Scrivenings: 04/01/2008

Another Brawl at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (a church allegedly built on the site where Jesus was buried)

April 21, 2008, the headlines read:

Orthodox groups clash in Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Christians fist fight at Jerusalemʼs Holy Sepulchre
Police breaks off clash at Church of Holy Sepulchre
Priests exchange blows over religious rights

Earlier Fight At Holy Site

Six Christian denominations jealously guard their rights at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, so when one denomination moved a chair into a spot claimed by another, it was a declaration of war (a violation of the “status quo” law as enshrined in a 1757 Ottoman declaration). About eleven monks were taken to hospital after being hit by rocks, metal rods and chairs that they threw at each other. Christian monks from rival denominations [Ethiopians and Egyptian Copts] have been warring for more than a century over the roof of the shrine which the Ethiopians call the “House of Sultan Solomon” because they believe the biblical King Solomon gave it as a gift to the Queen of Sheba. The Ethiopians lost control of the roof during an epidemic in the 19th century which enabled the Copts to take over. But in 1970, during a brief absence by Coptic priests from a rooftop chapel, the Ethiopian clerics returned and have been squatting there ever since. An Ethiopian monk huddles in the corner of the chapel day and night to guard the squattersʼ claim. The Egyptian monk, who has been living with them on the roof since the 1970 takeover to assert the Coptsʼ rights, decided to move his chair out of the sun during a hot Jerusalem day. “They (the Ethiopians) teased him,” said Father Afrayim, an Egyptian Coptic monk at the next door Coptic monastery. “They poked him and brought some women who came behind him and pinched him,” he said. Each side accuses the other of throwing the first blow in the fist-fight and stone throwing that ensued. Police eventually broke up the brawl but by all accounts many of the protagonists were already wounded.
Reuters, July 29, 2002

Another Fight At Holy Site

Greek Orthodox and Catholic Franciscan priests got into a fist fight at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, Christianityʼs holiest shrine, after arguing over whether a door in the basilica should be closed during a procession. Dozens of people, including several Israeli police officers, were slightly hurt in the brawl at the shrine, built over the spot where tradition says Jesus was crucified and buried. Four priests were detained, police spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby said. Custody of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is shared by several denominations that jealously guard territory and responsibilities under a fragile deal hammered out over the last centuries. Any perceived encroachment on one groupʼs turf can lead to vicious feuds, sometimes lasting hundreds of years.
Mondayʼs fight broke out during a procession of hundreds of Greek Orthodox worshippers… Church officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at one point, the procession passed a Roman Catholic chapel, and priests from both sides started arguing over whether the door to the chapel should be open or closed. Club-wielding Israeli riot police broke up the fight…
In 2003, Israeli police threatened to limit the number of worshippers allowed to attend an Easter ceremony if the denominations did not agree on whom would lead the ceremony… But a year earlier, the Greek patriarch and Armenian clergyman designated to enter the tomb exchanged blows after a dispute over who would be first to exit the chamber.
Associated Press, 2004

Mark Twainʼs Experiment

Consider my experiment. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately. Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk [Muslim] from Constantinople; a Greek Orthodox Christian from Crete [Greece]; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahmin [Hindu priest] from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh…not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
Man is the only animal that has religion, even the True Religion…several of them.
Mark Twain, “Manʼs Place in the Animal World,” 1896

A Real Life Version Of Mark Twainʼs Experiment

In the middle of the 20th century in the eastern European country of Rumania (that was communist at the time), anyone whom the government considered “anti-communist” was imprisoned. In one case ministers of different religions were imprisoned together in the same close quarters:

In the hour which the priestsʼ room had set aside for prayer, Catholics collected in one corner, the Orthodox occupied another, the Unitarians a third. The Jehovahʼs Witnesses had a nest on the upper bunks; the Calvinists assembled down below. Twice a day, our various services were held: but among all these ancient worshippers I could scarcely find two men of different sects to say one ‘Our Father’ together. Far from fostering mutual understanding, our common plight made for conflict. Catholics could not forgive the Orthodox hierarchy for collaborating with Communism. Christians of minority beliefs disagreed about ‘rights.’ Disputes arose over every point of doctrine. And while discussion was normally conducted with genteel malice, as learnt in seminaries on wet Sunday afternoons, sometimes tempers flared. [Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, In Godʼs Underground (London : W. H. Allen, 1968), p.218, 232)]

Their “quarrels…came to a halt” only after loudspeakers were put in their cells that blared communist slogans day and night, and they were forced to attend lectures advocating communism. That was when the priests and ministers “learned that all our denominations could be reduced to two: the first is hatred, which makes ritual and dogma a pretext for attacking others; the second is love, in which men of all kinds realize their oneness and brotherhood before God.” But if the communists had not added those blaring speakers and forced them to attend lectures, would the pastors and priests have all joined together against their common enemy and “learned” how to avoid “disputing over every point of doctrine?”

