elfs | Culturally Approved Bigotry

It never ceases to amaze me, the number of TV shows and movies where, week after week, a Jewish character is portrayed as having "seen the light," come to his senses, and converts to Christianity. It was as if there was some kind of common sensibility among our mass-media producers that there was something so utterly wrong about such a powerless little group that it was acceptable, week after week, to hold them up to scrutiny and, if only in fiction, show individual Jews realizing the error of their ways.

Such cultural bigotry doesn't really exist in America. Popular cultural consensus doesn't portray each Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu as "wrong" about the choice he makes every day to retain his identity as Jew, Muslim, or Hindu. We can be confident that the media isn't going to attack anyone because of his or her specific beliefs about god or the supernatural.

Of course, if you don't actually believe in that stuff, then you're fair game. It's okay for popular television and movies to depict atheists, agnostics, and secularists "seeing the light" and coming to cherish their belief in a supernatural reality "beyond our own."

There is a special irony in that, to show these characters "the light," the TV shows have to use special effects. None of what they experience, we can experience. Angels do not appear (and if they did, reality would still suck) to us, the hand of God does not move mountains. Believers seem prone to thank their particular god for their survial from disaster without ever wondering why the disaster happened in the first place, and often miss out the dark horror attendent on their thankfulness that other people died, but not them.

I was reminded of this persistent assault on a dedication to reality because it seems that the rabbis are feeling a bit threatened by it. Rabbi Avi Shafran discusses the "remorselessness" of a recently deceased mafia hitman as an example of a life without god-- without ever actually discussing what the hitman's actual religious beliefs were (according to his obituary, he was a Catholic) and then, using this very shaky ground, proceeds to declare that "atheists bristle at the implication of their belief, that morality and ethics are figments of our evolutionary imagination."

Well, no, Rabbi, we don't. Because I don't believe that. Morality and ethics are consequences of our evolutionary heritage: without a moral sense, we wouldn't be here. And in fact, most people have a moral sense not because some god tells them to have one, but because the consequences of not having one are dire: you usually end up dead at the hands of the moralists because there are a lot more of them than there are of you. Morality is an evolutionary strategy to create an environment in which we can compete more effectively.

Besides, the history of morality is not pretty: we only extend our sense of moral worth to those whose existence is more beneficial to us than not.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Gellman says that he wants to understand angry atheists, and asks the silly question, "Why do they seem threatened by the idea of God?"

Why am I ocassionally driven to anger? See above: mocking those who don't put up with your nonsense about reality, who don't spend every day convinced that the world is an illusion about to rolled up like a rug, is the last acceptable bigotry even among the liberal left.

I am not threatened by god. The idea of god is threatening because it drives people to bigotry, hatred, and discrimination. Like all religious ideas, it is ultimately the hands of human beings that act them out, that put "god's will" into action, often in opposition to some other "god's will," and often with tragic consequences for both.

Gellman writes that he is bemused by atheists the way Christians are bemused by his refusal to accept the Gospel as "gospel." Well, from my perspective, a pox on both fantasy houses. If secularism wasn't here to hate, you'd turn on each other in a heartbeat. The tendency of belief systems to divide into "the divine us" and "the diablical them" is no surprise: over 80% of the conflicts being waged today are between two different strains of Islam which can't agree if you pray with your arms on your thighs or on your belly.

I'm reminded of an Emo joke that gets less funny as I get older:

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! don't do it!"

"Why shouldn't I?" he said.

I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"

He said, "Like what?"

I said, "Well- are you religious or atheist?"

He said, "Religious."

I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

He said, "Christian."

I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

He said, "Protestant."

I said, "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

He said, "Baptist!"

I said, "Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

He said, "Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?"

He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!"

I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.