The myth of the New Atheism is that it’s not a myth.
That is, it's founded purely on observed, deductive reasoning and there's no myth or dogma about it.
Unfortunately for the apostles of New Atheism, in drilling down to the foundations of some of the basic tenets of their faith, I have found that instead of being built on the solid rock of demonstrable, objective science, it may as well be build on aether. Here's another example; 'people are good but religion is evil'.
Please follow me carefully on this because I'm going to agree broadly with the idea.
My contention with it is that it is utterly incompatible with 'pure' New Atheism. The idea actually belongs at home in a peculiarly Christian context. In other words, the New Atheists cannot say this if they want to advance their cause. Christians might say it without contradicting their own world-view, but I advise caution (I hate slogans, even good ones, anyway).
To be more specific, my objection to the New Atheist's use of this slogan is twofold;
1 'Pure' atheism cannot comprehend that good is 'good' and evil is 'evil', therefore it has no logical basis to call people 'good' and religion 'evil'. A better paradigm is found in the Christian Gospel.
2 Jesus and his followers spearheaded a counter-Temple movement. I'll tackle this next week.
Are people 'good'?
My understanding of 'pure' New Atheism is that there is no external, divine influence on the cosmos. Everything is cause and effect. Everything in the cosmos is what it is now purely and wholly because of what it was one micro-nano-second earlier. And where it was one micro-nano-second earlier was because of where it was in the previous micro-nano second, and so on, all the way back to the Big Bang.
Each and every electron, for example, in the entire universe is located where it is located now because of a seamless and uninterrupted chain of events since the Big Bang. That's an unimaginable number of electrons and an unimaginable period of time but, and this is the point, because they all obey natural and reasonable laws with no surprises thrown in by an external deity, their current locations are entirely predictable (we don't have the computational power to do the math for an accurate prediction and we never will).
Another way to look at it is to say that each and every electron, and everything else in the cosmos was always going to end up exactly where it is today. It doesn't have a choice.
This includes all the electrons spinning round the atoms in the electro-chemical impulses in your brain in that great flux that you perceive as 'thought'. Curiously, you don't have a choice either, because those electrons were always going to line up exactly as they have done and coalesce into what you perceive as a choice, ever since the Big Bang.
So, if we were only ever going to make the choices we make, what makes a good choice 'good' and an evil choice 'evil'? What makes Michael Young's attempt to cycle around Australia to raise money for the Cancer Council good, and what makes implementing a policy to systematically exterminate Jews evil? According to the New Atheism, both choices are simply the results of the laws of nature exerting themselves inexorably on the cosmos.
The common response, I suspect, is to call something 'good' if it is beneficial to humanity. The Nazi Holocaust was obviously not good in this context; in fact, we call it 'evil'.
Now, I'm absolutely not going to defend genocides and other atrocities here, but I need to ask the question about why 'beneficial to humanity' constitutes 'good' in an objective sense.
As I have argued above, the impersonal laws of nature have simply acted to bring everything to where it is today. In the process, they threw up human beings, but they also threw up cockroaches, HIV viruses and a host of other creatures. What makes us think that the interests of human beings are more important that these other things, and what happens when their interests conflict?
We like to think we are special. But, according to the New Atheism, that sense of 'specialness' is nothing more than the result of the normal, impersonal forces that shaped our anthropogenic heritage. There's nothing 'special' about the 'special' feeling, and the universe certainly doesn't care one way or the other. Will that 'special' feeling save me from being killed by a tsunami? Of course not! Though, it might give me the motivation to try to get myself saved.
If we step outside our own self-interests for a moment, we are faced with the unsettling truth of the Atheistic Cosmos – what right have I got to pursue and defend my interests? Who should we kill; the patient or the malarial protozoa? They both owe their existence to an unknowing and uncaring universe that has no purpose in its existence and no way to know the difference between the human or malarial creature. To assert otherwise would be to insist on an intelligent and purposeful deity, which is strictly forbidden under the rules of New Atheism.
By contrast, the Christian Gospel, following the older Jewish tradition, asserts that when God made the universe, he made it 'good' (Genesis 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:20, 1:25 etc.). In other words, God looked at what he had made and he liked it. Furthermore, he particularly liked the human beings he had made and considered them to be a special part of his good creation (Genesis 1:27-31). Interestingly, he continued to safeguard their interests, even when they lost interest in his (read from Genesis 3:21 to the end of the book), but I digress. Here, we have a logical basis to call the protection of humanity's interests a 'good' thing.
The picture is nuanced by the introduction of sin, which tends to draw people to the wrong thing. However it is complete in the sense that we are created as sentient beings with the capacity of choice and, even though we often choose evil, we have a basis to promote and defend the things that are beneficial to our neighbors. In other words, my neighbor might harm me, but I still have a reason to love him (Matthew 22:36-40).
So, the Christian Gospel lays a rational, logical foundation on which to call people 'good' and to pursue the things that benefit them.
There is no such foundation in New Atheism.
In New Atheism, it's a myth.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Myths of New Atheism - Part 1 - The Myth of Inevitable Progress
The myth of the New Atheism is that it’s not a myth.
Or, technically, it’s not founded on its own myths.
What I aim to do here is to expose some of those myths, as I see them. I concede at the outset that this doesn’t prove the New Atheism to be false, any more than it proves my Christian Faith to be true. However, what I hope to do is to counter the shrill voices of New Atheism that condemn me, and people like me, for no other reason that we hold to our particular mythology.
Mr. Kettle, let me introduce you to Mr. Pot.
(They’re both black, in case you didn’t get it.)
The first myth of the New Atheism is what I call the myth of inevitable progress. It’s more a sentiment than a doctrine, but it still ends up as dogma. It is expressed in a number of ways, but it ends up at roughly the same place – we are better than our parents because…well, just because, OK?
And by ‘better’, it can be ‘better’ in any number of ways. We are more tolerant, better informed, more rational, more reasonable, better communicators. In its crudest form, it’s the voice of the petulant teenager screaming out that his or her parents are stupid idiots (because they have ordered said teenager to tidy up his or her bedroom).
Now, it may just be that we have access to better information and education (though the latter is moot), but the wry commentator will note that not all change is progress. Certainly, this is the case if you look in the broader history of humankind. Nazi Germany thought it was progressing to a new age, the infamous Third Reich, and we know how that story ended.
Kingdoms and Empires rise and fall. On what basis do we say that one is ‘better’ than another? On what objective basis can I claim to be a ‘better’ person than my forebears?
If the New Atheists look to evolutionary theory to underpin this sentiment, they are looking in the wrong place. Specifically, our species has been recognizably distinct for many tens of thousands of years. I’m sorry if my science is a bit vague here, but it’s certainly a very long time when compared to the time span from one single generation to the next. In other words, we (modern 21st Century human beings) are genetically indistinct from those people who hid in caves and told themselves creation myths in the dark. Apart from the chronology, the only thing different between them and us is our access to better technology, and the internet.
If we were to get hold of a caveman, give him a shower and take him through our education system, he would look at the world in much the same way as we do. The question here is not what opportunities that education would open up to him, but how he would use them. Would he be wiser or more stupid than us? Would he be ‘better’ than us? Genetically, he would be indistinguishable from us; same man, different clothes.
What’s worse, and this is something ‘proper’ evolutionists would probably agree on, is the myth that evolution will make me into a better person. Face it; evolution by natural selection will NOT make you into a better person. What it does is that if you’re genetic make-up is better suited to the circumstances in which you find yourself, you’re more likely to pass it on to your progeny than someone who’s make-up is less suited. It’s all about your progeny, not you, and by the time they benefit (several generations into the future), you’ll be dead. You will not benefit one iota. It offers no hope to the individual.
You cannot call on evolution to claim that you are being made into a better person. What’s more, we cannot claim that evolution is making us better as a species, because we have interrupted the process of natural selection. Put simply, instead of being forced by our environment to change our genetic make-up over the generations, we have changed our environment to suit our genetic make-up. The Eugenics movement tried to correct this perceived imbalance, but they went the same way as the Nazis, which is no mere coincidence.