“Equustentialism” By Emo Philips

(Excerpts from his 1985 comedy CD for Epic Records, E=MO2)
Emo: I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said “Stop! donʼt do it!”
Jumper: “Why shouldnʼt I?” he said.
Emo: “Well, thereʼs so much to live for!”
Jumper: “Like what?”
Emo: “Well…are you religious or an atheist?”
Jumper: “Religious.”
Emo: “Me too! Are you a Christian, Jew, or something else?”
Jumper: “A Christian.”
Emo: “Me too! Protestant or Catholic?”
Jumper: “Protestant.”
Emo: “Me too! What franchise?”
Jumper: “Baptist.”
Emo: “Wow! Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
Jumper: “Northern Baptist.”
Emo: “Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
Jumper: “Northern Conservative Baptist.”
Emo: “Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist?”
Jumper: “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist.”
Emo: “Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Eastern Region?”
Jumper: “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region.”
Emo: “Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”
Jumper: He said, “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”
Emo: And I said, “Die, heretic!” And pushed him off the bridge.

But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!
Denis Diderot (1713-1784), cited in Against the Faith by Jim Herrick

Men have gone to war and cut each otherʼs throat because they could not agree as to what was to become of them after their throats were cut.
Walter Parker Stacy (1884-1951)

Thereʼs a tendency [in religion] to declare that there is more backsliding around than the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, that itʼs time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this purpose.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Religious tolerance has developed more as a consequence of the impotence of religions to impose their dogmas on each other than as a consequence of spiritual humility.
Sidney Hook, The Partisan Review, March, 1950

The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because theyʼve realized they canʼt get away with it.
W. H. Auden, in Alan Arisen, ed., The Table-Talk of W. H. Auden (1990), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

Everyoneʼs A Skeptic (About Someone Elseʼs Religion)

Millions of Hindus pray over statues of Shivaʼs penis. Do you think thereʼs an invisible Shiva who wants his penis prayed over…or are you a skeptic?
Mormons say that Jesus came to America after his resurrection. Do you agree…or are you a doubter?
Floridaʼs Santeria worshipers sacrifice dogs, goats, chickens, etc., and toss their bodies into waterways. Do you think Santeria gods want animals killed…or are you skeptical?
Muslim suicide bombers who blow themselves up in Israel are taught that “martyrs” go instantly to a paradise full of lovely female houri nymphs. Do you think the dead bombers are in heaven with houris…or are you a doubter?
Unification Church members think Jesus visited Master Moon and told him to convert all people as “Moonies.” Do you believe this sacred tenet of the Unification Church?
Jehovahʼs Witnesses say that, any day now, Satan will come out of the earth with an army of demons, and Jesus will come out of the sky with an army of angels, and the Battle of Armageddon will kill everyone on earth except Jehovahʼs Witnesses. Do you believe this solemn teaching of their church?
Aztecs skinned maidens and cut out human hearts for a feathered serpent god. Whatʼs your stand on invisible feathered serpents? Aha!…just as I suspected, you donʼt believe.
Catholics are taught that the communion wafer and wine magically become the actual body and blood of Jesus during chants and bell-ringing. Do you believe in the “real presence”…or are you a disbeliever?
Faith-healer Ernest Angley says he has the power, described in the Bible, to “discern spirits,” which enables him to see demons inside sick people, and see angels hovering at his revivals. Do you believe this religious assertion?
The Bible says people who work on the Sabbath (Saturday) must be killed: “Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 31:15). Should we execute such people…or do you doubt this scripture?
At a golden temple in West Virginia, saffron-robed worshipers think theyʼll become one with Lord Krishna if they chant “Hare Krishna” enough. Do you agree…or do you doubt it?
Members of the “Heavenʼs Gate” commune said they could “shed their containers” (their bodies) and be transported to a UFO behind the Hale-Bopp Comet. Do you think theyʼre now on that UFO…or are you a skeptic?
During the witch hunts, inquisitor priests tortured thousands of women into confessing that they blighted crops, had sex with Satan, etc. then burned them for it. Do you think the church was right to enforce the Bibleʼs command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18)…or do you doubt this scripture?
Members of Spiritualist churches say they talk with the dead during worship services. Do you think they actually communicate with spirits of deceased people?
Millions of American Pentecostals spout “the unknown tongue,” a spontaneous outpouring of sounds. They say it is the Holy Ghost, the third god of the Trinity, speaking through them. Do you believe this sacred tenet of many Americans?
Scientologists say each human has a soul which is a “Thetan” that came from another planet. Do you believe their doctrine…or doubt it?
Ancient Greeks thought a multitude of gods lived on Mt. Olympus…and some of todayʼs New Agers think invisible Lemurians live inside Mt. Shasta. Whatʼs your position on mountain gods…belief or disbelief?
In the mountains of West Virginia, some people obey Christʼs farewell command that true believers “shall take up serpents” (Mark 16:18). They pick up rattlers at church services. Do you believe this scripture, or not?
Indiaʼs Thugs thought the many-armed goddess Kali wanted them to strangle human sacrifices. Do you think thereʼs an invisible goddess who wants people strangled…or are you a disbeliever?
Tibetʼs Buddhists say that when an old Lama dies, his spirit enters a baby boy being born somewhere. So they remain leaderless for a dozen years or more, then they find a pubescent boy who seems to have knowledge of the old Lamaʼs private life, and they anoint the boy as the new Lama (actually the old Lama in a new body). Do you think that dying Lamas fly into new babies, or not?
In China in the 1850s, a Christian convert said God appeared to him, told him he was Jesusʼs younger brother, and commanded him to “destroy demons.” He raised an army of believers who waged the “Taiping Rebellion” that killed 20 million people. Do you think he was Christʼs brother…or do you doubt it?
James A. Haught, “Everyoneʼs a Skeptic…About Other Religions” [Originally delivered as a talk to Campus Freethought Alliance, Marshall University, Huntington, WV, July 12, 1998]

