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I am dreading the Republican presidential season.\u00a0 We are going to see an escalating arms race about piety and God-given American exceptionalism.\u00a0 Everyone will be as convinced about their messaging from God as Walter Jones is.\u00a0 Not everyone can be right, which is fine.\u00a0\u00a0 But when it comes to divine inspiration, I just want some hint as to how we figure out who is wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A conservative Republican Congressman from North Carolina\u2019s military and Bible belt, Walter B. Jones, opposed the war in Iraq and is now calling for a pull-out from Afghanistan.\u00a0 For such a courageous stance against party conformity, he should be congratulated.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[685,182],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6000"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6005,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6000\/revisions\/6005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}