See. I’m appealing to history, which might be a waste of time on some New Atheists because they were the first to discover the universe, stupid.
We could go on with the current misuse of the word. For example, we could say that the personal computer has ‘evolved’ from its humble beginnings.
No it hasn’t. Not in the naturalistic sense. The reason PCs are better now than they were is wholly because an external intelligence (PC engineers) looked at previous generations and figured out how to improve them. Apply this metaphor to the natural world, and you actually argue for Theism (an intervening external intelligence), not Atheism.
So, please, let’s abandon the idea that evolution is somehow responsible for the law of inevitable progress – it isn’t.
It changes stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better. In fact, you could argue that it actually makes it worse through a rather poor exegesis of the Laws of Thermodynamics and entropy.
One of the more insidious expressions of the myth of inevitable progress is the Richard Dawkins doctrine on the evolution of religion. Put simply (and you’ll find this pap all over the internet) Mr. Caveman didn’t have science to explain how the universe worked, so he invented God. The argument follows that now we have the science, we don’t need God. In fact we need to progress beyond the idea of God because…well, just because its progress, OK, and progress is inevitable. God, therefore, is holding us back.
Crucially, Dawkins and his disciples miss the point that its not just about science. If you believe that the purpose of humanity is to produce good science, then Dawkins’ hypothesis might actually work for you. (I’m not convinced, and I don’t see why, in an Atheistic Universe, improving our understanding of it will make any ultimate difference to it whatsoever). However, human beings are more than walking test-tubes – we try to understand our universe for a reason, and that reason is life and living (to put it crudely).
Allow me to illustrate. A few months ago, a friend of mine, Michael Young, set out to cycle around Australia and raise money for Cancer Research. Incidentally, he’s a Christian and I know him because we go to the same church. When he set out, I don’t think he thought to himself, “I’m going to need to invent a God who will fill in the gaps in my knowledge of the route”, which is akin to Dawkins’ simplistic analysis of why religion came to be. What I do think he thought was that by undertaking this venture, some good will come of it (because, ultimately, there is a God who is interested in such things), and I sincerely hope it does. (PS Please donate through Michael's website, if you can.) The former is an enquiry into the nature of the universe; the latter is faith. Dawkins confuses the two in his quest to replace Christianity with a cult of his own making.
I digress, but the myth of inevitable progress ignores the evidence, which is inexcusable for a movement that prides itself on being led by the evidence. And, by evidence, I’m referring to the many, many instances in which faith in God has propelled the advances that we have benefited from today.
For example, the very fact you are reading this has much to do with the Reformation. The Reformers vigorously promoted the learning of reading and writing and the reason, for them, is that they wanted people to be able to read the Bible for themselves, without relying on the Roman Church to read and interpret it for them. In fact the whole premise that we function better in the universe if we understand it finds its origins in the Judaeo-Christian traditions, and we’re talking about traditions that stretch back maybe 3,500 years to Moses and beyond.
Surely, if we are to become ‘better’ people, then we need to allow ourselves to learn from our forebears, and to do that we must abandon our bombastic claims that we are intrinsically better than them. Progress is possible, yes, but it’s not inevitable and it takes a lot more humility and hard work than the New Atheists might acknowledge.
When I see the kind of propaganda put out by some New Atheists, my mind instantly goes to the petulant teenager. Usually, bound up with these objections, there is some reason to jettison God. It’s usually an objection to the possibility that God could interfere with that person’s life in some way. Heaven forbid that this same God might actually judge that person and (horrors!) decide whether that person belongs in heaven or hell.
The Christian Faith stands in the tradition of God. The progenitors of this ideology certainly did believe in a God who would judge them (along with everybody else), and that made them into the best people that I have ever heard of. As far as the myth of inevitable progress is concerned, our spiritual ancestor pronounced that “No servant can be greater than his master” (John 13:16). I agree, and that’s why I count myself in his family. To me, Jesus of Nazareth is the pinnacle of what it means to be truly and fully human – and he lived 2,000 years ago. Have we really progressed since then? We have changed, but are we ‘better’?
So, what gives us the right to claim that we are ‘better’ than our ‘religious’ Caveman and his colleagues? That’s right, nothing more than a myth. We are better than him because…well, just because, OK.
Or, technically, it’s not founded on its own myths.
What I aim to do here is to expose some of those myths, as I see them. I concede at the outset that this doesn’t prove the New Atheism to be false, any more than it proves my Christian Faith to be true. However, what I hope to do is to counter the shrill voices of New Atheism that condemn me, and people like me, for no other reason that we hold to our particular mythology.
Mr. Kettle, let me introduce you to Mr. Pot.
(They’re both black, in case you didn’t get it.)
The first myth of the New Atheism is what I call the myth of inevitable progress. It’s more a sentiment than a doctrine, but it still ends up as dogma. It is expressed in a number of ways, but it ends up at roughly the same place – we are better than our parents because…well, just because, OK?
And by ‘better’, it can be ‘better’ in any number of ways. We are more tolerant, better informed, more rational, more reasonable, better communicators. In its crudest form, it’s the voice of the petulant teenager screaming out that his or her parents are stupid idiots (because they have ordered said teenager to tidy up his or her bedroom).
Now, it may just be that we have access to better information and education (though the latter is moot), but the wry commentator will note that not all change is progress. Certainly, this is the case if you look in the broader history of humankind. Nazi Germany thought it was progressing to a new age, the infamous Third Reich, and we know how that story ended.
Kingdoms and Empires rise and fall. On what basis do we say that one is ‘better’ than another? On what objective basis can I claim to be a ‘better’ person than my forebears?
If the New Atheists look to evolutionary theory to underpin this sentiment, they are looking in the wrong place. Specifically, our species has been recognizably distinct for many tens of thousands of years. I’m sorry if my science is a bit vague here, but it’s certainly a very long time when compared to the time span from one single generation to the next. In other words, we (modern 21st Century human beings) are genetically indistinct from those people who hid in caves and told themselves creation myths in the dark. Apart from the chronology, the only thing different between them and us is our access to better technology, and the internet.
If we were to get hold of a caveman, give him a shower and take him through our education system, he would look at the world in much the same way as we do. The question here is not what opportunities that education would open up to him, but how he would use them. Would he be wiser or more stupid than us? Would he be ‘better’ than us? Genetically, he would be indistinguishable from us; same man, different clothes.
What’s worse, and this is something ‘proper’ evolutionists would probably agree on, is the myth that evolution will make me into a better person. Face it; evolution by natural selection will NOT make you into a better person. What it does is that if you’re genetic make-up is better suited to the circumstances in which you find yourself, you’re more likely to pass it on to your progeny than someone who’s make-up is less suited. It’s all about your progeny, not you, and by the time they benefit (several generations into the future), you’ll be dead. You will not benefit one iota. It offers no hope to the individual.
You cannot call on evolution to claim that you are being made into a better person. What’s more, we cannot claim that evolution is making us better as a species, because we have interrupted the process of natural selection. Put simply, instead of being forced by our environment to change our genetic make-up over the generations, we have changed our environment to suit our genetic make-up. The Eugenics movement tried to correct this perceived imbalance, but they went the same way as the Nazis, which is no mere coincidence.
See. I’m appealing to history, which might be a waste of time on some New Atheists because they were the first to discover the universe, stupid.
We could go on with the current misuse of the word. For example, we could say that the personal computer has ‘evolved’ from its humble beginnings.
No it hasn’t. Not in the naturalistic sense. The reason PCs are better now than they were is wholly because an external intelligence (PC engineers) looked at previous generations and figured out how to improve them. Apply this metaphor to the natural world, and you actually argue for Theism (an intervening external intelligence), not Atheism.
So, please, let’s abandon the idea that evolution is somehow responsible for the law of inevitable progress – it isn’t.
It changes stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better. In fact, you could argue that it actually makes it worse through a rather poor exegesis of the Laws of Thermodynamics and entropy.
