Religion Rejecting the World

In keeping with a dominant theme in the last few posts, I came across a story carried on Religon Dispatches - found at:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/1618/my_womb_for_his_purposes%3A_the_perils_of_unassisted_childbirth_in_the_quiverfull_movement/ - dealing with a subset of the 'quiverfull' movement of conservative Christianity that calls for a complete rejection of any human system. After all, if you depend on any person, you are not depending on God.

I have commented about this patriarchal movement that rejects any birth control and depends on God to give or to withhold pregnancy before. In case you wonder about the name, there is a Biblical reference that refers to children metaphorically as 'arrows', hence to have a 'quiverfull' is to have many children. Part of the rationale given by some in the movement is to increase the number of children in Christian families and, thus, compete against the high birth rates among other religious groups.

The story from Religion Dispatches, though, looks at a more radical portion within this movement who hold more extreme views. In the 'Home In Zion Ministries' group, primarily influenced by Carol Balizet, who in turn is influenced by Kenneth Copeland and the 'name-it-claim-it' teachings, the true Christian is one who rejects all human institutions and depends solely upon God for all things.

In their words:
We’re Home in Zion Ministries, and as our name may indicate, our goal is to encourage separation from the counterfeits of the world, and entrance into what is symbolically called Zion. This is a life TOTALLY dependent on God alone. We advocate home childbirth, home schooling, home healing, often even home churching, and other things which accompany a separation from the world and a return to the God-centered reality of the kingdom. We want to share the experiences and testimonies of the many, many families we know who have victories in these and other areas of kingdom life. We reach out to the "seven thousand" who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’

‘Satan has built himself a seven-headed system (or a system built on seven mountains) as counterfeits for these seven revelations of our need-meeting God. Seven intricate, self-perpetuating, man-glorifying, unholy organizations: government, commerce, education, science, the arts, medicine and religion, which claim to provide all the things that God has promised.’

As the Religion Dispatch article and the other articles it references, this 'Zion' based teaching has led to deaths and abuses among the followers. This certainly seems to be an example of the misinterpretation and misapplication of scripture. Yet, the beliefs expressed by this group are not that far removed by what is proclaimed in many conservative, though more 'mainstream', Christian churches. I have heard many sermons extolling the faithful to depend upon God, to turn their back on the world, and to live faithful and holy lives separated from the world. It is a short step from those sermons to this mind-set.

Religious Laws Trump Civil Laws? Part II

On June 13, I referenced the conflict in Israel between the ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe that God's laws, as they understand and apply them, trump any civil laws. That conflict was about parking cars and driving on the Sabbath.

In the US, there have been cases of children who died because their parents followed their religious beliefs and prayed for healing rather than seek medical treatment. On June 23, 2009, in one such case in Oregon, a jury essentially acquitted a couple whose 15 month old died.

Here are two reactions to this case to generate some thought.

The first can be found on the site, Religious News Service, and is an interview with a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Shawn Francis Peters, who specializes in questions about faith healing. The interview was conducted by Lindsay Perra.

Q: What does the verdict say about the public perception of faith-healing?
A: Americans aren’t necessarily hostile to the concept of faith healing. In fact, there is openness to its possibilities. The trial may have been less about faith-healing and more about the way we view the responsibilities of parents. There was a sense among jurors that the parents were doing what they thought was right. As a society, we have to give parents the latitude to do that.

Q: So religious law supersedes civil law?
A: It was more that the jury just did not see a clear intent to harm the child or an overwhelming evidence of negligence. The jury never really got beyond the sense that the parents did not try to hurt the child, but in fact, did what they thought was right. Juries typically struggle with that and then go the other way.

Q: Are there constitutional protections that protect parents who fail to provide medical treatment for their children?
A: There really aren’t outright protections for these kinds of practices. There is certainly a First Amendment right for the free exercise of religion. But, in the realm of child health, it’s pretty clear that the state interest is in helping the health and welfare of the child. That takes precedence over the parent’s right of the free practice of religion. Some state laws have exemptions for faith-healing practices.

The second is a piece written by Susan Nielsen for The Oregonian.

We also should keep asking the questions that bedevil juries in faith-healing cases: Is it ever OK to seriously harm your child in the name of religion? If so, which religion? Other states that struggle with these questions tend to realize that holding citizens to different criminal standards, based on their religious beliefs rather than their conduct, leads to messy laws, messy trials, unhappy juries and more dead kids.

The Worthingtons, who shun modern medicine in favor of faith healing, stood trial last month on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminal mistreatment for the 2008 death of their 15-month-old daughter, Ava. Prosecutors said the couple let the child die of pneumonia and a blood infection, complicated by an untreated cyst on her neck that affected her breathing. . . .

The Supreme Court correctly holds that the state must give great deference to parents. The ability to raise children according to one's beliefs and direct their medical care is a matter of fundamental liberty, deeply rooted in our laws and culture.

