(From The New Yorker) Paul Haggis Vs. the Church of Scientology
(Via my friend, Diana, who is, by all accounts, freezing in the subarctic temperatures somewhere in Colorado...)
Paul Haggis is the screenwriter behind films like Million Dollar Baby and Crash. The New Yorker has a lengthy new article discussing Haggis' departure from the Church of Scientology. I'm not going to get into an exhaustive review of the article - it's very long but worth the read if you're interested in this sort of thing. Instead I'll hit some of what I think are the high points.
For many years, he was a very active member of the Church of Scientology, the space-opera cult-cum-religion founded by the late L. Ron Hubbard. In 2009, Haggis left the church in a principled stand against Scientology's support of California's Proposition 8 (sanctioning marriage only between a man and a woman), walking out on an organization that had been a very significant (possibly the most significant) institution in his life for around 35 years.
That takes chutzpah, as anyone who has ever acted on a crisis of faith can confirm. (Revealingly, Haggis' letter of resignation mentions his exploration of perspectives outside of Scientology.)
The article describes Haggis' initial association with the church - it mirrors the initial association of many people with many churches: some trouble in his past, a vague feeling of aimlessness, a desire to improve one's life. His involvement started in the mid-1970's, a time when Scientology was aggressively recruiting young celebrities like John Travolta and Kirstie Alley1. (Celebrity recruitment has long been a staple of Scientology. Considering how the advertising industry courts celebrity, it's difficult to fault them for that...)
The article mentions how many of the celebrities in the church credit Scientology with their successes (failures, I suppose, aren't the failure of the belief system but rather failures of the individual, like the lady in my last post claiming that if she was here after May 21, 2011, it was because she wasn't worthy of being saved and not because her belief system is wrong), and the price (in "donations") to achieve the highest levels within the church could be as high as half a million dollars.
Much is made about the, well, weirdness of Scientology's upper level teachings, which Haggis appears to have obtained. I'll not go into that here, but a brief Google search on "Scientology space opera" should get the interested reader everything they can stomach on the matter.
There is then some discussion on how Haggis' daughters were steeped in Scientology and Scientology-related institutions (such as schools using Hubbard's study methods). In ordinary private schools, they felt out-of-place. I suspect this is not totally unlike the experience of anyone from a strict religious upbringing who suddenly finds herself in a less restrictive environment. At least one of the daughters drifted away from Scientology as she discovered other worldviews2.
The article also touches on some of the questions regarding L. Ron Hubbard's career and the development of Scientology out of his original work with Dianetics. There are some interesting disagreements between Scientologists and outside researchers, particularly in regard to the claims surrounding Hubbard's career in the U.S. Navy.
There was a time, not too many years ago, where my interest in articles like this would have been driven entirely by the opportunity to watch a group that most people would regard as fringe get exposed to the harsh light of day. While there's still some entertainment value in that, my focus has changed somewhat.
Scientology is more interesting now not for the bizarre space-opera claims that underpin its belief system, but for the opportunity to watch a religion sprout from the ground up. Hubbard was nothing if not a prolific writer. The huge volume of his work that has been both published and leaked over the years documents his early elaboration of Dianetics and his subsequent embellishment of it to create Scientology.
What's also interesting is that many of the behaviors that Scientology (as an organization) is alleged to engage in are more extreme, but recognizable, versions of behaviors that many more mainstream religions engage in. The "disconnection" policy that frequently gets mentioned in articles about Scientology isn't much different from concepts of disfellowshipping, excommunication, or shunning that turn up in various Christian denominations. The rigid, hierarchical command structure within Scientology isn't much different from the medieval structure that we see within the Catholic church3. The tendency to treat Hubbard's writings as infallible and inerrant, despite the overwhelming amount of disconfirming knowledge available is no less puzzling than the insistence by many Christians that the Bible is likewise infallible and inerrant despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary.
This brings me around to my closing question:
Why is it so easy for us, sitting outside of a group like Scientology, to identify so many flaws, inconsistencies, and outright falsehoods within that group, while it is so difficult for us to see the flaws, inconsistencies, and falsehoods within our own worldviews?