One of the more insidious expressions of the myth of inevitable progress is the Richard Dawkins doctrine on the evolution of religion. Put simply (and you’ll find this pap all over the internet) Mr. Caveman didn’t have science to explain how the universe worked, so he invented God. The argument follows that now we have the science, we don’t need God. In fact we need to progress beyond the idea of God because…well, just because its progress, OK, and progress is inevitable. God, therefore, is holding us back.
Crucially, Dawkins and his disciples miss the point that its not just about science. If you believe that the purpose of humanity is to produce good science, then Dawkins’ hypothesis might actually work for you. (I’m not convinced, and I don’t see why, in an Atheistic Universe, improving our understanding of it will make any ultimate difference to it whatsoever). However, human beings are more than walking test-tubes – we try to understand our universe for a reason, and that reason is life and living (to put it crudely).
Allow me to illustrate. A few months ago, a friend of mine, Michael Young, set out to cycle around Australia and raise money for Cancer Research. Incidentally, he’s a Christian and I know him because we go to the same church. When he set out, I don’t think he thought to himself, “I’m going to need to invent a God who will fill in the gaps in my knowledge of the route”, which is akin to Dawkins’ simplistic analysis of why religion came to be. What I do think he thought was that by undertaking this venture, some good will come of it (because, ultimately, there is a God who is interested in such things), and I sincerely hope it does. (PS Please donate through Michael's website, if you can.) The former is an enquiry into the nature of the universe; the latter is faith. Dawkins confuses the two in his quest to replace Christianity with a cult of his own making.
I digress, but the myth of inevitable progress ignores the evidence, which is inexcusable for a movement that prides itself on being led by the evidence. And, by evidence, I’m referring to the many, many instances in which faith in God has propelled the advances that we have benefited from today.
For example, the very fact you are reading this has much to do with the Reformation. The Reformers vigorously promoted the learning of reading and writing and the reason, for them, is that they wanted people to be able to read the Bible for themselves, without relying on the Roman Church to read and interpret it for them. In fact the whole premise that we function better in the universe if we understand it finds its origins in the Judaeo-Christian traditions, and we’re talking about traditions that stretch back maybe 3,500 years to Moses and beyond.
Surely, if we are to become ‘better’ people, then we need to allow ourselves to learn from our forebears, and to do that we must abandon our bombastic claims that we are intrinsically better than them. Progress is possible, yes, but it’s not inevitable and it takes a lot more humility and hard work than the New Atheists might acknowledge.
When I see the kind of propaganda put out by some New Atheists, my mind instantly goes to the petulant teenager. Usually, bound up with these objections, there is some reason to jettison God. It’s usually an objection to the possibility that God could interfere with that person’s life in some way. Heaven forbid that this same God might actually judge that person and (horrors!) decide whether that person belongs in heaven or hell.
The Christian Faith stands in the tradition of God. The progenitors of this ideology certainly did believe in a God who would judge them (along with everybody else), and that made them into the best people that I have ever heard of. As far as the myth of inevitable progress is concerned, our spiritual ancestor pronounced that “No servant can be greater than his master” (John 13:16). I agree, and that’s why I count myself in his family. To me, Jesus of Nazareth is the pinnacle of what it means to be truly and fully human – and he lived 2,000 years ago. Have we really progressed since then? We have changed, but are we ‘better’?
So, what gives us the right to claim that we are ‘better’ than our ‘religious’ Caveman and his colleagues? That’s right, nothing more than a myth. We are better than him because…well, just because, OK.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Vaporware and FUD
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy (which I am), I must admit to being somewhat underwhelmed by a slew of potential products that all promise to beat Apple’s iPad (see here, for example).
Now, I’m not saying that some of these products might actually work, and they might actually work better than the iPad, but before you rush out to buy one (and give Steve Jobs the finger), consider this – you can’t. That’s because they don’t exist. Not yet. They’re vaporware. They’re in development, due for release some time in late whatever.
So, why would producers of consumer goods go to all this hoo-ha about promoting something that doesn’t (and sadly, in most cases I suspect, will never) exist? Partly, the reason has got to do with a sincere effort to produce something that can compete with someone else’s hugely popular thingo. Partly, as one observer wryly put it, it’s all about FUD (that’s fear, uncertainty, doubt). In other words, if Google can get a rumor going that it’s about to launch an iSlate, it might delay a consumer’s choice to buy an iPad, and thus prevent a defection to the opposition.
The moral of this story is that if you put enough FUD out there, you’ll immobilize people who might want to explore something new and they’ll stay at home (with you).
Strangely, this is the story of the Christian Gospel.
No, I’m not saying that the Christian Church is generating all the FUD I see today. It might have done in the past, when the Church had a significant role in western culture, but not today when it has been marginalized and largely discredited. Today, it’s the turn of the forces of modernism and popular culture to throw the FUD at the Christian Gospel and the Church that promotes it.
If my recent TV watching is anything to go by, you can’t get a person with profoundly religious convictions unless he or she is a murderous psychopath. I honestly cannot recall the last time the Bible was quoted on TV fiction unless it was in the context of someone doing something that was unspeakably evil. Add that to the urban myths/infomercials (sorry, documentaries) that are peddled about how unreliable the Bible is and the picture that emerges is that you shouldn’t touch it if you don’t want to get infected with the green death. I get the feeling that TV producers actually fear the Bible because it seems to make people do bad things. It has become the root of all evil (see 1 Tim 6:10, and note the irony).
Of course, my experience, and the experience of my Bible-reading colleagues, is the polar opposite. That’s not an argument to say that everything that anyone has done in obedience to the Bible has been good (and I include myself in this category). But it is an argument against the assertion that everything that the Bible inspires is evil. There’s something more nuanced here than the presence or otherwise of the Bible in a person’s decision-making.
Could it be that people can and do interpret what they receive (from the Bible or other sources) and they often get it wrong? In other words, it’s not simply a question of what is transmitted, it involves the reception as well. Here is my starting point for the old-fashioned notion of original sin and total depravity.
So, what’s our response? Do we throw up counter-FUD to scare people into Church?
No!
(Even if the resulting message is less entertaining)
The antidote to fear-uncertainty-doubt is not more fear-uncertainty-doubt or even, Heaven forbid, religious or anti-religious vaporware.
The antidote is actually the Light of the World (John 8:12), which the People of God has been called to hold up for the benefit of all (Matt 5:14). In one sense, this makes the Christian’s job easy – we are to preach Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor 2:2). In another, this makes the job hard – what does it mean to live as one who bears the light of the world? I guess you’ll have to read the rest of the Bible to figure that out.
Don’t be afraid. Ignore the FUD. It won’t kill you.
Now, I’m not saying that some of these products might actually work, and they might actually work better than the iPad, but before you rush out to buy one (and give Steve Jobs the finger), consider this – you can’t. That’s because they don’t exist. Not yet. They’re vaporware. They’re in development, due for release some time in late whatever.
So, why would producers of consumer goods go to all this hoo-ha about promoting something that doesn’t (and sadly, in most cases I suspect, will never) exist? Partly, the reason has got to do with a sincere effort to produce something that can compete with someone else’s hugely popular thingo. Partly, as one observer wryly put it, it’s all about FUD (that’s fear, uncertainty, doubt). In other words, if Google can get a rumor going that it’s about to launch an iSlate, it might delay a consumer’s choice to buy an iPad, and thus prevent a defection to the opposition.
The moral of this story is that if you put enough FUD out there, you’ll immobilize people who might want to explore something new and they’ll stay at home (with you).
Strangely, this is the story of the Christian Gospel.
No, I’m not saying that the Christian Church is generating all the FUD I see today. It might have done in the past, when the Church had a significant role in western culture, but not today when it has been marginalized and largely discredited. Today, it’s the turn of the forces of modernism and popular culture to throw the FUD at the Christian Gospel and the Church that promotes it.
If my recent TV watching is anything to go by, you can’t get a person with profoundly religious convictions unless he or she is a murderous psychopath. I honestly cannot recall the last time the Bible was quoted on TV fiction unless it was in the context of someone doing something that was unspeakably evil. Add that to the urban myths/infomercials (sorry, documentaries) that are peddled about how unreliable the Bible is and the picture that emerges is that you shouldn’t touch it if you don’t want to get infected with the green death. I get the feeling that TV producers actually fear the Bible because it seems to make people do bad things. It has become the root of all evil (see 1 Tim 6:10, and note the irony).