Yet these rights are not absolute. Beliefs are held sacred but conduct is not, and the government can intervene if parents endanger their children. As the high court famously ruled more than 60 years ago, "Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children."

Do you believe that religious beliefs should trump any civil law?

Shermer & Ayala, Part II

In a followup to the last post, there is at least one more point/counterpoint discussion between Michael Shermer and Francisco Ayala in the LA Times, which can be found at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-ayala-shermer31-2009jul31,0,2221507.story. This time the question was: What do you think of the theory that religious belief and experience are wired through evolution?

Shermer definitely agrees. He sees the human tendency to make meaningful causal patterns in observing and interpreting data as leading to a sense of the existence of spirits and gods. Note his conclusion:

People are religious because we are social and we need to get along. The moral sentiments in humans and moral principles in human groups evolved primarily through the force of natural selection operating on individuals, and secondarily through the force of group selection operating on populations. The moral sense (the psychological feeling of doing "good" in the form of positive emotions such as righteousness and pride) evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were good either for the individual or for the group. An immoral sense (the psychological feeling of doing "bad" in the form of negative emotions such as guilt and shame) evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were bad either for the individual or for the group.

While cultures may differ on what behaviors are defined as good or bad, the moral sense of feeling good or feeling bad about behavior X (whatever X may be) is an evolved human universal. The codification of moral principles out of the psychology of the moral sentiments evolved as a form of social control to ensure the survival of individuals within groups and the survival of human groups themselves. Religion was the first social institution to canonize moral principles, and God -- as an explanatory pattern for the world -- took on new powers as the ultimate enforcer of the rules.

Thus it is that people are religious and believe in God.

Ayala approached the question from another perspective. He posited the view that it was the natural selection process that emphasized and rewarded intelligence that led to religious practices and understandings. Again, read his conclusion:

Seeking causal explanations for events in the natural world was one source of religious beliefs and practices. Humans live in complex societies, which need to be governed by laws and moral norms. Seeking justification for moral norms and social laws was another source of religious faith and cults. Israelites, for example, were told by Moses to observe the Ten Commandments because these were ordered by God.

But there is one more source of religion that also depends on our evolution-endowed intelligence: self-awareness and its consequence, death-awareness. Except for young infants, every person is conscious of existing as a distinct individual, different from other people and from the environment. Self-awareness is the most immediate and unquestionable reality of our experience.

Moreover, we humans are the only animals with full experience of self-awareness, which implies death-awareness. If I know I exist as a distinct human individual, I know I will die because I see other people die. Because we ceremonially bury our dead, we know humans are the only animals that are death-aware. All human societies have burial rituals, although the rites are very diverse. Ritual burial follows from death-awareness: If I know I will die, I will treat other dead humans with such respect because I want to be treated this way when I die.

Because we humans are aware of the transitory character of our existence, we develop anxiety over death. This anxiety is at least in part alleviated by religious beliefs and rituals, which give meaning to one's own life even though life will end. Anxiety about death is further relieved in the many religions that attribute immortality to the soul, either through successive reincarnations or in the form of life beyond death.

Evolution, by making humans intelligent, predisposed us to be religious.

Now, the question for you is simple. Does this human pre-disposition to be homo religiosus suggest that we can conclude there is nothing beyond the material universe? What do you think?

Science and Religion . . . Again

The LA Times has had two point/counterpoint pieces written by Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skpetic, a magazine, and a contributor to Scientific American, and Francisco Ayala, a biology professor at UC Irvine, member of the US National Academy of Acience, and a recipient of the US National Medal of Science in 2001. The first piece I saw was on the relationship between science and religion, using Stephen J. Gould's understanding of science and religion representing two different, but not conflictual, magisteria. The link to it is: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-ayala-shermer30-2009jul30,0,1435073.story

Shermer concluded his piece with these words:
In conclusion, I go so far as to conclude that there is no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal. There is only the natural, the normal and mysteries we have yet to explain. God is a mystery, and the God of Abraham may very well be an eternal mystery for the simple reason that any god explicable through science and the laws of nature would, by definition, lose the status of supernatural and enter the realm of the natural. A god definable by science is not a god at all.

Here is Ayala's conclusion:
Just as many other religious authorities have said, Pope John Paul II put the matter correctly when he asserted that the "Bible itself speaks to us of the origins of the universe and its make-up in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. ... Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven."

I do agree with you, Michael: A god definable by science is not God.

There are many who would use the Bible as a science textbook and conclude that any discovery by modern science that contradicts their understanding of the teachings of the Bible is false. I feel they are wrong to use the scripture in that way. I take scripture very seriously. Scripture illuminates great truths about the reality of humanity and the relationship between the human and the divine; it does not, though, teach us biology or cosmology or physics. Nor should we try to make it do so.