-Jay
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1What's interesting to me at this point in the story isn't so much that Haggis fell in with Scientology, but rather that you could replace the word "Scientology" with the name of just about any religion without any loss of generality. Scientology leverages many (most?) of the same recruiting techniques that many of what we usually consider mainstream churches use to get people in the door, although where other groups may have some subtlety, the Scientology approach is more akin to getting hit over the head with a frozen ham.
2This is interesting not because a Scientologist left the "faith", but because someone was exposed to different worldviews and altered their own because of things they didn't know before. Beautiful.
3I'm nominally Catholic, but I think there are numerous malignancies within the church as an institution. That's not a topic I'm going to hit here beyond saying that I think that the vast majority of good that comes out the church comes from the people working in the individual parishes, and not from the upper levels of the hierarchy.
It’s The End of The World As We Know It (CORRECTED 13 April 2011)
(CORRECTION - Harold Camping's claim is that Judgment Day will take place on May 21, 2011. The end of the world proper will take place, according to Camping, on October 21, 2011. Apologies to anyone who made plans based on my erroneous report.)
I watched 2012 a couple of weeks back.
I don't have a good explanation of why I felt the need to burn 158 minutes of my life that I won't get back watching a movie that, according to my daughter, makes little children cry because of its badness.
But, nevertheless, I watched it.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around a literally Earth-shattering event in 2012 that wipes out the vast majority of the population as the Earth's crust reshapes and devastating tsunamis wipe most of the world clean. The world leaders, who knew this was coming, sort of prepared by building several large ships (arks, in a very ham-handed attempt to echo the Genesis flood narrative) that a few hundred thousand people could fit on. Things go awry when things start falling apart several months ahead of the December 21 date "predicted" by the Mayans1.
It's easy to watch a movie like 2012 and mock the absurdity of it, but in doing so, we often forget that the world is littered with failed end-of-the-world prophecies and predictions.
By way of example, there is currently a movement in the U.S. that claims that the end of the world will start on May 21, 2011.
The group behind this nonsense, Family Radio Worldwide (led by 89-year-old Harold Camping), follows in the long and ignoble tradition of trying to guess when the world will end based on clues in the Bible. There have been many attempts to do this - hundreds if not thousands - and they've all failed miserably2.
There's a basic pattern at work in such guesses:
- Start with the presupposition that the Bible is completely true and accurate.
- Assign some world event to an event supposedly predicted in the Bible.
- Play some complicated games with numbers and dates to come up with a date that the world will end. Or that Christ will return.
- When the predicted date passes without incident, punt.
Now, most people of a skeptical nature will dismiss the presupposition in Step 1 out of hand, at which point the whole enterprise comes crashing down. There are simply too many wild inaccuracies in the Bible to seriously entertain notions of inerrancy and infallibility. For example, let's briefly consider the Biblical claim of Genesis 30:37-39 (KJV), wherein we're supposed to accept that having goats mate in sight of streaked rods will result in streaked offspring:
37 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
38 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.
39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.
No. Just...no. We've got a very good understanding of how things like coat patterns in goats work, and it has nothing to do with showing streaked sticks to other goats. As trivial of an example as this is, it stands to demonstrate that the Bible does contain mistakes and falsehoods. If you're someone who thinks that Biblical inerrancy is a reasonable proposition, I strongly encourage you to try to step outside of your own worldview long enough to spend some time seriously looking into the matter. The Skeptic's Annotated Bible makes for a good starting point for this3.
The second and third steps work together. In more recent times, the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 serves as the anchor for the calendrical sleight of hand. Typically, whoever is trying to figure out the date of the end of the world grabs an assortment of events and durations from the Bible and shuffles them around until a date pops out. More often than not, that date is not too terribly far out from when the "prophet" makes his prediction. (In other words, they don't come up with dates ten thousand years in the future or five hundred years in the past.) In modern times, they'll usually tie the date in with elements of Rapture4 theology, although that hasn't always been the case. The problem here, of course, is that given some creativity, selective reading of the Bible, and a little ambiguity in historical dates (owing, for example, to different calendar schemes), a clever "prophet" can manipulate his "prediction" to fall on just about any date he wants. It's not terribly unlike when a stage magician presents the audience with a card trick that relies on a forced card rather than a truly random selection.