Of course, my experience, and the experience of my Bible-reading colleagues, is the polar opposite. That’s not an argument to say that everything that anyone has done in obedience to the Bible has been good (and I include myself in this category). But it is an argument against the assertion that everything that the Bible inspires is evil. There’s something more nuanced here than the presence or otherwise of the Bible in a person’s decision-making.
Could it be that people can and do interpret what they receive (from the Bible or other sources) and they often get it wrong? In other words, it’s not simply a question of what is transmitted, it involves the reception as well. Here is my starting point for the old-fashioned notion of original sin and total depravity.
So, what’s our response? Do we throw up counter-FUD to scare people into Church?
No!
(Even if the resulting message is less entertaining)
The antidote to fear-uncertainty-doubt is not more fear-uncertainty-doubt or even, Heaven forbid, religious or anti-religious vaporware.
The antidote is actually the Light of the World (John 8:12), which the People of God has been called to hold up for the benefit of all (Matt 5:14). In one sense, this makes the Christian’s job easy – we are to preach Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor 2:2). In another, this makes the job hard – what does it mean to live as one who bears the light of the world? I guess you’ll have to read the rest of the Bible to figure that out.
Don’t be afraid. Ignore the FUD. It won’t kill you.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Decisions, Decisions
I had something of a revelation recently; people don’t tend to make decisions rationally. Also, they don’t tend to make decisions – they actually see an outcome they want and then frame their decisions to secure the outcome.
I know, I know. Everybody else knows this, but I didn’t (or I have forgotten). Maybe its because, according to the Myers-Briggs typology; I’m an INTJ borderline ISTJ.
More probably, my work as a consultant engineer means that I put in an inordinate amount of analysis and logic into the decisions I recommend to clients. So, my working environment conditions me to backing up my decisions with a body of work, and to having my decisions scrutinized and challenged. I’m OK with that because the decisions I make have big dollar values associated with them. In my mind, the bigger the implication of the decision, the more effort is required to research the issue to come to a conclusion.
No.
The problem with people is that we routinely fail to prioritize, or rank, the decisions that face us in life. The apocryphal tales that come out of the retail business indicate that a person will spend just as long deciding which new toaster to buy as he or she would in deciding which house to buy (the reason it takes longer to buy the house than the toaster is that we’ve got to co-opt the banks into the venture we’ve decided to undertake). Of course, the situation is not helped by an advertising industry that wants us to get worried if we’re not seen driving the new car or if we’re not taking the right diet supplements. God help us if we’re using last year’s toasters!
I could run through the whole gamut of decisions from here – from relationships, to how to vote, to how we need to address climate change and global inequities. Yes! This last one is a real biggie, and we’ve got to jettison the urban myth of the infinitely growing economy.
What, I hear you say? Martin’s getting all political and tree-huggy. And shouldn’t we simply blame global industry (a.k.a. anyone but me)?
Seriously, though, we need to consume less, and we need to distribute our planet’s limited resources more equitably (because they will run out). And I don’t see it happening when the biggest thing on the agenda in the negotiations between the Bank of America and Merryll Lynch on the eve of the global financial crisis was what compensation needed to be paid to the senior executives (as I found out this week). I don’t know the final dollar amount was, but it was enough to bail entire cities. It could have saved thousands of families defaulting on their mortgages. What determined their sense of what decisions were more important than others? The word ‘greed’ seems the most appropriate.
The trouble is, when you listen to CEO John Thain’s “rationale” behind his remuneration, you’d think the guy was making sense. Listen up, he’s a bean counter. He might be a rather good bean counter, but who made the decision to pay him $4 million per year, when actual bean growers have to live off less than $2 per day?
I’m not suggesting that pay and rewards should not be differentiated, but at what point do they become obscene and shameful? Who decides what is obscene and shameful? It seems we have a conflict of interest between the likes of John Thain and the 5,500 (approx) bean growers who collectively earn as much as he does individually? What a bunch of bankers – it seems they pay themselves these amounts not because they deserve it, but because they can.
I could lapse into cynical depression at this point. Can anyone make sound judgments? And what makes a good judgment “good”, or a bad judgment “bad”?
My problem is that I refuse to believe that the best judgments are those that serve my self-interests the best, yet that is how most people will evaluate the decisions they make. They have wisely decided that they will not entrust their self-interests to people who tend to put their own self-interests first.
So, here it is – the ultimate engine of our individual and collective decision-making mechanisms. Self-interest rules! And bugger the world (even if there’s not much of a world left for everyone else after I’m finished with it).
My only hope is to appeal to One who is higher than all these muddied undertows (see Gen 1:2 and Psalm 93:3-4); One who has demonstrated His willingness to abandon His self-interest on our behalf (see Romans 5:8).
The biggest decision I need to make is whether I can believe in Him.
I know, I know. Everybody else knows this, but I didn’t (or I have forgotten). Maybe its because, according to the Myers-Briggs typology; I’m an INTJ borderline ISTJ.
More probably, my work as a consultant engineer means that I put in an inordinate amount of analysis and logic into the decisions I recommend to clients. So, my working environment conditions me to backing up my decisions with a body of work, and to having my decisions scrutinized and challenged. I’m OK with that because the decisions I make have big dollar values associated with them. In my mind, the bigger the implication of the decision, the more effort is required to research the issue to come to a conclusion.
No.
The problem with people is that we routinely fail to prioritize, or rank, the decisions that face us in life. The apocryphal tales that come out of the retail business indicate that a person will spend just as long deciding which new toaster to buy as he or she would in deciding which house to buy (the reason it takes longer to buy the house than the toaster is that we’ve got to co-opt the banks into the venture we’ve decided to undertake). Of course, the situation is not helped by an advertising industry that wants us to get worried if we’re not seen driving the new car or if we’re not taking the right diet supplements. God help us if we’re using last year’s toasters!
I could run through the whole gamut of decisions from here – from relationships, to how to vote, to how we need to address climate change and global inequities. Yes! This last one is a real biggie, and we’ve got to jettison the urban myth of the infinitely growing economy.
What, I hear you say? Martin’s getting all political and tree-huggy. And shouldn’t we simply blame global industry (a.k.a. anyone but me)?
Seriously, though, we need to consume less, and we need to distribute our planet’s limited resources more equitably (because they will run out). And I don’t see it happening when the biggest thing on the agenda in the negotiations between the Bank of America and Merryll Lynch on the eve of the global financial crisis was what compensation needed to be paid to the senior executives (as I found out this week). I don’t know the final dollar amount was, but it was enough to bail entire cities. It could have saved thousands of families defaulting on their mortgages. What determined their sense of what decisions were more important than others? The word ‘greed’ seems the most appropriate.
The trouble is, when you listen to CEO John Thain’s “rationale” behind his remuneration, you’d think the guy was making sense. Listen up, he’s a bean counter. He might be a rather good bean counter, but who made the decision to pay him $4 million per year, when actual bean growers have to live off less than $2 per day?
I’m not suggesting that pay and rewards should not be differentiated, but at what point do they become obscene and shameful? Who decides what is obscene and shameful? It seems we have a conflict of interest between the likes of John Thain and the 5,500 (approx) bean growers who collectively earn as much as he does individually? What a bunch of bankers – it seems they pay themselves these amounts not because they deserve it, but because they can.
I could lapse into cynical depression at this point. Can anyone make sound judgments? And what makes a good judgment “good”, or a bad judgment “bad”?
My problem is that I refuse to believe that the best judgments are those that serve my self-interests the best, yet that is how most people will evaluate the decisions they make. They have wisely decided that they will not entrust their self-interests to people who tend to put their own self-interests first.
So, here it is – the ultimate engine of our individual and collective decision-making mechanisms. Self-interest rules! And bugger the world (even if there’s not much of a world left for everyone else after I’m finished with it).
