We humans have all inherited remnants of the “reptilian brain”, by which I indicate the autonomic/emotional core that is found throughout the animal kingdom.

The apes that ultimately evolved into humans enjoyed survival advantages over those of their cousins who had not inherited genes for the Great NeoCortical Leap Forward. That is, in hominid evolution, those apes with the greatest cognitive advantage were able to survive, proliferate, and outnumber their rivals.

The persistence of religion, despite the far greater explanatory power of scientific knowledge, relies upon this emotional side of human nature. However, those who wish to impose their religious views on society are also well aware that the Idea of God must be instilled into children while they are still stuck in the magical-thinking stage. Let any child, even a child of average intelligence, grow to adulthood before attempting to convince them that some old book holds more “Truth” than empirical facts, and that mind will most likely have escaped religion’s clutches. Only early indoctrination can keep the synagogues, mosques, and churches filled with individuals willing to put an inculcated obsession ahead of humanity.

Catch ‘em young and many of them will never outgrow magical thinking because some are not genetically endowed with the cognitive powers to overcome illogic. Religionists seem unwilling to grasp the fact that atheists have escaped religious indoctrination through the operation of critical thinking rather than that atheists are victims of scientific cultism, naturally immoral, or incapable of emotional response.

Religionists, however, are scared of scientific knowledge because at some deep level that they are too scared to admit science refutes the creation mythology in Genesis. Religionists are so scared of knowledge that many, such as the creationist family in “God’s Christian Warriors”, are home-schooling their children to ensure that they cannot bite the forbidden fruit of secular knowledge. If the facts supported religionist beliefs, then creationists would not need to attack or defend against knowledge.

The Internet is flooded with emotional reactions to the program, including criticisms that Amanpour did not fully cover the religious history behind the fundamentalist nutbars* interviewed. The program did not claim to be a history of religion, so this criticism is irrelevant.

*Yes, I do mean nutbars in the sense of their not being emotionally stable and of their displaying an antisocial cognitive disorder. Militant fundamentalists are individuals who decry religiopolitical actions in one breath then justify greater atrocities in the next. Obviously, these hate-filled control-freaks decry acts against their religiopolitical position while self-justifying any act that they deem necessary to promote their selfish, indoctrinated religiopolitical position.

Rather than being a history of religious thought, “God’s Warriors” is an examination of the fervent religiopolitical activites of fundamentalists from each of the three major J-C-I religions. Call Him Yahweh, God, or Allah, the fictional deity is the same deity for all the religions. Let’s call Him “Yagoal” to indicate that there is ONLY ONE common J-C-I deity. One Father to Unite Us All. Except, of course, that human nature is more inclined to the divisive.

So, with a single, identical Yagoal, only the T-B-K books and the interpretive trappings differ. This sectarian nonsense is the cause of so much religious strife.

٭ I watched the first segment (Jewish fundamentalists, Conservative Zionists in Israel) with diminishing hope that the region will find peace. The battle is not so much over ideology as it is over which ideological group has control over lands and structures revered as Holy by virtue of the ideology. For the Palestinians it is a question of land from which they have been recently displaced by UN votes, by armed conflict, and by the zionist version of squatters rights. For the Jews, the book that Jews wrote (T) promises them ownership of land that has long been in the possession of others.

The zealot who claimed that Yagoal wants Jews to worship in areas that are now confined to Muslims did not seem to have wondered why, if Yagoal wanted this so much, Yagoal did not make an appearance to settle the matter. If Yagoal was interested enough to dictate a book (T), and then sent his Son to dictate a revision (B), and then sent another prophet to dictate another revision (K), then why is Yagoal showing so little interest in the current disputes? Why has Yagoal not cared about his Special Creation for the last 1,400 years? The answer is obvious to anyone who cares to think logically, but the entire series demonstrated that religious fundamentalism and logic very definitely do not mix.

ر I watched the militant Islamic fundamentalist segment with a mixture of disgust at worldviews that have regressed so far since the flowering of Islam and with concern for moderate Muslims, for Muslim women, and for the future of civilization in the face of such passionate desire for oppressive regression.

How could I respect a mother who was delighted that her son was a suicide bomber and murderer? Does she have Yagoal’s personal assurance that her son is really in Paradise as reward for murderous deeds for which most religions threaten Eternal Damnation? Her son, in reality, is simply dead.