Step four is an interesting one. Invariably, the date of the end comes and goes without event. This would lead a normal, rational person to conclude that the "prophet" was wrong, assuming there was any reason to think otherwise in the first place. However, what often happens is that the "prophet" preempts such a conclusion by claiming that, for example, God has responded to the prayers of the faithful and spared the world. Or, perhaps, a previously undetected error in calculations revealed that the "prophet" was off by a year or so. Family Radio Worldwide has convinced their believers of a somewhat different possibility:
If May 21 passes and I'm still here, that means I wasn't saved. Does that mean God's word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all.
-Allison Warden, 29 year-old follower of Harold Camping
That's an interesting new twist. So the end times will start but she just wasn't good enough? This, I suspect, is an extension of the horrible notion that all humans are pretty much worthless and vile creatures with no measure of value apart from how Christian they claim to be5. It would be instructive to follow up with this group and see how they explain the fact that none of their membership vanishes mysteriously on May 21. I wouldn't be surprised to see them claim that some of their number have disappeared, but won't really be able to back that up.
I'm not sure why people like Harold Camping want to set a date for the end of the world. Maybe it's because they sincerely believe in what they're doing. Maybe they're in it for the notoriety. Maybe they're just kooks. But people have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years, and they've always failed.
What I am quite confident of is that on May 22, 2011, the world will still be here.
(If you're interested in some ways that the world might really end, I have to throw a plug out for Death from the Skies! by the ever-awesome Phil Plait. Phil's just cool. Read his book. Twice.)
-Jay
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1I'm not going to spend much time on the Mayan prediction business. It's basically equivalent to saying that the world will end on December 31st because that's the last day on the calendar.
2There are several good books on the subject of End of the World prophecies. Two that I recommend are Johnathan Kirsch's A History of the End of the World and Sharan Newman's The Real History of the End of the World: Apocalyptic Predictions from Revelation and Nostradamus to Y2K and 2012.
3Through the years, I've engaged with numerous people who claim to know the Bible very well, and who claim to hold it in very high regard. It often becomes quickly apparent that they've never actually read it, and that they know very little of the history behind it.
4The Rapture, in my opinion, is one of the best examples to be found of what happens when people run amok with the Bible and fail to treat it as the human-created collection of literature that it is.
5Different churches use different terms, but the point of the argument is that one must accept that God, who on one hand is supposed to be kind and loving and protecting is also so petty and tyrannical that He would make every human live under threat of eternal punishment because of the actions of two people (ignoring for the moment that Adam and Eve were purely mythical people) that He had to have been able to anticipate. Those two character traits are totally incompatible, and I personally cannot do anything other than categorically reject a doctrine that would require me to believe this.
Movie Review: Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus
The fine folks at Asylum followed up their blockbuster hit, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, with another stellar production:
Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus
I'm thinking that the Mega Shark might be the American answer to Godzilla. Or not.
MSvC, as I'll subsequently abbreviate the title, stands unique among films in that it pits Steve Urkel, The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, some dude that kinda looks like Pierce Brosnan but isn't, and some actress I've never heard of against a pair of poorly rendered monsters.
Jaleel White Will Never Live This Down...
Steve Urkel plays U.S. Navy Lieutenant Terry McCormick who specializes in sharks. He's on the USS Gibson (a nod to Debbie Gibson's role in the original MSvGO), trying to confirm the death of the Mega Shark, when it shows up out of nowhere and sinks the ship (possibly a commentary on the state of Gibson's career...). McCormick loses his girlfriend in the carnage, and is the only survivor of the attack. McCormick has developed some sort of sonic widget that can either attract or repel sharks, depending on what the screenwriter needs it to do at any given point in time.
Not Pierce Brosnan plays Nigel Putnam, a soldier of fortune in Africa who specializes in ghost hunting.
At First Glance, He Might Fool You. Then He Speaks...