My only hope is to appeal to One who is higher than all these muddied undertows (see Gen 1:2 and Psalm 93:3-4); One who has demonstrated His willingness to abandon His self-interest on our behalf (see Romans 5:8).
The biggest decision I need to make is whether I can believe in Him.
Friday, September 17, 2010
The Parable of the iPad and the Swimming Pool
Last week’s episode of the Gruen Transfer, in which the panel discussed the marketing of religion, did more than just prompt my musings on the “H Word”. It also touched upon something else that’s been on my mind about the inestimable impact of modernism on what David Wells calls “Our Time”.
David F Wells is the author of a book that my brother loaned me called, “No place for truth, or whatever happened to Evangelical Theology?” (IVP, 1995). I’m half way through and I hope my reading of it doesn’t end up like so many of my unfinished projects, which is, of course, unfinished.
According to the bio, David Wells is (or was) a Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Massachusetts. The central thesis of the first part of his rather dense book is that we’ve got more to worry about from modernism than any other “ism” out there.
Wells describes a massive paradigm shift that has occurred, largely unnoticed outside specialist circles, in the last 200 or so years of western civilization. In a nutshell, before we derived our self-identity from family and place (in which Church played an important role) and after we derive our self-identity from our own internal experience.
The rather profound outworkings of this paradigm shift are that a pre-modern person would look outside himself or herself in order to interpret and understand the world, and a post-modern would look inside himself or herself.
This might sound highly theoretical, but it becomes important when you consider that the Biblical idea of God is someone that transcends human experience. If you've got difficulty following the jargon, think of a God who was there before there were any human beings to experience Him (Gen 1:1), and who will be there after the end of all things, too (Rev 22:13). In other words, God is outside of us, but He also enters into our experience in a tangible way (John 1:14).
According to Wells, the post-modern mind finds this concept confusing, incomprehensible and, possibly, very frightening. Basically, there’s a God out there who does not conform to whatever image we have of Him in our minds. To the post-modern, God is a threat and that’s seen as a bad thing (even if it’s true).
Anyway, the Ad-luvvies on the Gruen Transfer articulated the post-modern view superbly (if unconsciously), with their talk of “building the brand”. To them, religion is a consumable, and the success of the advertising is measured in increased sales (or bums on pews). They weren’t concerned with content, or whether something was true or not, and that might not be such a bad thing in the context of mass marketing. They were simply concerned about whether the adverts did the job of getting people into church (or, keeping the converted in the church).
So, the Ad-men’s appraisal of religious advertising was set within the same context of marketing the iPad. It might require some initial investment, but it’s something you can slip into your handbag with everything else that you carry around with you, and once you’ve got it, you’ll find that it’s cool and useful. The connection to post-modernism is that the “usefulness” of the product is assessed according to each individual’s experience. And, like the proverbial product, we have the right to discard it when it interferes with our predispositions, aspirations and habits.
Another one of my projects (which I hope to continue) is that I’ve been doing lane-swimming at the local pool on Saturdays and Sundays. I’m quite pleased with my progress, but I still get passed by human torpedoes more regularly than I’d like.
One of my musings, while swimming, is that I’d like someone to ask me if I find my Christian faith “useful”. I’ve been looking for answer such a question for a while, and I think I’ve found one. Ask me if my Christian faith helps me in my life, and I will ask whether the swimming pool helps my swimming.
It’s a riddle, of course. The water in the pool slows me down tremendously (I’d get to the other end much faster if I could walk). But without the pool there would be no swimming. Without God there would be no life, so the question about whether He helps you in it or not is unanswerable. OK, so there are some rules, like don’t try to breath in when you’re head is under water, but the rules make sense when you acknowledge that you’re in a swimming pool.
So, we’re back to the pre-modern/post-modern thing. Like God, the swimming pool is outside me, and I am in the pool. It’s not simply a figment of my imagination, which I can re-create according to my internal dictates. Acknowledging the pool and my place in it is the start of my sustainable relationship with the pool.
The acknowledgment of God is the start of a sustainable relationship between Creator and creature, and it is also the start of the sustainable relationships between us creatures. The first lesson in this is that we cannot re-mold reality just because it doesn't suit us. Truth is important and, contrary to the conspiracy theorists (like Dan Brown) the concept of transcendent truth is highly valued in the Christian faith.
Oh, and iPads are cool, too.
David F Wells is the author of a book that my brother loaned me called, “No place for truth, or whatever happened to Evangelical Theology?” (IVP, 1995). I’m half way through and I hope my reading of it doesn’t end up like so many of my unfinished projects, which is, of course, unfinished.
According to the bio, David Wells is (or was) a Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Massachusetts. The central thesis of the first part of his rather dense book is that we’ve got more to worry about from modernism than any other “ism” out there.
Wells describes a massive paradigm shift that has occurred, largely unnoticed outside specialist circles, in the last 200 or so years of western civilization. In a nutshell, before we derived our self-identity from family and place (in which Church played an important role) and after we derive our self-identity from our own internal experience.
The rather profound outworkings of this paradigm shift are that a pre-modern person would look outside himself or herself in order to interpret and understand the world, and a post-modern would look inside himself or herself.
This might sound highly theoretical, but it becomes important when you consider that the Biblical idea of God is someone that transcends human experience. If you've got difficulty following the jargon, think of a God who was there before there were any human beings to experience Him (Gen 1:1), and who will be there after the end of all things, too (Rev 22:13). In other words, God is outside of us, but He also enters into our experience in a tangible way (John 1:14).
According to Wells, the post-modern mind finds this concept confusing, incomprehensible and, possibly, very frightening. Basically, there’s a God out there who does not conform to whatever image we have of Him in our minds. To the post-modern, God is a threat and that’s seen as a bad thing (even if it’s true).
Anyway, the Ad-luvvies on the Gruen Transfer articulated the post-modern view superbly (if unconsciously), with their talk of “building the brand”. To them, religion is a consumable, and the success of the advertising is measured in increased sales (or bums on pews). They weren’t concerned with content, or whether something was true or not, and that might not be such a bad thing in the context of mass marketing. They were simply concerned about whether the adverts did the job of getting people into church (or, keeping the converted in the church).
So, the Ad-men’s appraisal of religious advertising was set within the same context of marketing the iPad. It might require some initial investment, but it’s something you can slip into your handbag with everything else that you carry around with you, and once you’ve got it, you’ll find that it’s cool and useful. The connection to post-modernism is that the “usefulness” of the product is assessed according to each individual’s experience. And, like the proverbial product, we have the right to discard it when it interferes with our predispositions, aspirations and habits.
Another one of my projects (which I hope to continue) is that I’ve been doing lane-swimming at the local pool on Saturdays and Sundays. I’m quite pleased with my progress, but I still get passed by human torpedoes more regularly than I’d like.
One of my musings, while swimming, is that I’d like someone to ask me if I find my Christian faith “useful”. I’ve been looking for answer such a question for a while, and I think I’ve found one. Ask me if my Christian faith helps me in my life, and I will ask whether the swimming pool helps my swimming.
It’s a riddle, of course. The water in the pool slows me down tremendously (I’d get to the other end much faster if I could walk). But without the pool there would be no swimming. Without God there would be no life, so the question about whether He helps you in it or not is unanswerable. OK, so there are some rules, like don’t try to breath in when you’re head is under water, but the rules make sense when you acknowledge that you’re in a swimming pool.
So, we’re back to the pre-modern/post-modern thing. Like God, the swimming pool is outside me, and I am in the pool. It’s not simply a figment of my imagination, which I can re-create according to my internal dictates. Acknowledging the pool and my place in it is the start of my sustainable relationship with the pool.
The acknowledgment of God is the start of a sustainable relationship between Creator and creature, and it is also the start of the sustainable relationships between us creatures. The first lesson in this is that we cannot re-mold reality just because it doesn't suit us. Truth is important and, contrary to the conspiracy theorists (like Dan Brown) the concept of transcendent truth is highly valued in the Christian faith.