Expel the Lies (or, “Win Ben Stein's Career!”) : Selections from recent reviews of the movie Expelled, starring Ben Stein

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with Ben Stein addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Steinʼs screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, ‘the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus’ but that ‘the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Steinʼs lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university.’

Expelled trots out some of the people whom it claims have been persecuted. First among them is Robert Sternberg, former editor of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, who published an article on ID by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Sternberg tells Stein that he subsequently lost his editorship, his old position at the Smithsonian Institutionʼs National Museum of Natural History and his original office.

What most viewers of Expelled may not realize—because the film doesnʼt even hint at it—is that Sternbergʼs case is not quite what it sounds. Biologists criticized Sternbergʼs choice to publish the paper not only because it supported ID but also because Sternberg approved it by himself rather than sending it out for independent expert review. He didnʼt lose his editorship; he published the paper in what was already scheduled to be his last issue as editor. He didnʼt lose his job at the Smithsonian; his appointment there as an unpaid research associate had a limited term, and when it was over he was given a new one. His office move was scheduled before the paper ever appeared. [For more details see Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin by Michael Shermer.]

Steinʼs case for conspiracy centers on a journal article written by Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the intelligent design think tank Discovery Institute and professor at the theologically conservative Christian Palm Beach Atlantic University. Meyerʼs article, ‘The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,’ was published in the June 2004 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the voice of the Biological Society with a circulation of less than 300 people. In other words, from the get-go this was much ado about nothing.

Nevertheless, some members of the organization voiced their displeasure, so the societyʼs governing council released a statement explaining, ‘Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The council, which includes officers, elected councilors and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.’ So how did it get published? In the words of journalʼs managing editor at the time, Richard Sternberg, ‘it was my prerogative to choose the editor who would work directly on the paper, and as I was best qualified among the editors, I chose myself.’ And what qualified Sternberg to choose himself? Perhaps it was his position as a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, which promotes intelligent design, along with being on the editorial board of the Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, a creationism journal committed to the literal interpretation of Genesis. Or perhaps it was the fact that he is a signatory of the Discovery Instituteʼs ‘100 Scientists who Doubt Darwinism’ statement.

Meyerʼs article is the first intelligent design paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it deals less with systematics (or taxonomy, Sternbergʼs specialty) than it does paleontology, for which many members of the society would have been better qualified than he to peer-review the paper. (In fact, at least three members were experts on the Cambrian invertebrates discussed in Meyerʼs paper).