Or killing strange animals. Or something. Putnam gets into the act when some random tall, blond lawyer lady approaches him in a bar in the Congo and asks him to kill whatever it is that's been eating the workers at a mine nearby. They fly into the area, and the lawyer lady (inexplicably dressed in a short, tight dress and heels despite being in the jungle...) gets eaten by a giant crocodile (Crocosaurus, duh). The croc also tries to eat Putnam, but somehow he manages to tranquillize the thing from inside its mouth, and it spits him out and falls asleep. I was wondering why he didn't try to rescue the lawyer lady at that point, since she was swallowed whole and probably hadn't been digested yet. Maybe he just doesn't care much for lawyers.
The actress I've never heard of (and I'm using the term "actress" kind of loosely) shows up at McCormick's debriefing, and offers him a chance at some closure by joining a team that is trying to hunt down and kill the shark. This is Special Agent Hutchinson. She looks very severe, and speaks in short, clipped sentences, and may actually have been carved out of a block of wood.
That Look On Her Face - It's Like A Mask!
About halfway through the film, she takes off her suit jacket and spends the rest of the film in a tight tank top. This, I suspect, is a strong hint of why she's in the movie at all. I imagine that somewhere in development, someone realized that the movie failed to meet the SyFy Channel's MCR (minimum cleavage requirement), so they added the character of Hutchinson to cover that.
Anyway, Hutchinson works for Admiral Calvin, played by The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager. Calvin's main motivation for killing the shark appears to be so that he can smoke the most expensive cigar made. Personally, I don't get it, but by the time they introduced that plot point, I was willing to go along with whatever they said.
This Movie Really Needed A Doctor. A Script Doctor...
Back to Putnam. He manages to somehow get the sleeping croc onto a freight ship, along with some eggs. (Eggs? Where did eggs come from? There weren't any eggs before. It's like when the development staff realized they were low on cleavage, they also decided to add in some extra random plot points because the plot wasn't already convoluted enough.) For some inane reason, Putnam wants to take the croc and its eggs to the U.S. Why? Really, why? Does he want to corner the market on croc-skin accessories for the ladies? Didn't he see King Kong? Doesn't he know that bringing giant, vicious creatures to a densely populated city is a sure way to send said city to hell in a handbasket? Whatever the reason, the shark begins to attack the boat. (nit pick: both the shark and the croc tend to randomly change scale throughout the film. At one point, we're told that the croc is 1500 feet long. The croc is slightly longer than the shark. The shark, early on, sinks a U.S. Navy Battleship, which is ~900 feet long. The shark is clearly much shorter than the ship. Yet the dorsal fin of the shark is shown to rise out of the water higher than the mast antennas on the battleship. It's like the monsters are made of Expand-o-Foam.) During the attack, the croc wakes up and escapes. The boat sinks, and Putnam barely escapes. He washes ashore and heads to a bar, where he meets Hutchinson, who recruits him to help with the burgeoning creature eradication effort.
Back on Admiral Calvin's aircraft carrier, we learn that McCormick and Putnam know each other from back in their Peace Corps days. Or something. It's really not well-explained, and by that point in the movie, I was finding myself wishing that the cast would break into a Bollywood-style musical number or something because everyone was so tense and serious.
The rest of the film is spent on a confusing trans-oceanic relay race trying to get ahead of the croc and the shark. Why is the shark after the croc? Well....
So those eggs that randomly turned up a while back? As it happens, giant sharks are attracted to the smell of giant crocodile eggs (I mean, who wouldn't be?), and the giant crocodile just happens to have some "evolutionary adaptation" that enables it to lay gajillions of eggs whenever the plot needs it to. (giant pet rock: ham-handledly abusing evolution in order to give some magical characteristic or ability to an organism, even a monstrous one, is one of the reasons that a lot of people don't accept evolution. I certainly don't expect a movie like this to get science right, but when they don't bother to try to explain anything else, but throw evolution under the bus, it just ticks me off.)
Anyway, yeah. Sharks like eggs, and the croc has been cruising all over the oceans laying eggs. Oceans. Plural. Somehow these giant creatures are also endowed with warp drive, because they go from Florida to California to Hawaii in the space of what seems like minutes. And Admiral Calvin's carrier seems to have the same capabilities, because it just happens to be wherever the monsters show up. I'm sure there's a deleted scene that explains that. They probably cut to get the cleavage ratio up.