He threw away his life and the lives of others in the mistaken belief that he was not throwing away the only life that he will ever have in exchange for nothingness. He, Islamic puritan though he might claim to be, expected to be rewarded for his crime with ownership of some mythical number of virgins, presumably without veils etcetera. This is what comes of sexual repression! Muslims might despise American sexual freedom, but their notion of Paradise necessarily includes licence for sexual license.

Of course, deities do not actually exist, but even if Yagoal did exist, why would this Father want his children killing one another over misinterpretations of his edicts? Were the 10 Commandments just a first draft, and Yagoal has changed his mind in the interests of furthering conflict? Again, the answer is obvious, neither Yahweh, God, Allah, or Yagoal actually exist, so there is no deity Who will evince the least interest in the outcome of these bloody struggles.

Scientific knowledge has provided us with ample, internally consistent understanding of the world and our place in it. It is just that those who believe fervently in Yagoal and the man-invented Yagoal literature without any empirical, logical basis for that belief. Further, they refuse to believe in reality because they are personally empty and fear-ridden without external emotional props.

Despite all their tear-stained fervor and emotional declarations concerning the joy that obsessive belief in Yagoal has given them, the lives and psyche of all the fundamentalists appear to be in danger of complete collapse without crowd-promulgated mysterical** rituals and compulsive prayer.

Americans, of course, don’t have to worry about fighting over ownership of the land in which they live. They stole that land from the Native Americans over an extended period of trickery, battles, massacres, imprisonments, forced marches and treaties. Only the Mormons are so daft as to believe that Jesus actually made a side-trip to America.

† Religious Right [sick] Fistian Americans crow about the supremacy of American democracy on the one hand and decry its political and legislative advances on the other. With sublime ignorance of the actual sociological mechanisms in operation, conservative religious bigots blame all that goes wrong in their society on any group that holds views that do not fit their own narrow, indoctrinated, hate-filled worldview. These bigots are not content to live moral lives in which they personally practice their own values, they wish to impose their rigid, punitive values on the entire society by subverting the political system.

In the final analysis, Amanpour did not need to decry the messages proclaimed by whatever fundamentalist platform. To any viewer with a logical turn of mind who values peace, justice, emotional health, social values, truth, education, or compassion, the fundamentalists damned themselves and their mysterical messages. Six hours of listening to fundamentalist obsessives should be enough to convince any rational person that theocracies present a threat to the wellbeing of all concerned, including, kaboom, the religiously obsessed.

Obviously, the mysterically deluded viewer might deplore that fundamentalism associated with a different religious sect or denomination and would lack the capacity to see the anti-social component of his or her delirium of choice. Falwellists might consider themselves part of the “Moral Majority”, but they are moralistic rather than moral, and they are, fortunately, still in the minority.

J-C-I = Judeo-Christian-Islamic
T-B-K = Torah-Bible-Koran
Y-G-A= Yahweh-God-Allah = Yagoal

Fundamentalism is a belief in absolute religious authority and the accompanying demand that this religious authority be legally enforced. Often, fundamentalism involves the willingness to do battle for one’s faith. Fundamentalists make up only one part of any religion’s followers, who usually fall along a wide spectrum of different interpretations, values and beliefs.

† Fistians = Fundamentalist Christians

** mysteria, mysterical = mystical (as in magic-thinking), masses (as in mob-mentality), combined with emotional hysteria. This is the pump-up-the-devotion-to-shared-prejudices that religievangelists employ to overcome the last vestiges of reason in rationality-deficient audiences.

Sites Elsewhere : God’s Mysterical Warriors .

The numbers of people identifying themselves as atheists in surveys have been a small fraction of the population, and atheist organisations have had relatively little impact on the wider cultural landscape. But this could be changing. The high public profile (and sales) of recent books by Dawkins, Richard Dennett, AC Grayling, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens suggests growing numbers of people may be being drawn to identifying themselves in opposition to religion. Dawkins’s declared interest in making atheism more publicly acceptable – exemplified by the sale of ‘A for atheism’ T-shirts on his website – demonstrates that this phenomenon is not simply about philosophical debates concerning the existence of God. The sheer ferocity of many of the atheist critiques of religion also suggests that we are not in the territory of reasoned debate, but witnessing the birth pangs of a new, anti-religious cultural identity. We are now seeing a concerted effort being made to validate an atheist cultural identity through media and consumer products, just as evangelicals have already used these resources to consolidate their form of Christian identity in the modern world.