Meyer claims that the ‘Cambrian explosion’ of complex hard-bodied life forms over 500 million years ago could not have come about through Darwinian gradualism. The fact that geologists call it an ‘explosion’ leads creationists to glom onto the word as a synonym for ‘sudden creation.’ After four billion years of an empty Earth, God reached down from the heavens and willed trilobites into existence ex nihilo. In reality, according to paleontologist Donald Prothero, in his 2007 magisterial book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia University Press): ‘The major groups of invertebrate fossils do not all appear suddenly at the base of the Cambrian but are spaced out over strata spanning 80 million years—hardly an instantaneous ‘explosion’! Some groups appear tens of millions of years earlier than others. And preceding the Cambrian explosion was a long slow buildup to the first appearance of typical Cambrian shelled invertebrates.’ If an intelligent designer did create the Cambrian life forms, it took 80 million years of gradual evolution to do it.

Stein, however, is uninterested in paleontology, or any other science for that matter. His focus is on what happened to Sternberg, who is portrayed in the film as a martyr to the cause of free speech. ‘As a result of publishing the Meyer article,’ Stein intones in his inimitably droll voice, ‘Dr. Sternberg found himself the object of a massive campaign that smeared his reputation and came close to destroying his career.’ According to Sternberg, ‘after the publication of the Meyer article the climate changed from being chilly to being outright hostile. Shunned, yes, and discredited.’ As a result, Sternberg filed a claim against the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for being ‘targeted for retaliation and harassment’ for his religious beliefs. ‘I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist,’ he tells Stein. In August 2005 his claim was rejected. According to Jonathan Coddington, his supervisor at the NMNH, Sternberg was not discriminated against, was never dismissed, and in fact was not even a paid employee, but just an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term!

The rest of the martyrdom stories in Expelled have similar, albeit less menacing explanations, detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where physical anthropologist Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, for example, did not get tenure at Iowa State University in Ames and is portrayed in the film as sacrificed on the alter of tenure denial because of his authorship of a pro—intelligent design book entitled The Privileged Planet (Regnery Publishing, 2004). As Scott told me, ‘Tenure is based on the evaluation of academic performance at oneʼs current institution for the previous seven years.’ Although Gonzales was apparently a productive scientist before he moved to Iowa State, Scott says that ‘while there, his publication record tanked, he brought in only a couple of grants—one of which was from the [John] Templeton Foundation to write The Privileged Planet—didnʼt have very many graduate students, and those he had never completed their degrees. Lots of people donʼt get tenure, for the same legitimate reasons that Gonzalez didnʼt get tenure.’

Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life. Tenure decisions for astronomers are based on the number and quality of scientific papers published, the prestige of the journal in which they are published, the number of grants funded (universities are ranked, in part, by the grant-productivity of their faculties), the number of graduate students who completed their program, the amount of telescope time allocated as well as the trends in each of these categories, indicating whether or not the candidate shows potential for continued productivity. In point of fact, according to Gregory Geoffroy, president of Iowa State, ‘Over the past 10 years, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the physics and astronomy department were not granted tenure.’ Gonzales was one of them, and for good reasons, despite Steinʼs claim of his ‘stellar academic record.’

The most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a ‘great chain of being.’ The economic ruin of the Weimar Republic left many Germans itching to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and the Jews and other ethnic groups were convenient scapegoats. The roots of European anti-Semitism go back to the end of the Roman Empire. Organized attacks and local exterminations of the Jews were perpetrated during the Crusades and the Black Plague. The Russian empire committed many attacks on the Jews in the 19th and early 20th century, giving rise to the word ‘pogrom.’ Profound anti-Semitism even pollutes the works of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who reviled them in On the Jews and Their Lies and wrote, ‘We are at fault in not slaying them.’ I donʼt think Protestantism is accountable for the Holocaust, either, but the focus on ‘the Jews’ as scapegoats, and the added idea that their ‘bad non-Aryan blood’ had to be eliminated by killing them, were not Darwinʼs ideas.

The weakness of the logic of Expelled is beside the point, however. No one who is familiar with the evidence for evolution is likely to leave the theater shaken. Some people with looser understandings of the science or the legal issues might buy into its arguments about ‘fairness’ and protecting religion against science. Expelled is nonetheless mostly a film for ID creationismʼs religious base. That audience has seen one setback after the next in recent years, with science rejecting ID as useless and the courts rebuffing it as for a constitutional violation in public education. For them, Expelled is a rallying point to revive their morale.