Right. Well, McCormick, Putnam, and Hutchinson spend a lot of time in this adorable little 4-rotor helicopter, chasing the critters around and coming up with ineffective ways to try to kill them, including:
- Missiles
- Bombs
- Harsh Language
- Nuclear Subs (EPIC FAIL: The shark swallows the submarine. Whole.)
- Glaring Menacingly
- Trapping Them In The Panama Canal And Blowing It Up (Leads to random shark-on-land scene as it chomps its way back to the water, like some weird gray toothy Pac-Man.)
The Canal Scheme doesn't work, although it does manage to get the shark and the croc engaged in tooth to tail combat, where again all sense of consistency of scale is sacrificed in the interest of extra beer money.
They take the fight to Hawaii (I think. Hell, by this point in the movie, they could have been on Mars for all the sense it made), where the croc eggs are starting to hatch. A lucky slap of the croc's tail knocks the Urkelcopter out of the sky, injuring everyone and giving McCormick flashbacks of the shark attack that killed his lady-love. McCormick and Putnam, with a renewed sense of urgency, come up with the Greatest Freakin' Plan Yet To Kill The Giant Monsters!
- Take an inflatable motor boat out to where the monsters are fighting in the ocean
- Drop McCormick's Amazing Sound Generator into the water, tuned to "Create Volcanic Eruption"
- Lure the shark, croc, and half a gajillion baby crocs to the site of the impending eruption
- Get the hell out
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Meanwhile, off camera, Hutchinson has regained consciousness and gotten the Urkelcopter back in the air, and she arrives just as McCormick and Putnam beach their motor boat. They jump in the aircraft and get off the ground just as the volcanic eruption/nuclear explosion (remember, the shark ate a nuclear sub...) goes off, crisping all the critters in the blast.
Hutchinson finally cracks a smile (and it looked genuinely painful) as she reports that the shark and the croc are toast, and then flies off into the sunset.
Hokey smokes.
I never, in a million years, would have guessed that I'd watch a movie of which I can honestly say that Steve Urkel's acting was the unequivocal high point of the film.
Really.
-Jay
The Air Force Academy, MRFF, and Cadets for Christ
This story has been floating around for a while. I initially picked it up from Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, but it's also being covered at truthout and at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's site.
The short version of the story is that a cult-like group called Cadets for Christ, led by a couple named Don and Anna Warrick, are entrenched at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. Cadets for Christ is part of the "Shepherding Movement". Cadets who join Cadets for Christ, according to Chris Rodda writing at The Huffington Post:
...are separated from their families and anything else that might interfere with their brainwashing. In the shepherding movement, the female is the "sheep" and the male is the "shepherd," and a woman's sole purpose in life is to be a good wife and mother, subordinating herself to her male shepherd.
The name most closely associated with this situation is that of Lauren Baas, a 2010 Academy graduate, who has become estranged from her family due to the influence of Cadets for Christ. The quick version of her story is that she went to the USAFA with the goal of becoming a pilot in the Air Force, got involved with Cadets for Christ, was placed into an arranged engagement to her "shepherd", and has basically given up all of her dreams to be a sheep. (The photo below, of a cookbook given to Ms. Baas, is rather chilling. Her last name is a pure coincidence.)
Cookbook belonging to Lauren Baas, via Chris Rodda at the Huffington Post
The Baas family, in an effort to call attention to the situation at USAFA, wrote a "holiday letter" to the Warricks. Their pain is heartbreaking. An excerpt from the letter, again via Chris Rodda at The Huffington Post, is below. The letter in its entirety can be read here.
Did you ever have the guts to ask Lauren about her career goals before squelching them? From birth she was a very determined individual. As parents, we taught her to work hard and be persistent in any endeavor she chose to undertake. She completed elementary and high school with great pride and high academic achievement. Her next goal was to graduate from the United States Air Force Academy and become a USAF pilot. Of course, being a female, you made sure that goal was extinguished. In your words, she is the sheep and her career is to follow the male shepherd. HOW DARE YOU PLAY GOD!!!