~ Gordon Lynch in “Richard Dawkins, TV evangelist“

 Describing atheistic responses as “sheer ferocity” sounds rather hysterical! Dawkins is currently vilified as some sort of antichrist figurehead

 Hitherto, we atheists/Atheists have probably been more polite about our nonacceptance of the religious dogma with which society is inundated.  We either do not believe in God (small a) or are certain that no deity exists (capital A), yet we do not usually set out to attack religion. 

 Professionl Religionists, as distinct from mild-mannered believers, have previously enjoyed tax-protected status for their promotion of arrogant claims of knowing the “Truth” and for their assumption of the high moral ground.  I suspect that much of the anti-religious backlash also reflects antagonism aroused by illogical attacks on scientific knowledge perpetrated in attempts to preserve the illusion of creationism.

 I have recently been engaged in debate with an anti-Dawkins, pro-ID, religious apologist who peppers his (perhaps her, though I doubt it) arguments with selected quotes from writers and philosophers.  Interesting though the discussion has been, I am utterly unconvinced by any line of argument that relies upon selected quotes of previously (sometimes 2000+ years earlier) expressed ideas.  One can use an idea to clarify an idea, but it is not good intellectual practice to attempt to justify concepts solely on the basis of other conceptualizations — an infinite regress of ideas that effectively clarifies nothing. It strikes me that this form of fuzzy, emotional thinking is typical of religionists.

 People having had, and continuing to have, a variety of passionately expressed opinions counts for nothing in comparison to the actual import of those ideas.  It strikes me that this is the chief difference between philosophers and scientists.  Philosophy is not without value, nor does it offer nothing to our understanding of the world, but it is inherently self-limited in so far as philosophy manipulates language about language about language and so risks becoming divorced from reality.  Navel gazing, in practice and effect. 

Modern philosophers of science acknowledge that science has supplanted the old metaphysical formulations about the world, yet the pro-ID debater seems blissfully unaware of this and insists on quoting medieval philosophers on metaphysics.  Modern philosophers of religion admit that attempts to prove the existence of God have all failed, yet creationists persist in illogical attempts to discredit science.

 Science — which those of philosophical bent like to diminish in import with labels such as Logical Positivism – formulates concepts about the physical world on the basis of physical realities.  It is extraordinary that thousands of years of human attempts to understand the physical world neglected the obvious — that we can only understand the physical by examining the physical. Darwin is the usual target of anti-evolution bandwagons despite the fact that modern evolutionary biology has moved far beyond his theory of natural selection. Anti-Darwinian propaganda may be motivated by the fact that Darwin gave the religious community a real scare.  However, this focus is more likely explained by the fact that Darwinian concepts are simple enough that the religiously motivated can explain them to other creationists and that they provide an opportunity for straw man attacks on evolutionary theory.  Further, natural selection is so well established as a mechanism for biological evolution that this concept is taught in high school biology and few creationists seem to have more knowledge of science.

 Creationists seem not to understand not only the content of science, but also the actual nature of science.  Creationists fear science because at some level that they will not admit they know that science supplants God as they understand “Him”.  As a result they either deny scientific facts, invent pseudoscience, or attack scientists. 

 Finally, does any of this matter? To those of us who identify with liberal and progressive cultural movements, whether religious or humanist, there are potentially worrying trends here. The intensity with which new atheist identities are being forged through a hatred of imagined religious others is matched by the hatred felt by some conservative religious groups towards those they perceive as godless.

 ”new atheist identities . . . forged through a hatred of imagined religious others” . . . strong language to describe a long overdue reaction to the concerted misinformation campaigns that religious fundamentalists have employed against knowledge. 

 Lynch attempts to explain the upsurge of atheist expression as being, “in part, as a reaction to the perceived threat of Islam.” 

 If the upsurge of atheism were partly or mostly a reaction to Islamic threats, reaction would surely take the form of pro-Christian, anti-Islamic statements and would not focus on promoting evolutionary theories or decrying the rigid dogmatism of Christian fundamentalism (now called evangelicism) or lamenting past Christian atrocities directed against any difference of opinion. 

 No, Mr. Lynch, the upsurge of expressed atheism is really pitted against moralistic ignorance and is pro-truth.  The upsurge of expressed atheism is a reaction to the attempt to further undermine education by forcing religion into science classrooms. The upsurge of expressed atheism is a reaction to the funding and propaganda poured into promoting whatever variant of religionist dogma.

(Francisco J. Ayala, “Darwin’s greatest discovery: Design without designer,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 104:8567–8573 (May 15, 2007).)