Oh, and iPads are cool, too.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The H Word
One of the few TV programs that I consciously make an effort to watch is the ABC’s Gruen Transfer. For those of you who prefer your TV to be about people chasing balls around football pitches or ordinary-people-acting-ordinarily-with-some-grooming-from-the-producers (a.k.a. Reality TV), the Gruen Transfer is a full frontal on advertising, which is really about modifying people’s aspirations and expectations, which is really about human nature and how we communicate to each other.
Anyway, this week (Episode 9) the panel looked at Advertising Religion. Usually, I cringe and hide behind the lounge whenever TV tackles religion, partly because it usually makes such a mess of it and partly because it usually stereotypes believers like me as gay-bashing snake-handlers with no reason to justify my existence on this planet (maybe I need to grow a thicker skin?).
Surprisingly, the discussion on the Gruen Transfer was one of the best I’ve seen on the topic for a long time. It featured the “Hey Jesus” ads that were run in New South Wales (funded by contributions from 1500 churches – mostly evangelical I suspect), plus ads from the Mormons, Scientologists and AnswersInGenesis. No, it didn’t have the gravity of a Papal Encyclical or a Fatwah, but it did treat the subject with humanity, candidness and insight, which is how it should be treated.
One of the off-the-cuff comments of Todd Sampson, a regular and engaging panelist, caught my attention because it touched on a subject that I’ve been thinking over recently. In responding to other comments about Hell and how it can be used to scare people into church, Mr. Sampson said, “I thought that was its job” (or words to that effect).
I think Mr. Sampson has rightly echoed a popular misconception about the place of Hell in Christian Theology, and I’d like to see the church (or churches) do something to correct it. It's time to tackle the H Word.
This may be an impossible task, of course, but in keeping with the Gruen Transfer’s focus on advertising, I thought an ad campaign might be in order. Here’s a draft script…
Anyway, this week (Episode 9) the panel looked at Advertising Religion. Usually, I cringe and hide behind the lounge whenever TV tackles religion, partly because it usually makes such a mess of it and partly because it usually stereotypes believers like me as gay-bashing snake-handlers with no reason to justify my existence on this planet (maybe I need to grow a thicker skin?).
Surprisingly, the discussion on the Gruen Transfer was one of the best I’ve seen on the topic for a long time. It featured the “Hey Jesus” ads that were run in New South Wales (funded by contributions from 1500 churches – mostly evangelical I suspect), plus ads from the Mormons, Scientologists and AnswersInGenesis. No, it didn’t have the gravity of a Papal Encyclical or a Fatwah, but it did treat the subject with humanity, candidness and insight, which is how it should be treated.
One of the off-the-cuff comments of Todd Sampson, a regular and engaging panelist, caught my attention because it touched on a subject that I’ve been thinking over recently. In responding to other comments about Hell and how it can be used to scare people into church, Mr. Sampson said, “I thought that was its job” (or words to that effect).
I think Mr. Sampson has rightly echoed a popular misconception about the place of Hell in Christian Theology, and I’d like to see the church (or churches) do something to correct it. It's time to tackle the H Word.
This may be an impossible task, of course, but in keeping with the Gruen Transfer’s focus on advertising, I thought an ad campaign might be in order. Here’s a draft script…
You might think that we invented Hell to scare you into church.
But, if there were no church, would there be no Hell?
And if there were no Hell, would there be any ultimate justice?
I mean, if there were no Hell, then he got away with it [shows graphic of Adolf Hitler]. And so did these guys [shows graphic of 9/11 WTC]. And so will he [graphic of Robert Mugabe or some other current bad guy].
If there were a Hell, who decides who will go there?
When it comes to justice, I know you try to get it right, and I’m not suggesting you stop trying. But we know that sometimes we get it wrong, and sometimes, what gets sold to us as justice is really just a private political or personal agenda.
And, if we’re really honest, we’ve got to admit that we’ve all contributed when things go wrong, even in the smallest ways, or by failing to act when we should have acted, or by withholding help when it was needed. Does that mean we all deserve Hell? Should we be allowed to get away with it?
We believe in Hell, because without it there is no ultimate justice.
We also believe that the One Person who decides who should go there is the One Person who has demonstrated that he is not captive to self-interest, and that he knows what it means to live in this world, with all its injustices. We believe he can be trusted to make the right judgments.
We believe in working towards a better world today, but ultimately, whatever happens, there is One who will see to it that justice is ultimately served and no one, not even those who go to church, will be exempt.
In this context, we believe that Hell is good news.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Bible Bashing on Hungry Beast
This week's blog is another catch-up.
In April 2010, the ABC aired the last of its series "Hungry Beast". I enjoyed the program as a refreshingly different take on current affairs with an eclectic mix of light-hearted comedy, satire, cynicism and serious criticism.
However, there were two pieces in one episode that irritated me to the point that I wrote a complaint to the ABC. The following is my complaint, and the response from the ABC.
(I have edited the emails to remove email addresses. I have also inserted some links for ease of reference).
I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, the ABC has seriously considered my objections in accordance with its own guidelines. On the other it has assumed that its audience is aware of the difference between the Old and New Testament (am I assuming that the audience knows too little?) and is capable of time-lining the development of the Bible (noting that some surveys have suggested that most people don't know who came first, Paul or Moses). So, I'll invite readers to answer the question, was the ABC's response satisfactory?
To: Audience & Consumer Affairs
From: Martin Jacobs
Subject: Bible-bashing on Hungry Beast
Date: 15/04/10 22:12
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by Martin Jacobs
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABC program: Hungry Beast
Response required: true
Date of program: 15 April 2010
Contact type: Complaint
Location: QLD
Subject: Bible-bashing on Hungry Beast
Comments: Dear sirs,
Where do you draw the line between information and opinion? The short answer, I suspect, is that information is carefully compiled from demonstrable fact, and opinion is what you (or your viewers) make of it.
Last night's episode of Hungry Beast crossed that line with two of its articles.
The first concerned the bagging of Scientology and concluded by implying that all religions believe in crazy, implausible stuff so they are all (to use the presenter's phrase) "a little bit bullshit".
The second concerned the current pedophilia crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.
My objection is not that these subjects should not be addressed, or even satirized. I do not object to a presenter expressing an opinion on these matters, even if I find it offensive.
What I do object to is when the information in these articles misrepresents what can be learned from demonstrable facts.
The subject in this case is the history of the Bible, which was grossly misrepresented by your presenters. I wrote an email to Hungry Beast on this subject via its website last night.
The first article claimed that the Bible was written by a "couple of fishermen". The second claimed that the Didache (a late first to second century document) was "older than the Bible", and it implied that the Bible was both the creation and the sole property of a malfunctioning Catholic Church.
Whereas I don't expect your presenters to agree with the agenda of the Bible, I do expect that when they present something as "information" (not opinion), they might at least get their facts right. It seems, though, that they got their information straight out of the Atheists Handbook, or Dan Brown's fiction, The Da Vinci Code. Had they not even heard of the Old Testament?
Whereas there is a broad spectrum of serious scholarship on the history of the Bible, the compelling consensus is that it is the product of a large number of people over a period of many centuries. The earliest parts of the Old Testament were written several hundred years before Christ, and the last parts of the New Testament can be reliably dated to the close of the First Century AD (or even the start of the 2nd), which coincides roughly with the authoring of the Didache.
What should be obvious from this timeline is that the Didache is NOT older than the Bible. That the Catholic Church did not create the four fifths of the Bible that is the Old Testament should be obvious from the fact that it wasn't around at the time. We could debate whether we should consider the New Testament authors as Catholics, but we're still mid to late First Century AD, well before the Didache.
Further, there is a compelling case that the Bible has been reliably transmitted from its autographs, which places the idea that the Catholic Church changed it in the Third Century AD firmly in the urban myth basket. The Catholic Church has done many things (current crisis included), but the one thing it has not done is vandalize the Bible.
Your reporters should also note that the Bible is not the sole property of the Roman Catholic Church; the Reformation saw to that. In fact, the Bible isn't owned by anyone, which is a good thing because new translations cannot go unchallenged. No single interest group can alter it to suit their own agenda, though it is every person's prerogative to make what they will of it.