Did you know that Lauren never experienced the thrill of dating someone? Growing up, she was always quiet, shy and spoke of getting her feet on the ground before entering the dating arena. Of course, you instructed her that God sent a USAFA Cadet over two years her junior, to be her life long partner. They never had the opportunity to date, as it would interfere with their "Bible study." Five months into their relationship you were shoving "Biblical" marriage preparation materials down their throats!!! Don't tell us that you had no part in orchestrating their engagement. YOUR SELFISH GOAL WAS TO PERPETUATE THE FUNDAMENTALIST EVANGELICAL MISSION!!!
There's a lot of wrong going on here - a climate at USAFA that fosters religious intolerance, a lack of scrutiny of religious groups that are allowed to operate on campus, a particular group using classic cult techniques to isolate and control its members, families being broken apart by the activities of the aforementioned group.
The fact that this is happening at a military academy is unsettling, but when we move beyond that, the situation is one that's not uncommon on college campuses around the country.
It's not hard to see why.
Young adults starting college are often finding their first real taste of responsibility. They're away - possibly thousands of miles away - from home, they don't know very many people, they're seeking their own identity yet looking for some familiarity. There are clubs and groups of all sorts, and many students find their way to Bible/religious study groups. More than likely, they'll end up in one that's fairly congruent with whatever faith they grew up in - Catholics tend to find Catholic groups, different sorts of Protestant Christians will tend to find groups with similar views, and so forth.
Some, like Lauren Baas (raised Catholic), end up in groups that are radically different. Indeed, Ms. Baas' parents indicate that Cadets for Christ actively led her to reject her Catholicism1:
Do not attempt to trivialize these circumstances with the rationalization that we are merely a family that cannot accept the fact that their daughter has "chosen" to change religions and marry outside the Catholic faith. YOU KNOW, AS WELL AS WE, THIS STATEMENT IS SO FAR FROM THE TRUTH!!! You have taken Lauren's mind and soul and twisted it to your fundamentalist Christian liking. She was brainwashed to believe she was "unenlightened" and an "unsaved fool" in the Catholic faith. She now lives in fear of God and feels "shameful" if she does not continually stand guard against "ungodly people."
(From the Baas family's letter to the Warricks)
Had Ms. Baas simply decided to marry a non-Catholic, I suspect there wouldn't be much of an issue. Had she decided, on her own, to leave the Catholic church and join a different one, the situation would be different. In this case, though, it appears that she was intimidated and coerced2 into rejecting her previous beliefs and manipulated into an engagement - things that the "old" Lauren wouldn't have done.
It's reasonable to ask how a group can steer someone away from their worldview and into something so completely different. It's fairly straightforward - surprisingly so - but it can be difficult to spot if you're in the middle of it. I'd venture to say that Cadets for Christ uses some of these techniques on new members:
- Love bombing - new members are made the focus of attention with an ulterior motive of drawing them deeper into the group. They might be flattered or they might find that the group pays a lot of attention to anything they have to say. In short, the group welcomes them with open arms and makes them feel special. Of course, not every group that warmly welcomes new members is trying to brainwash them. It can be very difficult to distinguish between a group that is engaging in love-bombing its members and a group that is genuinely friendly and welcoming until one tries to leave the group.
- Controlling activities and contacts - the new members are presented with group-related activities that start to occupy all of their free time. They may be strongly encouraged to spend leisure time with other members of the group. Members might be encouraged or pressured to date within the group, or to invite their external friends to join. Members might explicitly be discouraged from spending time in non-group activities or with non-group associates. In extreme cases, members might end up leaving existing jobs to go to work within the group. The end result of all of this is that a member is eventually steered to a point where nearly all of his or her interactions are with group adherents.
- Controlling information - members are shielded from exposure to information contrary to the group's ideology, or are bombarded with information that agrees with the group. They're encouraged to reject disconfirming information and look for data that supports what they already consider to be true. Negative information may be portrayed as dangerous3.
- Authoritarian leadership - the leadership of the group is seen as inviolate and inerrant. When the leadership starts making important personal decisions for the group members, such as who they will marry, it's a very loud alarm that things are seriously wrong.