Ironically, I would agree with your article's assessment on the origins of the Book of Mormon (Joseph Smith's head in a hat), because it is borne out by the extant documented evidence (including the records of the LDS Church). For some years I have been involved with a counter-cult initiative, which contends for these issues at blog.mrm.org. Having read the Qu'ran, I have a little more sympathy for it, and if you have the time, you can browse my opinions at http://web.mac.com/martin_jacobs1/iWeb/Superseded/Quran_Blog/Quran_Blog.html. I have also run a short course in the History of the Bible, and studied theology by correspondence with Moore Theological college in Sydney.
I don't necessarily expect your presenters to subscribe to my opinions, but to say that because one religion gets it wrong, they are ALL wrong, is plain wrong in itself.
Getting back to Hungry Beast; did the Church know about pedophilia 2000 years ago. According to the Didache, yes. But we've also known about murder since Cain, and that gets the same treatment. Again, the article's analysis is almost right in one respect, but it implied that the root cause of pedophilia was the Church. How absurd! Genuinely, I'd like to know if anyone else in the First or Second Century AD Greco-Roman world was taking a stand against pedophilia.
Fundamentally, I am concerned that too often the ABC presents certain urban myths as if they had some credible basis in demonstrable history. The currently fashionable dogma, that the Bible was created by a malfunctioning Catholic Church to serve its own agenda, is a prime example.
I would be pleased to discuss this further with the ABC, though I will do all I can to maintain the distinction between my information and my opinion.
Yours sincerely
Martin Jacobs
From:CORPORATE_AFFAIRS7
Subject:Re: Bible-bashing on Hungry Beast
Date:15 June 2010 2:38:51 PM
To:Martin Jacobs
Dear Mr Jacobs
Thank you for your email regarding the episode of Hungry Beast broadcast on 14 April. I am sorry for the long delay in responding to you.
I understand you considered that two segments in this program misrepresented facts. In accordance with the ABC's complaints process, your concerns have been investigated by Audience & Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of program making areas within the ABC. In light of your concerns, Audience & Consumer Affairs has assessed the segments to which you refer against the relevant editorial standards for accuracy.
The first segment to which you refer was the regular 'Things We Think Might be Bullshit' segment. This segment was categorised as opinion content in accordance with the ABC's editorial standards. This content category is subject to the requirements of section 6 of the ABC's Editorial Policies, available in full here: http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm. Opinion content is specifically commissioned or acquired to provide a particular perspective or point of view. The standard for accuracy which applies to this content category is outlined in section 6.6.4 of the Editorial Policies, as follows: "In the presentation of this content, staff should... take reasonable steps to ensure factual content is accurate".
In the case of 'Things We Think Might be Bullshit', each week a different member of the Hungry Beast team used the segment to briefly present their opinion on a specific subject. On this occasion, Daniel Keogh presented his opinion that attacking Scientology is "a little bit bullshit" because, in his view, other religions can be equally "kooky". During the segment Mr Keogh said, "The reason a lot of people mock Scientology is because it was created by the science fiction writer L. Rob Hubbard [pointing at the book 'Dianetics' by L. Rob Hubbard], but why is that any weirder than those religions invented by an allegedly illiterate businessman [holding up the Quran], a bunch of fishermen [holding up the Bible], or a guy who read the words of God out of a hat [holding up the Book of Mormon]?".
I understand you considered Mr Keogh's claim that the Bible was written by "a bunch of fishermen" to be inaccurate as it was the product of a large number of people over many centuries. The producers of Hungry Beast have advised that this claim represented Mr Keogh's opinion. They have advised that the segment was not intended as serious academic scholarship on the collective authorship of what came to be known as the New Testament. I understand some of Jesus' key disciples had been fishermen and were involved in passing on knowledge about his life which became the New Testament. I am advised that Mr Keogh's visual reference to the Bible was intended as shorthand for the New Testament, and his reference to "a bunch of fishermen" was intended as shorthand for its collective authorship.
On review, Audience & Consumer Affairs considers that the exaggerated shorthand used by Mr Keogh was acceptable within the context of opinion content. Although it is not precisely accurate to describe the authors of the Bible as "a bunch of fishermen", it was an exaggeration based in some truth, and was clearly presented as a hyperbolic claim designed to amuse and bolster Mr Keogh's argument. Audience & Consumer Affairs is satisfied that the segment was consistent with the editorial standards for opinion content.
The second segment to which you refer was the regular 'Beast File' segment. This segment was categorised as topical and factual content, which is subject to section 7 of the Editorial Policies. The standard for accuracy which applies to this content category is outlined in section 7.4.2(a) of the Editorial Policies as follows: "Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that factual content is accurate and in context".
This particular 'Beast File' examined the Catholic Church's response to child sexual abuse and the historical church documents showing that the problem has existed for almost 2000 years. On review, Audience & Consumer Affairs does not agree with your suggestion that the segment implied that the Bible was the creation or sole property of the Catholic Church, or that the Catholic Church changed the Bible in the third century. Furthermore, the segment did not imply that the Catholic Church was the root cause of paedophilia, as you suggest.
I note your comments about the dates of composition of the Bible and the Didache. The relevant statement in the segment was as follows: "But the Church's own paper trail shows it has known about and failed to deal with the problem for 2000 years. The first recorded link between priests and paedophilia can be found in a manual for church officials from around AD 60 called Didache. Older than the New Testament, it made the rule clear: 'Thou shalt not seduce young boys'".
While I understand some parts of the New Testament were written as early as the middle of the first century, as you point out, the later parts have been dated to the close of the first century or the start of the second century. There is considerable uncertainty as to the date of composition of the Didache. However, the producers of Hungry Beast have provided several sources in support of the claim that it was written "around AD 60", and Audience & Consumer Affairs is satisfied that every reasonable effort was made to ensure that this claim was supported by evidence. Given this, we are satisfied that the description of the Didache as being "older than the New Testament" was consistent with the editorial standard for accuracy.
Nonetheless, while we are satisfied that both segment adhered to the relevant editorial standards, please be assured that your comments have been noted and conveyed to the producers of Hungry Beast and ABC Television management. Thank you for taking the time to write.
Yours sincerely
Simon Melkman
ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs
In April 2010, the ABC aired the last of its series "Hungry Beast". I enjoyed the program as a refreshingly different take on current affairs with an eclectic mix of light-hearted comedy, satire, cynicism and serious criticism.
However, there were two pieces in one episode that irritated me to the point that I wrote a complaint to the ABC. The following is my complaint, and the response from the ABC.
(I have edited the emails to remove email addresses. I have also inserted some links for ease of reference).
I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, the ABC has seriously considered my objections in accordance with its own guidelines. On the other it has assumed that its audience is aware of the difference between the Old and New Testament (am I assuming that the audience knows too little?) and is capable of time-lining the development of the Bible (noting that some surveys have suggested that most people don't know who came first, Paul or Moses). So, I'll invite readers to answer the question, was the ABC's response satisfactory?
To: Audience & Consumer Affairs
From: Martin Jacobs
Subject: Bible-bashing on Hungry Beast
Date: 15/04/10 22:12
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by Martin Jacobs
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ABC program: Hungry Beast
Response required: true
Date of program: 15 April 2010
Contact type: Complaint
Location: QLD
Subject: Bible-bashing on Hungry Beast
Comments: Dear sirs,
Where do you draw the line between information and opinion? The short answer, I suspect, is that information is carefully compiled from demonstrable fact, and opinion is what you (or your viewers) make of it.
Last night's episode of Hungry Beast crossed that line with two of its articles.
The first concerned the bagging of Scientology and concluded by implying that all religions believe in crazy, implausible stuff so they are all (to use the presenter's phrase) "a little bit bullshit".
The second concerned the current pedophilia crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.
My objection is not that these subjects should not be addressed, or even satirized. I do not object to a presenter expressing an opinion on these matters, even if I find it offensive.
What I do object to is when the information in these articles misrepresents what can be learned from demonstrable facts.
The subject in this case is the history of the Bible, which was grossly misrepresented by your presenters. I wrote an email to Hungry Beast on this subject via its website last night.
The first article claimed that the Bible was written by a "couple of fishermen". The second claimed that the Didache (a late first to second century document) was "older than the Bible", and it implied that the Bible was both the creation and the sole property of a malfunctioning Catholic Church.
Whereas I don't expect your presenters to agree with the agenda of the Bible, I do expect that when they present something as "information" (not opinion), they might at least get their facts right. It seems, though, that they got their information straight out of the Atheists Handbook, or Dan Brown's fiction, The Da Vinci Code. Had they not even heard of the Old Testament?
Whereas there is a broad spectrum of serious scholarship on the history of the Bible, the compelling consensus is that it is the product of a large number of people over a period of many centuries. The earliest parts of the Old Testament were written several hundred years before Christ, and the last parts of the New Testament can be reliably dated to the close of the First Century AD (or even the start of the 2nd), which coincides roughly with the authoring of the Didache.
What should be obvious from this timeline is that the Didache is NOT older than the Bible. That the Catholic Church did not create the four fifths of the Bible that is the Old Testament should be obvious from the fact that it wasn't around at the time. We could debate whether we should consider the New Testament authors as Catholics, but we're still mid to late First Century AD, well before the Didache.
Further, there is a compelling case that the Bible has been reliably transmitted from its autographs, which places the idea that the Catholic Church changed it in the Third Century AD firmly in the urban myth basket. The Catholic Church has done many things (current crisis included), but the one thing it has not done is vandalize the Bible.
Your reporters should also note that the Bible is not the sole property of the Roman Catholic Church; the Reformation saw to that. In fact, the Bible isn't owned by anyone, which is a good thing because new translations cannot go unchallenged. No single interest group can alter it to suit their own agenda, though it is every person's prerogative to make what they will of it.
Ironically, I would agree with your article's assessment on the origins of the Book of Mormon (Joseph Smith's head in a hat), because it is borne out by the extant documented evidence (including the records of the LDS Church). For some years I have been involved with a counter-cult initiative, which contends for these issues at blog.mrm.org. Having read the Qu'ran, I have a little more sympathy for it, and if you have the time, you can browse my opinions at http://web.mac.com/martin_jacobs1/iWeb/Superseded/Quran_Blog/Quran_Blog.html. I have also run a short course in the History of the Bible, and studied theology by correspondence with Moore Theological college in Sydney.
I don't necessarily expect your presenters to subscribe to my opinions, but to say that because one religion gets it wrong, they are ALL wrong, is plain wrong in itself.
Getting back to Hungry Beast; did the Church know about pedophilia 2000 years ago. According to the Didache, yes. But we've also known about murder since Cain, and that gets the same treatment. Again, the article's analysis is almost right in one respect, but it implied that the root cause of pedophilia was the Church. How absurd! Genuinely, I'd like to know if anyone else in the First or Second Century AD Greco-Roman world was taking a stand against pedophilia.
Fundamentally, I am concerned that too often the ABC presents certain urban myths as if they had some credible basis in demonstrable history. The currently fashionable dogma, that the Bible was created by a malfunctioning Catholic Church to serve its own agenda, is a prime example.
I would be pleased to discuss this further with the ABC, though I will do all I can to maintain the distinction between my information and my opinion.
Yours sincerely
Martin Jacobs
From:CORPORATE_AFFAIRS7
Subject:Re: Bible-bashing on Hungry Beast
Date:15 June 2010 2:38:51 PM
To:Martin Jacobs
Dear Mr Jacobs
Thank you for your email regarding the episode of Hungry Beast broadcast on 14 April. I am sorry for the long delay in responding to you.
I understand you considered that two segments in this program misrepresented facts. In accordance with the ABC's complaints process, your concerns have been investigated by Audience & Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of program making areas within the ABC. In light of your concerns, Audience & Consumer Affairs has assessed the segments to which you refer against the relevant editorial standards for accuracy.
The first segment to which you refer was the regular 'Things We Think Might be Bullshit' segment. This segment was categorised as opinion content in accordance with the ABC's editorial standards. This content category is subject to the requirements of section 6 of the ABC's Editorial Policies, available in full here: http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm. Opinion content is specifically commissioned or acquired to provide a particular perspective or point of view. The standard for accuracy which applies to this content category is outlined in section 6.6.4 of the Editorial Policies, as follows: "In the presentation of this content, staff should... take reasonable steps to ensure factual content is accurate".
In the case of 'Things We Think Might be Bullshit', each week a different member of the Hungry Beast team used the segment to briefly present their opinion on a specific subject. On this occasion, Daniel Keogh presented his opinion that attacking Scientology is "a little bit bullshit" because, in his view, other religions can be equally "kooky". During the segment Mr Keogh said, "The reason a lot of people mock Scientology is because it was created by the science fiction writer L. Rob Hubbard [pointing at the book 'Dianetics' by L. Rob Hubbard], but why is that any weirder than those religions invented by an allegedly illiterate businessman [holding up the Quran], a bunch of fishermen [holding up the Bible], or a guy who read the words of God out of a hat [holding up the Book of Mormon]?".
I understand you considered Mr Keogh's claim that the Bible was written by "a bunch of fishermen" to be inaccurate as it was the product of a large number of people over many centuries. The producers of Hungry Beast have advised that this claim represented Mr Keogh's opinion. They have advised that the segment was not intended as serious academic scholarship on the collective authorship of what came to be known as the New Testament. I understand some of Jesus' key disciples had been fishermen and were involved in passing on knowledge about his life which became the New Testament. I am advised that Mr Keogh's visual reference to the Bible was intended as shorthand for the New Testament, and his reference to "a bunch of fishermen" was intended as shorthand for its collective authorship.
On review, Audience & Consumer Affairs considers that the exaggerated shorthand used by Mr Keogh was acceptable within the context of opinion content. Although it is not precisely accurate to describe the authors of the Bible as "a bunch of fishermen", it was an exaggeration based in some truth, and was clearly presented as a hyperbolic claim designed to amuse and bolster Mr Keogh's argument. Audience & Consumer Affairs is satisfied that the segment was consistent with the editorial standards for opinion content.
The second segment to which you refer was the regular 'Beast File' segment. This segment was categorised as topical and factual content, which is subject to section 7 of the Editorial Policies. The standard for accuracy which applies to this content category is outlined in section 7.4.2(a) of the Editorial Policies as follows: "Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that factual content is accurate and in context".
This particular 'Beast File' examined the Catholic Church's response to child sexual abuse and the historical church documents showing that the problem has existed for almost 2000 years. On review, Audience & Consumer Affairs does not agree with your suggestion that the segment implied that the Bible was the creation or sole property of the Catholic Church, or that the Catholic Church changed the Bible in the third century. Furthermore, the segment did not imply that the Catholic Church was the root cause of paedophilia, as you suggest.
I note your comments about the dates of composition of the Bible and the Didache. The relevant statement in the segment was as follows: "But the Church's own paper trail shows it has known about and failed to deal with the problem for 2000 years. The first recorded link between priests and paedophilia can be found in a manual for church officials from around AD 60 called Didache. Older than the New Testament, it made the rule clear: 'Thou shalt not seduce young boys'".
While I understand some parts of the New Testament were written as early as the middle of the first century, as you point out, the later parts have been dated to the close of the first century or the start of the second century. There is considerable uncertainty as to the date of composition of the Didache. However, the producers of Hungry Beast have provided several sources in support of the claim that it was written "around AD 60", and Audience & Consumer Affairs is satisfied that every reasonable effort was made to ensure that this claim was supported by evidence. Given this, we are satisfied that the description of the Didache as being "older than the New Testament" was consistent with the editorial standard for accuracy.
Nonetheless, while we are satisfied that both segment adhered to the relevant editorial standards, please be assured that your comments have been noted and conveyed to the producers of Hungry Beast and ABC Television management. Thank you for taking the time to write.
Yours sincerely
Simon Melkman
ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs
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