That's really about all it takes, and the Baas letter strongly suggests that Lauren was subjected to just these sorts of things as a member of Cadets for Christ.
Looking at the situation, it's very disquieting that the USAFA has allowed (and continues to allow) Cadets for Christ to operate on campus. The dual messages being sent are that the Academy condones the theology that Cadets for Christ espouses and endorses the techniques they bring to bear on their members. Neither of these messages is appropriate for a Service Academy. It's very disquieting, based on the articles linked above, that the leadership at USAFA when confronted with evidence of unconstitutional proselytizing by Cadets for Christ has deliberately failed to act appropriately on it.
And it's very disquieting that at least one family has lost a daughter.
-Jay
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1I am categorically not attempting to stake out a position that people should always and forever remain within whatever faith tradition they were raised in. As people grow and learn and experience new things, their beliefs often change. If your beliefs at age 30 are essentially the same as they were at age 10, you're doing life wrong.
2Threatening someone with eternal punishment in Hell as a consequence of not accepting a particular system of beliefs is every bit as coercive as forcing conversions at the point of a sword or at the end of a gun.
3Stop and think for a few moments about how often this occurs in daily life. Most often when this happens, someone is trying to sell you something. Nobody ever sold a car by saying "Go try the dealer down the street. Their prices are better and they sell better cars." It would be a rare pastor indeed who closed a sermon with "...and you should really read Ehrman's God's Problem for an interesting and insightful take on the problem of evil." You'll probably never hear a politician say "The problems we're facing aren't really the fault of any one individual or administration. They're the culmination of many decisions made by many individuals and administrations over the last several decades and it's going to take a long time, a lot of cooperation, a lot of money, and a lot of work to fix them."
I Haven’t Cross-Posted From James McGrath In A While…(Take Two)
(NOTE: To anyone who noticed that I posted this, then unpublished it - when I re-read it this morning, I realized I had left out a significant portion of what I intended to say. Sorry 'bout that.)
...so I thought I'd take a cue from this post and re-post (or perhaps re-re-post) this video:
The video is from a blog called Recovering Fundamentalists1.
I liked this particular video mainly because he gives a very nice visual explanation of the circular reasoning that goes into claims of Biblical inerrancy.
There are a number of flaws in the reasoning, not the least of which is that when books of the Bible refer to scripture, they're referring to scripture as it was understood when the text in question was written. In other words, a reference to scripture in Psalms doesn't include books like 2 Timothy, which was written much, much later.
This is something that seems quite obvious to people outside of the circle, but can be very difficult to recognize and acknowledge to people who are caught up in it.
He makes a couple of other good points in the vein of not letting fear of the answers2 (or of Hell) prevent you from asking the questions that might be bouncing around in your head.
That's important.
It's extremely easy to set aside questions you really need to get on the table simply because you might not like the answers. Maybe they run counter to what you've been taught. Maybe they force you to look closely at some doubt or concern that you hoped would just go away. Or perhaps they make you realize that it's time to set some changes in motion that have been needed for a while.
The take-aways are these:
- It's often useful to take a step back and look at things from a different perspective than you're used to.
- Don't be afraid to ask tough questions. The answers may challenge you, but in the long run you'll be the better for it.
Good advice, I think.
Now, I am slightly concerned that he goes down a path towards the end that may be more aggressive than it needs to be for an introduction type video. My thinking is that people who are starting to question fundamentalist beliefs are likely to be doing so bit by bit, so perhaps terms like "undermine" and "dismantle" aren't the most useful. I could be wrong. I agree with him that the question of Biblical inerrancy is central to the matter, but that's a question that can be addressed with history and scholarship without the need for overt hostility. I think people would be more receptive to that approach, and more inclined to ask deeper and more involved questions.
-Jay
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1I haven't browsed around Recovering Fundamentalists enough to get a good feel for what they're all about, so other than saying that it looks like they might have some interesting things to say, I'm not going to get into much about them right now.
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Recent Posts
- Mini Book Review: The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, Translated by Reg Keeland
- Montreal Police Finally Investigating David Mabus (UPDATE)
- Biblical Inerrancy
- That’s Offensive!
- Movie Review – Speed Racer (2008)
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